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Our Resignation of Dependence
Our Resignation of Dependence: “
In American history and government classes across this country, we still teach our children that our founding fathers demonstrated genius both in articulating the inalienable rights belonging to each person in our Declaration of Independence, and then in preserving those rights in our Constitution. Their sole and emphatic purpose in imposing a system of checks and balances among the three branches of the federal government was to prevent the accumulation of power; and in imposing a system of federalism between the national and state governments to prevent the usurpation of authority rightfully belonging to the states or to the people. The genius, then, was not only in proclaiming the natural rights of man, but also in acknowledging the need to protect those rights from man’s natural desire for power.
Man’s desire for power does not always come from those with evil or corrupt motives. It also arises in those who believe they are possessed of beneficent, even magnanimous intentions. There are two simple reasons, however, why our founders were not fooled by the promised good intentions of their fellow man: today’s seemingly good intentions become tomorrow’s despotism; and the price of accepting the good intentions of government is paid for with a loss in liberty and a surrender in self-reliance.
Our founders unequivocally understood these stark truths. Upon the passage of the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention, a citizen of Philadelphia passing by Independence Hall asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government had just been decided on. Franklin famously responded: ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’ Franklin clearly knew that the greatest vulnerability of self-government is when its citizens realize they can manipulate government for their own selfish desires, taxing revenue away from others for purposes that stray farther and farther beyond the boundaries of constitutional legitimacy.
Thomas Jefferson also profoundly observed that ‘the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.’ In other words, left to their own natural behavior, men will add to their power in and through government, which will necessarily erode the amount of freedom enjoyed by those living under that government. Stated yet another way, where diligence, vigilance, and perseverance must be exercised is in resisting the natural tendency of man and government to seek more power. It is as if we as citizens are driving the eighteen-wheeler of government that is perpetually out of alignment, constantly requiring us to put all of our weight against the steering wheel to keep our big rig from heading straight into the bar ditch, if not ultimately off the cliff.
And yet, just as pitiful and ironic as the addict who knows that the alcohol or drug he craves is the very same thing that is killing him, Americans continue to hand over their freedoms and relinquish their independence and individual responsibility – those attributes that have uniquely defined what it is to be an ‘American’ – to an increasingly intrusive and expansive government made up of individuals who are all too willing to become that very concentration of accumulated power that our founders feared and attempted to prevent with the Constitution they ratified.
While our leaders in government are certainly culpable in accepting this excessive power, often embracing and even pursuing it, ultimately the greatest blame lies at the feet of the Americans who have permitted, even demanded that it happen. That is, in our panic to deal with the inescapable emergencies of life, we have all too often accepted the alleged helping hand of government and have grown only more expectant of government’s proffered solutions to our personal and financial difficulties. While we once purposely proscribed governmental interference – certainly interference by the federal government – in our daily affairs, we now apparently consider it to be irresponsible of government not to interfere, with the unprecedented expectation that the government of today led by the men of today are somehow different from the governments and men of yesterday and are no longer in need of the constitutional limitations we once considered the secret of our success.
And, so, we find ourselves as Americans in the twenty-first century and heirs to the genius of our founders at yet another historic crossroad in our nation’s story. We watch our elected leaders taxing and spending incomprehensible amounts of the posterity intended for our generation and for the generations to come, in order to bail out corporations that (we are told) are too big to fail; entire industries that represent too much American tradition to be allowed to collapse; one of our largest states, whose budget shortfall alone is more than the gross national product of most countries; and Americans whose varying conditions of unemployment, retirement, and health coverage propel them to unhesitatingly surrender their dignity in exchange for a willing – even permanent – dependence on government for their welfare.
Our founders, who for an uncertain cause but certain treason were willing to sacrifice their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor – and the patriots who, in fact, did give up their lives and fortunes, so that we could embark on this great experiment in self-government – would be heartbroken and dumbfounded at how easily we have abdicated our independence and individual responsibility, and how subservient and deferential we have become to a government that was originally designed to be our servant, rather than our master. Is this really the future about which they dreamed and for which they died?
We seem ready to accept the trendy rationalization that action ceding massive power and control to the federal government must be taken because certain entities, industries, and markets are just too big to fail. Have we also deluded ourselves into believing that our nation is somehow too big to fail? That kind of hubris is more likely the telltale sign of the very real possibility of what we consider to be impossible. President Obama has proclaimed that we are the change that we have been waiting for; it is likely more accurate that we are exactly who the founders were trying to protect us from. In 233 years, we have fallen from the heights of proclaiming to the world our eloquent and profound Declaration of Independence to the depths of whimpering this resignation of dependence.
The hope promised by President Obama is not ultimately the hope of freedom and opportunity that has been the historical signature of America. Instead, it is the insidious siren call of immediate relief to an impatient and impulsive people, in exchange for expanded governmental servitude, a wholly un-American principle. True hope, however, lies in Americans rediscovering and embracing the principles of our founders and the proper relationship between government and the governed as reflected in our Constitution. It is time for the current generation of prodigal Americans to return to our roots and once again practice the principles we continue to acknowledge as genius in our textbooks and classrooms and to which we have erected countless monuments and memorials all over this country. It is time for us to return to the unique blueprint of self-government that has permitted America to be the shining city on the hill that Ronald Reagan so eloquently described. It is time for us to admit that our salvation does not, and cannot ever, lie in government. It is time for us to liberate those who have been dependent on government for too long, to prevent a new, even more-expansive generation from being enslaved to government, and to promote an unabashed return to self-reliance. It is time for us to start acting like Americans.
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Bill Keffer is a former Texas State Representative (R – Dallas), a practicing attorney, and frequently writes and speaks on issues confronting Texas and the United States. He can be reached at bkeffer@mklaw.net.
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(Via Dallas Blog RSS Feed.)
Fisking Obama’s latest attack on the GOP
Fisking Obama’s latest attack on the GOP: ”
From a short report, mostly comprising direct quotations, at Politico.com:
President Barack Obama chided Republicans for criticizing his agenda without being able to name priorities of their own.
‘The Republican Party right now hasn’t sort of figured out what it’s for,’ Obama said during a Monday interview with regional press, according to a transcript posted Tuesday by the Louisville Courier-Journal.
‘As a proxy, they’ve just decided, ‘We’re going to be against whatever the other side is for,’’ he said….
If one ignores the Obama Campaign’s rhetoric and the Obama Administration’s rhetoric, and instead focuses on the Obama Administration’s actual domestic proposals and actions, then without any doubt, the simplest, most consistent, most principled, and most conservative approach any Republican leader, state or federal, can have taken since the Obama inauguration has been to oppose the Obama adminstration. There may be a few exceptions, but they’re trivial. The best way to get things right as a conservative on matters of domestic policy, in other words, has been to presume that Obama is absolutely wrong in every respect, and vote against him. When the leaders of our country are marching us off a fiscal cliff, then simply being against what they’re proposing is indeed an adequately comprehensive political philosophy, at least until we’ve backed away from the cliff.
‘What you’ve seen is the Republican Party trying to position themselves as fiscally conservative after eight years of being in power and not being particularly fiscally conservative,’ Obama said.
‘I understand their efforts to brand themselves in that fashion. I just want to make sure that when it comes to solving this current economic crisis that we don’t get so caught up in short-term politics that we’re missing the big picture.’
Oh yes, by all means, let’s not miss the big picture (h/t InstaPundit):
That ‘big picture’ — which itself is incredibly generous to Obama, since only fools and idiots (or members of the Congressional Budget Office) can give any credence at all to the notion that once Congress has set precedents for significant domestic spending, that spending will ever be dialed back in any meaningful way — tells one at a glance why the Obama Administration will be a disaster for the American economy and, ultimately, the American electorate. Indeed, the only one of these deficit projections that is reasonably certain is the single most frightening one — for the current year!
If that graph doesn’t make you want to vomit, you’re either a socialist or you’re in a coma.
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(Via BeldarBlog.)
Video: NRSC ad targets Obama on hypocrisy
Class Warfare And The Left’s Populism
Class Warfare And The Left’s Populism: ”
In order to have a true populist revolt, a person must define the enemy. Throughout the campaign, President Barack Obama did just that by saying that people owning small businesses making more than $250,000 are rich. (The actual number he’s using is $200,000 for individuals.) $250,000 is very subjective. $250,000 here in Texas is a mighty fine sum. $250,000 in New York City or San Francisco might land you in the middle class. For example, the cost of living in New York is 76% higher than in Houston, Texas, but the pay is only 15% more. The net change in disposable income is $150,856.00. Just think of how many health care policies a person could buy for that much money.
Second, we have to instill a sense of unfairness. It’s not that some people took bigger risks, or made tougher decisions to get where they got. It’s that the system favored them and needs to start favoring the disaffected masses. As Obama said to Joe the Plumber, ‘People who make $60,000/year work hard, too. If you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.’
Finally, there needs to be the symbolic harm. Americans are not too thrilled with the bailouts. In this ownership society, lots of people have seen their 401Ks diminish into oblivion while the financial guys now get bailed out. It’s not fair. And then, to find out that they get $165 million in bonuses (they are retention payments, because guess what? no one wants to stay on a sinking ship). Outrage ensues. It’s a witch hunt. ACORN mobilizes their tiny force. AIG employees live in fear.
The fact is, I felt that President Obama was appealing to the basest of desires all the way around during the campaign. The have nots bought into the talk and nobles liked it, too. He spoke smoothly and had a presidential temperament. As the contemptible Christopher Buckley opines, fluish and back from landing his Cessna and gazing at the Iditarod:
I voted for Barack Obama largely on the basis of his temperament, which I thought superior. He is only 47 years old, but to me seemed older than that: a man of precocious aspect and judgment. In the French wording, un homme sérieux.
Of course you did, darling. You nincompoop.
So there were two ends of the spectrum that voted for Obama-the discontented and those suffering a fit of noblesse oblige. As in, no matter how much taxes the mighty Obama can put forth, it won’t matter for the super rich or for Senators, because they find their way around taxation anyway. Can you say Maryland?
In between these extremes, are the people who work for their money, who built businesses and who pour their earnings back into their business in order to grow it. What the President has been attacking isn’t wealth but talent and ambition. The working people are people who work with their hands, grunt and lift things, turn a wrench, while rich people, as Matt Yglesias said, ‘sit in cushy chairs.’ James Joyner responded to that with this:
There’s no doubt that many low paying jobs require a lot of physical effort. Indeed, most of them are more physically demanding than most of the jobs that pay very well.
On the other hand, as Matt acknowledges offhandedly, those jobs have very low barriers to entry. One doesn’t study hard for four years of high school, four years of college, and three to eight years of professional schooling to become a mover or a stockboy or a stenographer. That’s a lot of work that’s generally put in while deferring income that those who took lesser paying jobs were earning right away.
Another key difference is that people who schlep boxes for a living don’t take their work home with them. They’re not thinking about better ways to get a piano down the stairs on the weekend or stressing about how much packing tape they’re using on the drive home.
Of course, we don’t pay people based on how hard they work any more than we grade students for how hard they studied. Ultimately, it’s about how much value others place on your services and how much competition there is for them. But the idea that an executive isn’t working hard because his chair is confortable is rather silly.
This resentment is more than resentment at the rich-it’s resentment at those who have taken the time, committed to the work and had the smarts to achieve. It’s not class warfare so much as it’s achievement warfare. Look at how the AP’s Matthew Brown summarizes the Montana plane crash victims:
Vanessa Pullen was a pediatrician, Michael Pullen was a dentist, Erin Jacobson was an opthalmologist and Amy Jacobson was a dental hygienist. Brent Ching was an orthopedic surgeon.
Buddy Feldkamp identified the pilot as Buddy Summerfield.
The Yellowstone Club, near Yellowstone National Park, is a millionaires-only resort that counts former Vice President Dan Quayle and Microsoft founder Bill Gates among its 340 members.
The loss, in terms of humanity, and brain drain is staggering and yet, the author finishes by making reference to Dan Quayle and ‘millionaires-only’.
The Leftist’s anger isn’t against rich, it’s against achievement. If you have succeeded in the private sector, you’re suspect and to be maligned. If you’ve achieved your wealth through graft and corruption like many in the public arena, well, that’s to be forgiven. The key is to make everything public-owned, then no one is better than anyone.
The ultimate goal of the Left’s populism is simple: socialism.
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(Via Dr. Melissa Clouthier.)
Beware of Obama Inflation Crisis
Beware of Obama Inflation Crisis: ”
Some people may not fully comprehend the profound significance of the Federal Reserve’s decision this week to buy $300 billion of U.S. long-term debt, but ponder the words of Wall Street savvy Ben King, ‘it’s the nuclear option … commence the Weimar Watch.’
Germans before World War II suffered under hyperinflation, in which they pushed wheelbarrows of currency to make ordinary purchases. The collapse of the currency caused the rise of the Nazi Party.
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(Via Dallas Blog RSS Feed.)
Democrook Watch: Dodd’s Wife Is a Former Director of Bermuda-Based AIG Controlled Company
Democrook Watch: Dodd’s Wife Is a Former Director of Bermuda-Based AIG Controlled Company: “
Chris and Jackie Dodd shared a fondness for AIG.
Not only was Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn) one of AIG’s favorite recipients of campaign donations but his wife Jackie was a director of an AIG Bermuda-based company.
Real Clear Politics reported, via LGF:
No wonder Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn) went wobbly last week when asked about his February amendment ratifying hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives at insurance giant AIG. Dodd has been one of the company’s favorite recipients of campaign contributions. But it turns out that Senator Dodd’s wife has also benefited from past connections to AIG as well.
From 2001-2004, Jackie Clegg Dodd served as an ‘outside’ director of IPC Holdings, Ltd., a Bermuda-based company controlled by AIG. IPC, which provides property casualty catastrophe insurance coverage, was formed in 1993 and currently has a market cap of $1.4 billion and trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol IPCR. In 2001, in addition to a public offering of 15 million shares of stock that raised $380 million, IPC raised more than $109 million through a simultaneous private placement sale of 5.6 million shares of stock to AIG – giving AIG a 20% stake in IPC. (AIG sold its 13.397 million shares in IPC in August, 2006.)
Clegg was compensated for her duties to the company, which was managed by a subsidiary of AIG. In 2003, according to a proxy statement, Clegg received $12,000 per year and an additional $1,000 for each Directors’ and committee meeting she attended. Clegg served on the Audit and Investment committees during her final year on the board.
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(Via Gateway Pundit.)
Punch-Drunk Obama– The Video
Punch-Drunk Obama– The Video: “President Punch-Drunk
punch-drunk- suffering cerebral injury usually from many minute brain hemorrhages that is a result of repeated head blows received in boxing and is typically marked by mental confusion, incoordination, and slurred speech
At last, here’s the punch-drunk Obama video:
Via HotAir.
And, here is the transcript of the exchange from ‘60 Minutes’ last night:
Steve Kroft: You’re sitting here. And you’re laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he’s sitting there just making jokes about money?’ How do you deal with — I mean: explain… Are you punch-drunk?’
Obama: No, no. There’s gotta be a little gallows humor to get you through the day. Sometimes my team talks about the fact that, uh, if you had said a year ago that the least of my problems would have been Iraq — which is still a pretty serious problem — I don’t think anyone would have believed it. But we’ve got a lot on our plate, and a lot of difficult decisions we’re going to have to make.
Of course, violence in Iraq was way down even last year at this time so Obama was not paying much attention to the war either.
The Bush Surge was already showing amazing results last year at this time. Enemy initiated attacks were way down. US fatalities were way down. Al-Qaeda in Iraq was defeated.
Maybe Obama was punch-drunk then, too.
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(Via Gateway Pundit.)
Obama’s Failed Diplomacy
President Barack Obama wrote former French president Jacques Chirac a letter saying that he looks forward working with him over the next four years. Meanwhile, the actual President, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French press and and the French people are offended. Gateway Pundit has the story.
My question: What exactly will Obama and Chirac work on together? The new world order? A shadow government?
More questions: Is Obama consulting with his Secretary of State about these secret letters, YouTube videos and stupid gifts? Is it a case of Dumb and Dumber or is Obama just doing what he damn well pleases?
I can’t escape the feeling that President Obama just does not give a flip about diplomacy. Or rather, he’s so narcissistic, that he figures anything he does will be preferable to what his predecessor did. Newsflash, Mr. President. Some of the leaders in the world may not have liked George W. Bush, but you can be sure they respected him.
President Obama is quickly taking the position of being unliked and disrespected. That does not bode well for the safety and security of Americans abroad. Nor does it bode well for our standing in the world.
He’s going to have a tough time filling his remaining cabinet slots. No one will want to touch this administration with a ten foot pole.
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(Via Dr. Melissa Clouthier.)
Fannie and Freddie tell Barney “NO”
Fannie and Freddie tell Barney “NO”: “Washington Post:
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) demanded yesterday that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cancel retention payments being paid to thousands of employees, but the federal regulator that authorized the payments is refusing to comply.
Congress proposed legislation this week that would have severely taxed these payments, in addition to those at American International Group and other big financial firms receiving taxpayer assistance.
Frank, whose committee oversees the mortgage finance companies and their regulator, went further, asking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to eliminate all retention payments and claw back those already paid. The companies, seized by the government in September, have received about $50 billion in taxpayer money.
…
Writing in response, Lockhart said he told Congress in September that he had instituted retention programs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in consultation with the Treasury Department. Since then, many employees have helped carry out the Obama administration’s housing recovery plan.
‘It was very important to work with the current management teams and employees to encourage them to stay and to continue to make important improvements,’ Lockhart wrote. ‘In response, most have stayed. Indeed, I can attest that many employees at all levels at each company have been working far more hours, with far less compensation than they did prior’ to the government’s takeover.
Retention payments are being paid over a 1year period, starting last December. Lockhart said that Fannie Mae has offered 5,000 employees payments averaging $21,000, and that Freddie Mac has offered 4,000 payments averaging $19,000.
…
Legislators seem to have little knowledge of management and compensation issues, but they also seem eager to impose their ignorance on the entities who are trying to workout the bailouts. It is possible that Barney Franks and others will make matters much worse by running off the current employees. They are adding to the impression that the Democrats do not know what they are doing.
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(Via PrairiePundit.)
