“Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.”
— Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States
This president came into office with the most aggressively socialist agenda of any chief executive since Franklin Roosevelt. His goals were simple but radical:
- to diminish the image of the United States abroad as a sort of penance for what he perceives as our past sins on the international stage;
- to redistribute the wealth of the nation in order to reward his friends and punish his political foes;
- to grow the size and scope of federal authority and power beyond even the wildest dreams of FDR himself.
Since taking office, he has bowed before Saudi princes and other tinhorn dictators, thereby groveling on behalf of all his countrymen. He apologized for us to our enemies in the Muslim world, offered to talk unconditionally to the leader of Iran (a suicide state if ever there was one), and snubbed Israel, the one democracy and our most important ally in the Middle East. He is preparing to abandon Iraq to the mercy of Syria and Iran. Can Afghanistan be far behind?
Goal #1 accomplished.
Obama has taken over banks, insurance companies and two-thirds of the U.S. auto industry. He held General Motors and Chrysler stockholders hostage to his auto bailout while stealing their stock and handing it over to his union supporters in the United Auto Workers.
He recently signed a $26 billion bill to bail out teachers' unions and prop up their bloated pensions. (It's for the children, you know.)
He intends to allow the Bush tax cuts to sunset at the end of this year, thereby raising taxes on all productive Americans in the name of "fairness."
Goal #2 humming along nicely.
He forced through a monstrous government health care bill that most of the Congress had not read and most of the country did not want. It forces Americans to buy something they may not need or cannot afford, and it increases the burden on an already overworked system at a time when many health care professionals are threatening to leave their vocation. And now that it is law, Obama will spend unlimited amounts of our tax dollars defending it in court.
He has stated that he wants a gargantuan tax on American consumption (VAT) and upon industry (carbon tax). In short, he wants to be involved in every aspect of our lives.
Goal #3 right on schedule.
Barack Obama knows, as did Franklin Roosevelt, that once enacted and accepted as entitlements, the programs he has initiated will never go away. He knows that most future Republican politicians will never have the intestinal fortitude to tell the American people the truth as to why, for the sake of the union, they must repeal his initiatives.
In recent years, our benevolent federal government has "saved" us from Big Tobacco, Big Alcohol, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Automobile, Big Pollution and Big Business. The question is, when Barack Obama and our other saviors in government and in the media are finished "saving" us, who will save us from Big Brother?
By his own reckoning, Barack Obama is no failure. Even if he is a one term president, he has done damage that may never be repaired.
© 2010 by Doug Patton
Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself much more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns of sage political analysis are published the world over by legions of discerning bloggers, courageous webmasters and open-minded newspaper editors.
