But Obama said the same thing - look what that got us - Granite Grok

But Obama said the same thing – look what that got us

In today’s Granite Status was this piece about what the Warren B. Rudman Center wants: Bringing campaigning back to the living room (reformatted, emphasis mine):

The executive director of the Warren B. Rudman Center is working to crystallize some of what makes the New Hampshire Primary so special in a series of public forums.
The ingredients: Ideas, access and engaging, close conversations with leaders.  “People are craving facts and some sense of civil discourse,” Broderick says.

I don’t see this as a big surprise.  What did surprise me was near the end of the article was this piece of pablum pie-in-the-sky:

Snowe, the author of “Fighting for Common Ground: How We Can Fix The Stalemate in Congress,” said at the Rudman Center that Republicans and Democrats need to spend more time working across the aisle and less time working the donor phonebanks.

Snowe, the author of “Fighting for Common Ground: How We Can Fix The Stalemate in Congress,” said at the Rudman Center that Republicans and Democrats need to spend more time working across the aisle and less time working the donor phonebanks.  “I think we have to jettison the red and blue state approach and unite under the red, white and blue because that’s what it’s about,” Snowe said. “It’s about the entire country.”

I have the same thing to say here that I said to someone in active in NH politics tonite concerning the Article V Con-con being bandied about: you can’t unite about the political process because of the hyper-partisan atmosphere right now; we are a nation divided because of futures that are diametrically incompatible with each other.  Sure, Obama said “We’re not red states and blue states; we’re all Americans, standing up together for the red, white, and blue” – and as he had lawlessly moved the country towards the Progressive / Socialist / Government controlled end game, the rest of us are rebelling to stay true to the Constitution that

Those valuing a American birthed Constitutionally limited Government whose main purpose is to protect Individual Liberty versus a foreign political philosophy that demands Government decree how its people are to act and behave.  One that allows a person to control their own course versus one that controls it for you.  One is where our elected representatives act and vote in open and transparent fashions versus one where the bureaucracy makes its own rules.  One where there are no limits to success versus one where others determine your success.

Freedom versus Tyranny.

Nope.  If we go down the Socialist path (and one can quibble that we are far down that path given the implicit adoption of “each according to his ability, to each according to his need”), we know what the outcome will be even if we are electing those that are dragging us down that path.  After all, the last century is strewn with failed examples (and millions of deaths to prove it).  We are watching one now in its death throes – Venezuela as they are proving, in real time, the Margaret Thatcher Rule: ‘The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”  And at $18 Trillion, and the Administration just so anxious to scrounge up as much money as possible to further it Redistributionist ideal, we may not be far behind.

It begs the question of the Proper Role of Government: one that makes outcomes for everyone equal within certain boundaries or one in which everyone is equal before the law?  Mandated outcomes or outcomes you make for yourself?  The ability to take risk (and suffer the consequences) or where risk is removed by force and bad consequences are mitigated?  One where one is just left alone or one where one is forced to be in the collective group?  One determines their own size or one-size-WILL-fit-all?

Red, White, and Blue – but which one?  Let’s be honest – this is a country divided.  Each of the above questions are reasonable and do outline the vast chasm of the two camps and what those views are.  “Working across the aisle” – it sounds so nice, so collaborative, but from MY standpoint and the results it has given us so far in the cost, size and intrusiveness of Government, I see my side loosing in this give and take.  It seems every year, that Overton Window goes further Socialist and except some very few exceptions, rarely moves back to its Constitutional roots (notice I did not say Left or Right).  From a Progressive standpoint, the negative Rights (what government CANNOT do)  and governance laid out in the Constitution have all but overrun and replaced by the Positive ones (what Government MUST do for you).  Listen to the DC politicians, especially Republicans – listen to how when they talk about cutting spending – only “discretionary” side of the ledger even as the majority of the spending they disavow any ability to control.

That’s what they want us to believe, but remember, if “mandatory” spending was set by Law, it can be changed by Law.  And if it is the mandatory spending that is the problem, we SHOULD demand that they fix it instead of continuing to be political cowards, valuing their butts over our financial well-being.

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