We remember back to the Declaration of Independence: “pursuit of happiness”, which the meaning of the Founders for the word “happiness” was Private Property. The founding philosophy was that Government was to be a neutral player; it set the table in a flat, even handed fashion in creating the rules and then backed out of the way and let citizens go about creating their wealth in a manner they saw fit, with the intensity of effort and innovation that fit them and their goals.
Winners and Losers picked by Government as a matter of course? Nope!
Obama seemingly has never had that as a grounding philosophy – raised by a mother who had a philosophy, by all accounts I’ve read, of an anti-Americanism, fathers / husbands that left she and Barry after some period of time, spending formative years in Hawaii at the “Red Church”, and mentored by outright Socialists, Marxists, and Communists. By his own hand:
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structured feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpets or set our stereos so loud the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling conventions…
And in my opinion, never truly learned what American Exceptionalism is all about; instead, he was taught to despise it. And he became the President without really understanding in his soul what America was all about – only a black Marxist nightmare doppelganger of it. I will say one thing – he hid it well until it was too late for us. Now, in yet another piece of vetting (that the MSM should have done before the LAST election), it comes out that ““When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody” in 2007 was being formulated well before that in 1998:
What that means then is that as we try to resuscitate this notion that we’re all in this thing together, leave nobody behind, we do have to be innovative and thinking what are the delivery systems that are actually effective and meet people where they live. And my suggestion, I guess would be that the trick, and this is one of the few areas where I think there are technical issues that have to be dealt with as opposed to just political issues. I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure everybody’s got a shot.
And it is not clear what “a certain level” is for Obama as he always wishes to “ask” that the rich “pay their fair share” even as the top quintile (top 20%) of income earners paid 70% of all Fed income tax. At what point is “fair”, fair? Is it France’s President Hollande’s 75% marginal tax rate? Is it higher (according to some Democrat Socialists of America, it should be ALL)? It is not clear, but what is clear is that the Democrat Socialists and the rest of the Left believe that whatever you make, if you are not spending it in ways that they ‘bless”, they should be able to take control of it – they will let you keep what they think you need of your money. Look at the brouhaha over taxes: it is also clear that if your money is not being spent for the “common good” (as defined by….the Left), you are the cold-hearted SELFISH person – they need it for someone else’s needs.
Redistribution. The word screams Socialism. I disagree that Charity has to be Government based (as the Charity “universe” served by general Society is ever more crowded out by Government “professionals”); here in the US (as opposed to the European model) much of charitable work historically has been Society based. Starting in the ’30s under the Great Lurch Left by FDR, however, Government began the long march of muscling out the private concerns – or co-opted them with the lure of “free money” (aka “grants”). But if FDR was the Architect of the Great Lurch of Government Pushiness, then Obama can be categorized as the Red Button Pusher of the Great Rocket Launch to the Far Left – not only not caring if the money comes in (re: years of trillion dollar deficits) but that the money he wishes to give to other that “merit it” (a notion from his Socialist / anticolonialist hatred of America), was actually earned by someone else. Someone else’s labor, their time, their effort, and their skills are being callously taken from them. Add it up – most middle class folks are paying up to 50% of what they owe to Government.
Don’t get me wrong – we do need Government. Well, most of us want a limited version of (let’s leave aside the anarchists and near-anarchists) government even as most of us just want to be left alone the majority of the time. I’ve maintained that local Govt should be responsible for, and control of, local roads, local police, local fire and local education (with the caveat that I often think that government worker monopolies of those functions could be replaced by firms that would have to bit servicing those needs and be held to account better for the results). However, Obama would have none of that – he wants more and more centralization of all functions to be at as high a level as possible. Just as the Democrats here in NH drew more and more power into the State Capital in Concord from the local towns to the State, Obama and the national Dems want the power to be drawn into DC. Not only that, he wants Government to do even more and more functions that are done in Society.
And that would mean top-level control of levying and collecting taxes to fund it. After all, if DC controls your schools (by mandating curriculum standards and when teachers becomes Federalized – something that has been floated!), and your police (again, paid out of DC) and your fire dept (yup, DC again), it will be just like healthcare. It is clear from the the new info dug up by Stanley Kurtz is that Obama not only wants more taxes to give to others, but want to use a different government structure in order to get that tax other than what we are used to here in America.
Healthcare you say? Yup – look what has happened. As Govt costs for healthcare skyrocket, we get that double whammy by the Big Statists – by first offering that entitlement back in the 60s under LBJ at “little cost” AND mandating that everyone HAS to participate / ante up as akin to “simply helping others (er, another replacement for Charity?), as this “we care” entitlement has become more and more expensive. And look what happened! Costs soared so high that now the Nanny Staters, who started this as “helping” are now in melt-down over the costs of a program that they started. Now, most of us who start a hobby or a biz that grows beyond our means would either scale back or stop (logical, eh?). Not these wondertwits – they decide that because it now costs so much, it is now the PEOPLES fault for taking advantage of it. They can’t stand that -and now instead of doing what is “logical”, they blame all of us for, well, living. The stick? WE (the government) are paying for it – and we can no longer afford it and you all are the reason: you’re fat, out of shape, smoke, drink, and act slothfully (according to us) and eat the wrong foods. Thus, to cut the costs – YOU have to change your lifestyle to fit OUR notion of how you are to behave. Why? Because the Govt now has the money (er, wasn’t that OUR money before they taxed us for it to give it back to us?).
It’s simple – we exist to fund their ideas of what is best of us. Their choices – not ours. Remember, Indy 500 / Sprint Car driver Danica Patrick said:
I leave it up to the government to make good decisions for Americans.
Trust me, those in Government rub their hands in glee at a statement like that – never let such an opportunity go to waste. Now think of everything else that Government touches – we gave you an entitlement, you’ve now “abused” it, and we have to take your economic freedoms, your choice freedoms, and your political freedoms away to make you pay for “freedom of worry”. After all, once Obama’s nirvana of redistribution is achieved you won’t care that all your work is owned by Him.
Once again, that pie in the sky of a Utopian Heaven of Earth achieved by the Enlightened Few for the Masses – if the Masses would only shut up and get with the program).
Freedom? Go ahead – tell me where the notion of full bore, full throated Freedom fits into their notion of Freedom?
Or does Obama’s notion of financial Redistribution necessarily include Freedom Redistribution as well?