Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Next Tuesday is our opportunity
to begin to restore America

Commentary by James H. Shott


The mid-term election is a week away, and many Americans are looking forward to Nov. 2nd with great hope and anticipation, for two reasons. First, they are fed up with the reprehensible and appalling gutter tactics and personal attacks of the campaign, but mostly they look forward to electing candidates that will bring substantial changes to the political landscape that will stop the nation’s headlong rush toward a command economy.

Our country is in deep trouble, and not just from the insane spending that has occurred since 2008, nor from the government takeover of auto manufacturers and banks, and not even that government has failed to do what needs to be done to foster a real recovery and job creation. The most serious problem is that the government is out of control, with elected officials running wild, refusing to follow constitutional principles, and enacting laws and instituting policies that are dangerous and harmful.

The country is controlled by people who appear not to understand what their country is all about. They either don’t know its founding principles or don’t respect them, and they want to tear down the government that was established more than 230 years ago and replace it with a system like that of the lesser countries of the world. They want bigger government, more powerful government, and more government control.

But America did not become great because it had a large federal government that controlled the minutest aspects of its citizen’s lives; it became great because it had precisely the opposite kind of government, the government outlined in the US Constitution, and the government under which the United States grew to be the greatest nation on Earth.

Of the casting off of Constitutional limits on government’s appropriate function, size and power Dr. Robert Higgs, author of Crisis and Leviathan, writes, “In the past century, the first five such critical episodes in the United States were: World War I; the Great Depression; World War II; [and] a multi-faceted set of crises associated with the civil-rights revolution and the Vietnam War.” More recent events contributing to the expansion of government size and power are post-9/11 events, the housing bust of 2006 and the ensuing recession, he wrote.

Responsibility for the growth in the scope, size and power of the government lies at the feet of our elected representatives, who through their legislative and administrative malfeasance caused it to happen. Primarily it was the work of career politicians in Congress, as they abandoned their duty to the Constitution and their constituents in order to be re-elected, and who became immersed in the incestuous relationships that the desire for power and prestige rely on.

And now the American people have realized the threat their own government poses to their liberty, and they are fed up with it. There is a great hew and cry among the citizenry to replace those who haven’t been listening to their objections to the recent legislative agenda. They want people in office who are not cloistered away in Washington, and because of their isolation no longer understand what life is really like outside DC. They have forgotten for whose benefit they are paid too much money and receive too many benefits.

The people now see they made a serious mistake at the polls in 2006 when they elected liberal Democrats to Congress that would forsake their oath of office and undermine the Constitution.

And they made another mistake in 2008 when they elected an appealing and charismatic black man to manage the country who had no experience managing anything. Barack Obama won election with the phrase “change that you can believe in.” They didn’t realize that what he really meant was “change WHAT you believe in,” and they now strongly reject that notion.

To borrow from a notorious racist demagogue’s comment right after the 9/11 attacks and apply it to the unpopular liberal agenda, now “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Next week the country can take a big step toward fixing this problem by defeating liberal Democrats in Congress who support the wild-eyed proposals that have moved America further than it ever has been from its original design. Measures like cap and trade, the financial transaction tax, card check, and the health care reform that will destroy the very system it purports to repair, and take down the insurance industry along with it.

In order to put an end to the liberal statist agenda that threatens our freedom we must elect Republicans, or more conservative third party or independent candidates at every opportunity. But we must make certain they realize that the change we demand is not just a change in political party rule, but a change in how things are done. And be sure they understand that if they don’t do the country’s work any better than the Democrats, if they get comfortable in the Washington scene the way other incumbents have, they’ll be sent home to find honest work, too.

Cross-posted from Observations

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