I thought I would provide a rebuttal and poem to Barack Obama's speech.  Enjoy:                                                           

                                                 Yes, It is Change We Seek

As we Americans watched Barack Obama give his speech at Invesco Field, we couldn’t help but be proud of the nation in which we live.  An African-American has risen up from the depths of history to become a Presidential candidate for one of the major political parties.  It is a history scarred by slavery and segregation, the eternal reminders of the danger of placing too much power in the hands of government demagogues, and it is truly a blessing upon our nation that Obama could give that speech to the very party that instituted those tragedies upon our great land.  It is a wonderful testament to our founding fathers’ great philosophy of individual liberty, small government, and free markets that he stood before us.  It is also a testament to that precious document we call the Constitution that allowed the Amendments under true democratic government to enshrine the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal.” 

Was it an historic moment?  Yes.  Was the speech historic?  Yes, and that is the problem.  Americans seek change.  This is true, but the philosophy Mr. Obama proffers is anything but change.  It is a repudiation of everything that has made, makes, and will make our nation stronger and better.  It is history.  It is a worn out philosophy that has failed humanity’s hopes and dreams countless times.  From Otto Van Bismarck to Lenin to the Maoist leaders of China today demagogic promises have been made and broken innumerably.  These so-called agents of change promise evermore solutions to the same problems they created in the first place, then turn around and blame free society.  All they ask is that you give up a little bit more of your liberty and money.  Just a little more, and they can get the job done.  And when they fail to get the job done, they ask for a little more.  Always more, and all in the name of some perceived “progress,” bashing traditions and history, as if traditions and culture are a terrible thing.  And thus the road to tyranny and serfdom begins.

Under this philosophy of hatred and envy, the population becomes enslaved to its government masters, groveling for handouts and government’s plundering of the “wealthy,” whose definition changes at the whim of the demagogue.  The government happily and willfully obliges its pleas, all too eager to steal from the “rich” and give to the poor in a perverted sort of Robin Hood politics, all the while shackling its population with the chains of mental and physical oppression.  No one would claim that a man or woman born poor deserves condemnation.  So, why do the statist demagogues condemn the man or woman born rich through no fault of his or her own or who earns his or her way to the top?  Isn’t entrepreneurialism something to be praised?  Why do politicians provoke the flame of envy?  Envy is the most powerful tool of the demagogue.  Without it he cannot promise you anything.  Oh, and promises he does make, all of which he can never fulfill, because they are utopian and hopelessly idealistic.    

Yet poverty remains.  Discrimination remains.  Why, one asks him or herself, do these injustices remain when we have so many government programs and such well intentioned politicians?  It is age old wisdom for no small reason that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  You see, government can never solve these problems nor does it want to.  What would it be without poverty and misery?  Would the leftists of today ever be elected in a society without discrimination, supposed imminent environmental disaster, and poverty?  The answer is clear.  No, the answer must be.  Let’s say there existed a Bureau for Poverty, most aptly named.  What would happen if the Bureau solved poverty?  It would cease to exist, and, oh the horror, countless, faceless government bureaucrats would lose their precious jobs of plundering from the wealth creators in our society and handing it out to modern slaves of the state.  The government through excessive and meaningless regulation creates a situation in which private enterprise is stifled and the free market is suffocated, all impoverishing people to such a degree that they must turn to the nanny state, because government has deprived them of the liberty to change things on their own.     

When did it become acceptable in America to punish success?  When did it become tolerable to hate the wealth producers and job creators in our society?  When did it become okay for a private corporation to pay one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, which inhibits free enterprise?  And you wonder why American jobs are leaving!  When did it become okay for a private corporation such as Exxon to pay $4,000 dollars in taxes per second vs. $1,400 per second in profit?  Would you accept such a deal to open up a private business?  For every 5.4 dollars you make in total you get to pay 4 dollars out of it in taxes.  I would wager that the answer is absolutely not.  What happened to the American Dream and the hope of free enterprise?  Is this the sort of policy that encourages small business owners to open up shop?  Obviously not, and it is just as unfeasible for a new entrepreneur to open a business, simply because he cannot afford to wade through all of the government regulations to open a business in the first place. 

The demagogue must talk about racism, sexism, and all forms of discrimination to get elected.  The politician must pit class against class, race against race, gender against gender, sexuality against sexuality, because it raises irrational emotions, which is the only possible way a demagogue can survive.  Is that the philosophy of tolerance?  These emotions are so irrational that they trust the same government that discriminated against them to liberate them.  From where does this naïve trust in government come?  Everyone agrees that businessmen are greedy.  People in general are flawed and greedy.  Somehow, though, people exempt the politician from such scrutiny.  All of this comes about despite the fact that the politician has more reasons to be greedy than the businessman, who is at the very least accountable to himself, his family, and friends.  The politician is accountable to nothing but the whims of irrational emotion.  The businessman at least provides jobs and spreads wealth throughout society.  The politician only sows the seeds of misery and oppression.

The point is that no matter how many degrees a person has, how much intelligence a person supposedly has, no amount of human knowledge or technology can ever keep up with or suppress the forces of human interaction always striving for more liberty at every point of time and place in our grand nation.  What rational person truly believes that Washington bureaucrats know our situation in our own cities and towns better than we ourselves?  If government could solve these problems, the United States, spending $3.1 trillion of our hard earned tax dollars on failed programs and entitlements each year would surely have solved them.  It is not more money that will solve these problems, and it is most definitely not a change of party that will bring about the change and justice people seek.  The problem is the institution itself.  The more it grows, the more it must grow.  In order to remain in power, politicians must promise more and better programs, always asking for more tax money to do this, focusing the population’s anger on the rich, while all along it is they that oppress you. 

Obama claims that some governments are trustworthy, but that we have simply become cynical about government.  Yes, he is right about the latter, and with good reason.  If the government gets to steal our money and use it on programs, shouldn’t there be a scorecard, as Reagan famously quipped?  Shouldn't we get to see some results?  I doubt the government could even bat .300 in America’s favorite pastime.  Can you name one government program that works well enough to justify the coercive use of force to steal your money?  Doesn’t the fact that politicians are always claiming government in Washington is broken undermine the whole philosophy of adding more government?  If government is broken and doesn’t work and they are the ones that instituted the programs, then why create more of it or entrust them with more?  Do we really believe that either party can fix Washington?  The best way to fix Washington is to stop legislating.  Reagan was right when he said that every day Congress meets we lose a little bit more of our liberty, and today we lose a lot more of our liberty every time Congress meets.  If government were an employee in the free market, for how long could he be employed?  A day, two, before being fired?  No one should tolerate such incompetence, and there is absolutely no reason the American people should tolerate it or even encourage it.

The philosophy of Mr. Obama seeks your enslavement under the temple of big government.  Oh yes, it is couched in lofty terms of “justice and fairness,” which are code words for misery and tyranny.  Winston Churchill was no fool when he said that socialism leads to equality, equality of misery.  Obama claims that being left to our own is not what we want, that liberty and free markets are somehow the philosophy of the past.  But I submit that being left alone is exactly what we want.  Liberty is not some form of tired, old politics.  It is hope.  It is change.  Oppression and more taxation are tired old politics.  What kind of misanthrope must a man be to believe that others, left to their own devices and liberty, cannot make it on their own or that it is only with his help, the demigod politician, that you can rise to his level of success?  What sort of hope is that?  It is the antithesis of hope.  It is anti-humanitarian.  Barack is right.  It is hope we seek, but not his kind of hope.  We seek liberty from the tyranny of big government.      

My heart cries, “socialism”

My brain, “capitalism”

Always at odds, they battle

Clashing thoughts, sabers rattle

A great land, a checkered past

Riches and war stain its mast

Built on meritocracy

A blind aristocracy

The streets lined with simple folk

Bearing crosses, a grave yoke

Shooting veins with antidote

Powdered pills, a candied coat

With their plight I sympathize

Though laziness I despise

To help them up is our task

Will we go broke, one must ask

Left or right, where do we go?

Communes or to each his own?

Is it fair to hate others’ wealth?

They, too, die and lose their health?

A rich man is born faultless

The poor’s hate for him thoughtless

Neither one deserves the blame

So why provoke envy’s flame?

The ones above play your strings

Entice you with deceitful things

Yet we’re taught to hate business

Though there’s no crime to witness

Why do we trust Satan’s brood?

Politicians, if stripped nude

Would be a ghastly stranger

It’s they, they are the danger

They are outrageously brash

No company steals your cash

At least you choose what you might

But they, they take without right

Government grows always more

On this sea there is no shore

Take freedom back, do not wait

Restore it ‘fore it’s too late

August 29, 2008 by Bear Nichols

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