PrintMarch 2, 2009
Time to Get Mean?
"Now remember, things look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. 'Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is." - The Outlaw Josey Wales
These words of the Outlaw Josey Wales, given life by Clint Eastwood, should be engraved on a huge sign in the offices of the Republican Party. Or somewhere. Anywhere that there might be a gathering of folks ready to fight for our country.
Frankly, if someone in the loyal opposition does not get mean, speedy Barack Obama and the Pelosi-Reid leftist juggernaut will have turned our nation into a textbook socialist republic faster than you can name the 57 states. There is nothing short of an all out legislative assault on our entire way of life and on the very spirit of what made our nation exceptional. Our Congress, riding Obama's coattails, has destroyed more freedom at home in a month than our military gained abroad since 2001.
In short, provisions in the stimulus and the new budget bills take away freedom to make money, to spend money and even to give away money. And it's all done for one purpose. To give the government more control to make, spend and distribute money.
And this rapidly descending snowball from hell will not be sidetracked if elected leaders of the Republican Party continue to be scared away from attacking Obama because of his approval ratings. Did it ever dawn on these geniuses that perhaps his ratings are high because no one ever attacks him?
Further, on the legislation that has passed and is passing in Congress, it is not sufficient to whimper weakly about "pork barrel spending" and "government waste" and "hard working American families" and so on. This is all of that, but it is much more. It is a restructuring of an entire economy.
It will wreck the private economy, which will shrivel away.
It must be stopped, and the only way to do that is to point this out. Period. It is time opposition leaders woke up and dared to do something about it. It will take bold action and bold, decisive words.
"Reaching across the aisle" and the "new tone" will just not do.
"Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is."
I fear Josey's harsh assessment might not be an exaggeration. American exceptionalism is under fierce and unprecedented attack from within. That's just the way it is.
The bottom line is this: the recent stimulus package coupled with the coming budget bill will not only tax all accomplishment in a fashion that will reduce the incentive to accomplish anything, it will create a mass army of even more pencil pushing and mouse clicking bureaucrats and lawyers who will pounce on whatever small number of motivated folks are remaining. These smarmy government employees will relish their role as success killers -- assuaging their wealth envy instincts while desperately trying to justify their existence to whatever Obama machine commissar they work for.
(My own business has been under attack from these folks. This is more than an academic theory to many who own businesses).
And there will be so damned many of them who vote that they will likely hold political power for a long long time. This is how one organizes a community.
And over this long period of time, this government economy will swallow itself. While everybody wants a government job or a government education loan or a government health and retirement plan, there won't be anyone left to produce anything that pays for all of this stuff.
Our government schools and media and Democrat politicians (and too many Republican politicians) have convinced much of the population that the business people who had "the audacity of success" are everyone's enemy. These populist rants by both parties have diverted the voters' attention away from how much freedom our government is killing and has focused in on the producers and achievers of the land as targets. A population quick to hate those more successful than themselves has bought in eagerly and ignorantly, not realizing that someone's success has paved the way for their very jobs.
If you work hard and are successful, now you will not only be resented and hated, your chances of being taxed into mediocrity or sued by some government bureaucracy have just gone way way up. Are you having fun yet?
So many folks ignorantly give government -- which takes away, through taxes and fees of one kind or another, half of what they make -- a pass while having absolute hissy fits over a corporate jet or a an office upfit ordered by some CEO somewhere. The government robs them of half of their lives, but they are quick to run to that government to punish a CEO for the jet and coffee table that cost them not a nickel. (Moreover, that jet and office redo put money in the pockets of a lot of middle class type folks. Or would have.)
This has resulted in anything but an environment that fosters success. This environment fosters folks hanging around college til they are 30 when they finally try to go get a job somewhere that will allow them to retire with full bennies when they're 50. Do we really think this is anyway to have a dynamic economy with liberty and the pursuit of happiness? It's mediocrity with the pursuit of double latte.
And all of this unhappy change has its groundwork set, simply, in the stimulus bill and the omnibus spending bill that is pending. This doesn't even include the employee free choice act and more healthcare legislation to come. Those will simply speed up the demise of the American way of life that is already underway.
The Obama team knows what they're doing. They know if it ever sinks in, folks will fight it. Unless it's too late. When they get more than 50% of the nation dependent on their new economy, they have us. Why do you think they are rushing all of this through?
If this country's way of life is worth fighting for, then it's high time to fight. And that means getting mean. Plumb mad dog mean.
Because if we give up, America neither lives nor wins. That's just the way it is.
