Welcome to the Obamanation! How Obama Got Elected

This is in Fact an Historically Significant Election, with Some Massive Potential for Change - Good and Bad...and Ugly

The Good

Despite the deep differences I have with Obama, there is some good in his election. For starters, like many people I too was impressed and encouraged - though not surprised - that we have developed enough as a people since the Civil Rights Movement to elect a six percent black man as President. Thus, it would seem clear from Obama's ascention that ethnic relations are better than many have tried to have us believe about ourselves. I say "ethnic" because to call them "race" relations is scientifically innacurate, but then, so is calling Obama "black" - as he is actually mostly Arab. Thus his middle name "Hussein" - yes, seriously. I know you didn't hear that on CNN or NBC, etc where most people get all their information. That's because they were rooting for him, and knew that publicizing  Hussein wouldn't too flattering for their candidate. But we'll talk more about how the media is more a propaganda arm of the democratic party than a news source a little later.

I don't really care about Obama's ethnicity itself. I just thought I'd point out his actual heritage to the "racists" in America who voted for him solely because they thought he is black; and to also point just how little the voting public actually knows him. Even the network talking heads realize this more and more and are starting to say out loud "who is Obama anyway?" It seems the Pied Piper trance is dissipating somewhat, which is also good. Of course, I wish the media had asked those questions - and many others - before the election, but here we are now. It is what it is, so let's make the best of it.

"Of course I am an optimist. I see no point in being anything else." - Winston Churchill

It's good that, like Sir Winston, I am a winner, and so is my country. We are not defeatists, so we will survive Obama just as we survived Carter. Americans are, in fact almost universally descended directly from pioneers and from people who braved oceans to come here and forge a better life for their families. The mettle that this required of our forebearers, as well as our Constitution, are what I believe most make us historically unique. Thus,

I believe that we are the first country in world history that has the potential to break the destructive cycle of decline that all free societies have slid down thus far. It was best expressed over one hundred years ago by Alexander Tyler when he wrote about the Fall of Athens, saying:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
 

It's easy to recognize where we are in the decline pattern even now. But unlike many people, I do not take from this election that we are now surely on the downslide of this pattern, which is a good thing. If I am wrong and we are, then so be it. But I won't go down even that slide without fighting. I choose to see this as a winner should...I choose to see Obama and the modern liberal democratic party as a good motivator for a new conservative movement. Although - unlike the democrats over the last eight years - I do not wish bad on my country - and even it's troops! - so that "my people" can be elected back into office by a disgruntled, miserable populace. But I do believe that Obama's election is dire enough and will be destructive enough to motivate True Americans to reassert conservatism. We are too good, after all, to be like kept, domesticated animals.

Before we had a Reagan, we had a Carter; so I have not lost my hope for change

I believe that the weakness and the watering down of our society by political correctness, entitlement syndrome, class envy, and success guilt syndrome can be reversed if we can get some people in Washinton who insist on being true leaders and who have the courage to risk articulating conservative principles again. That's why I don't too much fault the American voters for giving us our first socialist president...because for too long it has in fact been difficult to distinguish between the two competing political philosophies of our two political parties. Both sides have seen it as prudent for the sake of getting elected and staying in power to seek the middle ground. Thus, how can Americans be blamed fully for looking at Obama and saying "well, why not elect him? Politicians are all the same anyway, so why not give a guy who looks black a shot at the job? That'd be kinda neat." That pop culture phenomeon, and the overwhelming desire that many people have to abandon Iraq and Afghanistan, are what I believe most put Obama over the top in 2008 when charisma and flair matter more to most people than substance.

The Rest of This Article is Under Construction....Read on if you want, but it's pretty disjointed right now

About Iraq and the Global War on Terror

War is unpopular. It always has been. And I guess to some degree or another that's a good thing. We shouldn't be eager to go to war...but neither should we be so weak-kneed that we shirk its necessity when it is vital that we show resolve. To those of you who talk about Iraq and Vietnam in the same breath, I want to assert the following important points:

1. War is ugly. Always has been and always will be. If you are trying to point this out to us with your efforts, I say to you: "yes, we know that already." And I say too that if you really want to demonstrate against war where you can be most effective, I say "go to Bagdad, or to Tehran and demonstrate there." Go where the agitators are. The fact that you really can't do that kind of says it all, doesn't it? Please try to remember that before you show your courage by slapping an anti-war bumper sticker on your Prius and driving it through American suburbs. We are not the people you have to convince...the Husseins of the world are.

I am including a few quotes below in order to illustrate the kind of mettle and resolve that once characterized Americans. I include these thoughts in the "good" section of my Obama article because it would be good if we as Americans could find a way to return to this kind of strength. We were once a people who valued these ideals. While I believe that we still do, I also realize that few leaders have had the courage in recent decades to go against the politically correct current and vocalize these things. And if they did, they would be unlikely to get air time for it in our left-leaning media environment.

Consider these quotes below and ask yourself if this sounds like Americans or American politicians today:

"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." - Voltaire
 

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."  - Samuel Adams

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."   - Benjamin Franklin

or do we more resemble the following right now...

  "In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'"  - Dosteovsky's 'Grand Inquisitor'

The Bad

Well, first and foremost, it's bad to ever believe that any politician could be any kind of solution to any of your problems - or your personal responsibilities. Government has a horrible track record for fixing anything. They inevitably make a mess of things, for at least three very obvious reasons.

1. They have no competition, like the free market does. so they have zero inscentive to do anything efficiently. Think about that when they reintroduce Hillary's government health care proposals.

2. They are a bureauacracy, so by design they cannot be efficient. Have you been to the DMV to get your driver's license renewed? Yea, that's what any bureacracy is like. 'Nuff said, I think.

3. Government has a monopoly on the legal use of force. So they can take from you if they choose to.

All of these facts are why we conservatives are conservative about how much power and control to give to the government. 

Our politicians more and more are falling into this trap, and seem to lack the fortitude shown by our Founders. Democrats more openly incite class envy to justify taxing productive people so they can buy votes from other people who don't have the work ethic to take care of themselves, but republicans too have taken to growing government entitlement offerings just to get elected. Said another way, they get elected by promising people things...things they pay for with your money.

I doubt we as Americans will get "race" relations credit for Obama's election from the Oprahs of the world or from the people who have made profitable careers out of being race warlord agitators....people like Farakan and the "reverends" Jackson, Sharpton...and Wright (Obama's own long time pastor) who still somehow manage to get attention. They are likely to redouble their efforts to keep us from making social progress, somehow feeling vindicated by Obama's coronation. It's likely that they somehow will continue to feel "unleashed," as several of them have already started to say out loud - seemingly unaware of the irony that orbits their existence all the more now that they have less reason to believe America to be overun with racists. It's interesting to me that such people are always "reverends" despite their divisive and destructive message. I suppose that's best attributable to the fact that - as in many undertakings - posers arise after the passage of the real deals like Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and try to make a predictably cheap copy of a lofty and worthy movement. I suppose that's why we call men like MLK "great" - because of the inability of lesser men to emulate their heroism and their substance.

There are many people after the election today who are like him and who are now second guessing whether or not it's wise to 'go for it' right now and make their own way like that with a new or expanded business because they fear that they will just be looted by taxes into bankruptcy. That hesitation on the part of business leads to cut backs and layoffs and discourages the production of new jobs that all companies produce. What effect do you think that has on the "little guy" and the economy? Worse, that fear of government confiscation has many people thinking about where else besides the American economy to put their investment and retirement accounts to be safer from that looting machine called the IRS...a machine that gets even more powerful under a socialist ideology like Obama has told us himself he believes in. Why do you think Wall Street plunged when his election was announced? Business people know the effects of these policies...because it's their job to know their history in financial matters. Again, none of this is good for our economy...and that, by the way, means everybody suffers...not just those mean rich people who have it coming for having been so successful.

The Downright Ugly: I had hoped before the election that more Americans understood what our freedom means than we would think from listening to our biased media outlets. About that, it turns out after this election that I was overly optimistic....but I would have been that way all over again if I had it to do again today, and I believe that our society can return to that ruggedness if we can find some competent conservative leadereship somewhere.

It now seems clear that - although, as a winner, I am obligated to believe this is reversible - the ugly truth includes one of at least two realities:

One: That we are in fact declining as a free society, as all other free societies have. I say this again for well-justified emphasis, a la the Alexander Tyler quote above. Free societies have all (thus far inevitably) degraded into unsustainable welfare states that bankrupt themselves by plundering the successful producers among them through taxes. Taxes that they then redistribute to the shiftless who don't mind being "kept" and sustained with other people's money. Kind of puts the "class warfare" rhetoric you always hear about the "rich paying their fair share" into a new light, doesn't it? But it's not new at all..it's the same old stuff that we've seen played out in, say, Russia starting in about 1917....and plenty of other places too, mostly in Eastern Europe. You see how it worked out for them. They all become second and third world countries. This happens because plundering the successful is - you would think obviously - unsustainable economic policy if you want prosperity for anyone. It's unsustainable because it is a disinscentive for the producers to continue producing; and because those who do continue to produce just have it taken from them; and lastly because it encourages economically irresponsible, power-seeking people to run for office...people who don't mind the corruption inherant in being plunderers; and who must only want power for the sake of their own ego.

That's why you always see such leaders in poor, oppressed counties, and it's why I can't take Obama seriously as an American president. His rise to that height resembled so much the cult-of-personality syndrome and egoism you see in banana republics all over the world. Obama is clearly among those who don't see the signs of welfare state decline or who - worse - may see them fully but is using the plunder promise to buy himself votes. If that is the state of affairs, then he is just a European style socialist...as his long past associations and the books he has written indicate that he is. We are likely in for some massive heartache, and it's why our Founders despised democracy and warned us against it. Avoiding these tendencies is why conservatives keep talking about "returning to our Constitutional roots" - it's not because they're "just old fashioned," as the media shallowly portrays their motivations.

Two:

Things will likely get worse before they get better. And if the things I've read about and heard directly  from Obama are any indication, things will get far worse...especially with Pelosi and her gang on the Hill to help him. The voters saw fit in this election to give Obama unrestrtained control, in that they handed him a sympathetic Congress made up of the strangest gang I have ever seen legitimized in American politics. People like Harry Reed, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, James Carville, etc seem worthy of the Italian parliament (which has always been a circus act, at best) than America. We are about to see some rabidly partisan and very ugly politicking.

It's already started. The democrats are already holding committee hearings on how to confiscate IRAs and 401K accounts and turn them over to the Social Security Administration. That's right, that testament to woeful performance and economic corruption. Why do they want these? Because right now they belong to you. And a liberal government sees any of your money that they don't control or outright own as an operating expense of theirs. They see your money as their money that they are just looking for a way to transfer to themselves. That, and the liberal world view on economics revolves class envy, so they see anyone's prosperity as an ugly thing that should be "spread around" as Obama put it when he was talking to Joe the Plumber about penalizing his success if he followed his dream and bought his own plumbing company. The things about liberals about which I am always most appaled include that ...

1. Anyone could ever think it possible to have "too much prosperity"

2. You will never hear a liberal make any connection at all between a person's level of prosperity and the personal choices they make in life

3. Liberals can fail to see that punishing the business makers who create all jobs for everyone else will adversely affect the "little guys" everywhere, accross the entire economy

4. Liberals continue to see prosperity as a limited commodity, as if there is only so much pie to go around, and if one person has "too big" a piece of it that someone else must have less. How do they not see that ...

Businesses create MORE PIE for everyone, and that's why conservatives are pro business. Supporting business is the most compassionate way to maintain opportunity for everyone.

Plundering business is a sure-fire way to kill opportunity for everyone, but that's what Liberalism is all about: plundering the producers to spread money around, as Obama said himself, to people who didn't earn it. All so that they can secure their vote and stay in power. I'm sorry to dissillusion anyone if I point out that the people who compasionately have your best interests at heart will never be politicians. Only your family does, and conservatism is about minimizing the control over you that politicians crave so that your family will be free and empowered to improve itself. Please, people, name me one thing that the government ever improved? Even if they had the best of intentions, a bureacracy by definition is a hindrance to any kind of positive momentum...thus the term "bureacratic inertia." It comes to have a life and a hunger all its own.

None of this should surprise you or any of us. After all, government confiscation is the norm in most countries. That's why people are always saying how unique it is to be a free country. But it doesn't just stay that way without constant attention and sacrifice to keep it that way. And we have to always remain on guard against cult-of-personality, banana republic level politicians who have the potential to return us to that lesser evolved state of living. Going after your money is a normal government function. It's why politicians try so hard to convince so many people that "rich people" should be taxed. It's not because they want to be fair to you...it's because they want to get their hands on money...so they make promises to you so you will elect them so they can go tax the people who have the money. And targeting your retirement accounts is not new either. Clinton tried a smaller version of the same thing when he proposed a one time 15% of your retirement accounts that was blocked by the republican Congress that did their job as a check on his power - his typically democrat designs on your hard-won money. The new democrat plan goes far further (I told you accurately that they are now talking about 100% confiscation of them) no doubt because they now have a friendly situation between themselves and the Oval Office. No check and balance at all, beyond the slim possibility that the republicans will work hard enough to constantly fillibuster their proposed bills.

Next let's talk about the so-called Fairness Doctrine

It's a law that was in place before Reagan that required talk radio hosts to give equal air time, minute-by-minute (for free if necessary) to people who disagree with the host. If the host is conservative (as all the ones who are able to make their own way without tax subsidies seem to be) then they have to give equal time to liberals. Now before you pump your fist and say "right on!" try now to imagine this being required of someone you agree with. Worse, try to imagine the kind of government gestapo that would have to be created to monitor compliance...whether or not each word was properly "liberal" or "conservative" by definition...and how much like outright "big brother" censorship that would all be. I know, it just doesn't sound American - and it isn't. And yet the Fairness Doctrine has been a pet revitalization project of Nancy Pelosi, and Obama has already lined up the architect of the old law to head the new FCC he plans to create.

Alternative Media

I know this is all new to alot of you. I know that the traditional media doesn't report this stuff. And I know that you won't hear it from democrats about themselves - or, strangely, from their republican competition. And most of you who have never heard this have also been sold by the traditional media on the idea that the media alternatives like talk radio are just a bunch of mean-spirited people who are too unsophisticated for you because they talk straight, which is politically incorrest these days. So no, because of all of that, you would not have heard this. So I don't completely blame the American public for not knowing this stuff, or even for Obama's rise to power. You'd have to listen to talk radio to hear most of this, and around the water cooler you've heard about how all those guys on talk radio are just plain mean, so you've never bothered to listen for yourself. Maybe after your 401K gets confiscated you'll think about tuning in. 

What's more, if talk radio is really the medium of propaganda and mean-spirited falsehoods that many of you think it is, then why is it that what they say can be verified independently, and why do they encourage you to verify everything you hear from them in ways that liberals / democrats never do? If the info found on talk radio is easy to verify independently but you never hear it on the "regular" media outlets, then which medium should be considered a propaganda machine? Maybe that's why the Ted Kennedys and Hillary Clintons of the world are never heard on talk radio despite open invitations to plead their case to the very people whom they should want to win over if they felt they had a righteous cause? Maybe this doesn't happen because they know their cause - if it were challenged - would easily be exposed for what it is....socialism and all the associated plunder machinery of big government, where they have a lot of power over the lives of others. Maybe they also think they are entitled to easier interview questions like the ones the sympathetic network media has conditioned them to. And maybe they wish to be insulated from callers with tough questions about how their lives - far away from the media / DC coctail party circuit - are being affected by their policies. Just a thought or two.

although I admit that it's tough to resist taking it a little personally that my family's future security is under assault by someone you people placed in power. I say that I can't fully blame you because for far too long, republicans - McCain included - have been inept at articulating what are the dangers of the democrats' socialist / welfare state agenda. We clearly have a lot of work to do to educate Americans (and republicans) on politics. I hope that Conservatives will see this election as the wake up call that it is. Oh but one more thing...

I don't at all wish that on us, and - unlike the democrats when they were contained by their minority status in Congress and the Oval Office - I will not celebrate these disasters as reasons to reelect "my people." Partly I won't feel this way because I don't feel that I have too many of "my people" in Washington DC...thus, I cannot be very partisan in my motivation. 

Carter in cyclical seasons that alternate between welfare state dependency policies, and the true freedom that free market capitalism and individualism offers. But even if we do, then why do we have to endure the Carters and Neville Chamberlains and Obamas of the world ovefr and over again? Why can we not learn from the mistakes of those who went before us? I choose to believe the latter, and that we can rebuild ourselves stronger in the interim as we reinvent our vision. I  am not a defeatist. I choose to believe that my country is a winner. We have the roots of that spirit...and I believe it is possible to return to them.

Alexander Tyler spelled out the historical cycle better than I could...about why our Founders did not intend for us to become a mere democracy. They made us a republic instead. You have probably heard that alot but I doubt that you've heard it adequetly explained. What follows is the best and shortest explanation of why Welfare State Socialists like Obama and the democrats concern me as much as they do. The quote below from Tyler wasn't written about the United States. The words are well over one hundred years old. He was writing about the fall of the Athenian Republic. If you do some homework, there are several other such examples of failed free societies to choose from...and we need to educate people about these things.

Friends, I believe that it is possible to overcome the historical cycle that has led to the ruin of all free societies except for us. But the things that Obama and the democrats taking over Congress want to do to us play right into the same old destructive "welfare state" cycle. It goes like this:

Again, Obama's election is not necessarily the end of America's freedom experiment, but it is an unfortunate indicator that we are far down on the decline slide that's best explained above. I had hoped before the election that more Americans understood what our freedom means than we would think from listening to our biased media outlets. I had believed that we might be the first country to break the typical decline cycle...mostly because of our uniquely wise beginnings (our Constitution) and the fact that our citizenry is made up of people who are overwhelmingly descended from pioneers. I had hoped that this would all have lent us a ruggedness that would resist the decline into the welfare state. About all of that, it turns out after this election that I was overly optimistic....but I would have been that way all over again if I had it to do again today, and I believe that our society can return to that ruggedness if we can find some competent Conservative leadereship somewhere. As Churchill said before the dark, difficult - but ultimately triumphant - days of WWII,

"Of course I am an optimist...I see no point in being anything else."

But even if we do, it is going to be very painful. I know you don't hear this in the media but there are real and distinct differences between our two viable political parties. You don't hear that because we live in a politically correct and relativistic society made up of people who, more and more

1. Expect everybody to "get along," and to live comfortably in denial of our problems somewhere in the middle between very real and significant differences

2. Balk at the idea of difficulty, so that the hard realities of life that could keep us free if we accept them are shunned in favor of charismatic government politicians who promise to provide "goodies," hand outs, and programs that are paid for by other people through taxes

And the things that the democrats who are now in power want to do to us bode VERY ill for the country. Even more so now because Americans saw fit to give our new president a democratic majority in the only body - Congress - that might have been a check against his radically left-leaning ideas (he is statistically the most liberal voter in DC). Enter the age of Pelosi, Berkely-esque liberalism institutionalized in Washington. And worse, the sweeping tide that cleaned out most republican opposition is more than just a victory - it will likely be interpreted by democrat operatives and politicians alike as a "mandate." A mandate means that your victory was so decisive that you feel the public really wants your policies, so you feel encouraged to run full speed ahead with your agenda...and friends, the democratic socialist agenda will be a disaster for us all unless we somehow find the courage, vision, and public education on the issues to discourage them from running full steam ahead. Conservatives (but not republicans, for some reason) have been warning us of the problems of socialism for generations. But these warnings don't get air time because most media sources are too driven by their own democratic loyalties to air them. Of course, in the information age, it is possible to get the information but that takes away valuable time for the average person from watching American Idol and keeping track of what Jennifer Anniston and Bradjelina are up to.

I realize that to the "bumper-sticker-level" thinkers out there that most of what I am about to write will seem partisan-motivated. Such people likely are  news from CBS and CNN and who refuse to listen to alternative news sources like talk radio because they are too "open-minded." haven't given this stuff deeper thought than bumper-sticker analysis.

More About What Obama's Election Means

God Be With Us!

What Republicans

My Pre Election Research on Obama

Official, New Rules Under Obama

Quick Bytes - Short, to-the-point, common sense bullets that some politicians would say if they could. If more people understood these things, our country and the world would be a far better place.

My Political Articles Here (by topic)

What the Media Isn't Telling You