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Newsweek hails President Obama with socialist declaration
I was shocked to see the cover of this week’s Newsweek magazine. Although I’ve realized their extreme leftist predilection for some time, it was still surprising to see such blatant socialist propaganda from a major U.S. magazine.
It’s bad enough that President George W. Bush ignored the protests of those who put him in office, subsequently endorsing the nationalization of America’s banks with the TARP bailouts. But now, the editors of Newsweek believe that because Democrats have control of Congress and Barack Obama is in the White House, 233 years of freedom and liberty are now passé and Marxism is the order of the day.
We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly. People on the right and the left want government to invest in alternative energies in order to break our addiction to foreign oil. And it is unlikely that even the reddest of states will decline federal money for infrastructural improvements.
If we fail to acknowledge the reality of the growing role of government in the economy, insisting instead on fighting 21st-century wars with 20th-century terms and tactics, then we are doomed to a fractious and unedifying debate. The sooner we understand where we truly stand, the sooner we can think more clearly about how to use government in today’s world.
As the Obama administration presses the largest fiscal bill in American history, caps the salaries of executives at institutions receiving federal aid at $500,000 and introduces a new plan to rescue the banking industry, the unemployment rate is at its highest in 16 years. The Dow has slumped to 1998 levels, and last year mortgage foreclosures rose 81 percent.
All of this is unfolding in an economy that can no longer be understood, even in passing, as the Great Society vs. the Gipper. Whether we like it or not—or even whether many people have thought much about it or not—the numbers clearly suggest that we are headed in a more European direction. A decade ago U.S. government spending was 34.3 percent of GDP, compared with 48.2 percent in the euro zone—a roughly 14-point gap, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2010 U.S. spending is expected to be 39.9 percent of GDP, compared with 47.1 percent in the euro zone—a gap of less than 8 points. As entitlement spending rises over the next decade, we will become even more French.
This is not to say that berets will be all the rage this spring, or that Obama has promised a croissant in every toaster oven. But the simple fact of the matter is that the political conversation, which shifts from time to time, has shifted anew, and for the foreseeable future Americans will be more engaged with questions about how to manage a mixed economy than about whether we should have one.
The cover’s symbolism, that Democrats and Republicans now come together under the banner of socialism, makes me want to vomit. Contrary to what the author and editors of Newsweek would like to think, not everyone in our country is willing to go along with this nonsense. Many of us are intelligent enough to see that opiate of federal government for what it is. Just because many mistakes have been made doesn’t mean we have to just lay back and accept more. Too many of our forefather fought and died to prevent the well-intentioned evil of dependence on the state.
“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
–Alexis de Tocqueville
With Congress now forcing a bill with $1.5 TRILLION dollars in new government spending, now is the time to rise up and prevent this restraint and servitude being thrust upon us under the guise of “economic stimulus.” Our elected officials derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, but they are increasingly becoming destructive of these ends when they ignore the outcry from their constituents, choosing instead to fund “moral imperatives” like nationalized health care (and a host of other pork projects) by mortgaging our great-grandchildren’s future.
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
-C.S. Lewis from “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment.”
It’s not too late. The so-called stimulus bill has not passed yet. We should not and cannot allow the leftists in our government to “remake” America into a socialist nation.
Posted by FullMetalPatriot
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT
