Zomgee

President Elect Obama has fought well and has won a significant victory in American politics and I congratulate him on his successful campaign and on his ability to drum up support and get the nation out to vote. I would also like to emphasize what a great accomplishment it is that an African American has won the highest elected office in the United States only decades after many were not even allowed to drink out of the same water fountains as their white American brethren. This is truly a great accomplishment and by making this a reality our country has brought an end to an era that has lasted far longer than many observers had anticipated.

Benjamin Franklin warned our fledgling nation that “when the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” Today I believe we may have reached that very point in our history and have begun the last chapter in the great experiment that is freedom and liberty.

To many this may seem like a ridiculous notion and while I mark today as the beginning of the end it has really been a gradual process that has brought us here. It started in the early 1900s with the progressive movement of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson which promised all sorts of social programs and a nanny state like the country had never seen before. This appealed to the masses who eagerly accepted the change despite a repression of rights they mostly ignored. It was again adopted in the 1930s when a depressed nation turned once again to progressives to fix their problems for them, rather than standing up and fixing things themselves. Sadly FDR’s administration prolonged The Great Depression by 7 years.¹ We again saw this movement rear its ugly face with LBJ’s Great Society leading to some of the most radical legislative and judicial changes ever.

Today we find ourselves with a President who is a disciple of far left Marxist/Communists, a believer in both New Deal and Great Society policies, and a man who has offered up as solutions policies that mirror many of the beliefs of the progressives and socialists of the past. This election did not offer a simple ideological change from right to left and yet over half of the country still made the decision to move from center-right to the extreme far-left.

We are facing a congress that has promised to raise taxes on those making over $42,000 a year, promised to institute repression of political freedom of speech, promised to institute state-run control over substantial portions of the private sector, and promised to introduce measures to ensure unions in large percentages of American industry. We are facing a President who has promised to redistribute wealth from those who have earned it to those who have not, promised to to bankrupt the US coal industry,promised to create some sort of civilian national security force rivaling that of the US military, and promised to create program after program of government interference into private American lives.

America made its decision fair and square and we will all have to live with that. Rest assured though, change is coming and Obama has drawn upon, as Karl Marx would call them, his “useful idiots” to make sure it happens. At the end of the day all we will be left with is hope: a hope that we do not spiral into socialism or communism.

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. – Gerald Ford