I wrote this Friday evening before the election – mostly to my family but also for others. This is intended with no animosity but only a plea to understand. And hopefully some insight into what makes guys like me tick. Any may share it with their friends.
To: Any who intend to vote for Obama and feel it is the correct choice:
Please tell me I am wrong about Obama because I suspect Obama will win this election. I need some comforting.
I know you are intelligent people. I also know you hate Bush but I would hope that your hatred for one man would not be a motivation to vote any one way.
But please tell me, (more like assure me), that things will be okay under Obama.
Because to me, listening to the man and looking at what I can see about him I feel certain that he believes, to the core, in principles that chill me. I believe he artfully hides much of what he really feels and wants for this country because a direct statement of those principles would turn many against him. Such ideas leak out in small ways like his “spreading the wealth” statement a few weeks ago to his admission to Charlie Gibson that he knows that raising tax rates has often reduced government revenues but he just wants to do it because it seems “fair”. It leaks out in some of the company he keeps or has kept, in the statements he has made. But he is eloquent – and a perfect Harvard lawyer who knows how to make any case. He rarely makes errors of words.
He is truly brilliant. He has an OBAMA Channel on our Satellite system. A channel totally entirely devoted to him. He is funded far, far more than is McClain – though has the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the US election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. But brilliance has not always been the index to good motives and intentions. We need to be careful being led into the light of brilliance without true understanding of what lies at the source.
I fear that as the government grows, inevitably after he takes office, more of the great producers of this county will tend to give up and work less hard because more of what they create will be confiscated by the government. If you ever read “Atlas Shrugged” you can see the way such things can go. Socialism does not work. Our country was created by individual actions and by risk takers and by those who felt they could win. As we grow more socialistic, we weaken. Our strength is not in a ‘mass’ called government, it is individuals and groups of individuals who operate on the same terms as everyone else (without police power). It is folks like you and me. We, as a country, grew great because of limitations in government – not because of government.
Our national debt is NOT up because of Bush. It is up because of entitlements that were started decades ago by “do-gooders” wanting to be reelected – and maybe even feeling they were right in doing so. It grows because those laws fixed “solutions” into this society and current demographics are causing a runaway spending. These “solutions” have become arbritaries – and abritaries create more arbritaries. The Iraq war is NOT why we are in debt in this country. That is the wrong “why”. Also, tax cuts have, in the past, admitted to by most, stimulated this economy and created more money for the government. Revenues increase. The economy is not a limited pie that is split among the takers; it is a pie that grows as we grow – as long as we are motivated to work and produce and create — and keep what we produce. And the USA is not evil. Watch some of the Sadam H. and his sons documentaries on the brutality of what was happening over there. I read 2 books on it, prior to 9/11. He was worst than Hitler in many ways – and such evil spreads. The doctrine, even under Clinton, was to change the regime over there. It was in our and the world’s interest. It was the intent – long before Bush. This country’s soldiers are not a bunch of rapers and killers as so many have been lead to believe. Our history does not bear that out. Such ideas are propaganda – no different than that spread by the enemy in any war. We have created more freedom and liberty and good around this planet than any other.
We DO need government. It is a necessity. But it is not supposed to create winners and losers. It is to support them and defend them in their individual endeavors. It is not there to take from those who can and do produce and give to those who can’t, or more importantly, won’t. 57% of our taxes, today, are paid by the wealthiest 5% of our population. But having wealth is not bad – it is usually an indicator of value derived from simple or complex activities that bettered our world. There are exceptions, of course. But those exceptions are not the rule. When our country gets to a point where the non-producers become powerful enough to keep voting in the people who will plunder the “evil” rich to give to the less fortunate, then the country will forever keep voting those types of guys into office – and we are doomed as the United States. Put 100 people on an island, and say 15 of them are brilliant, hard working and make things go right for the island, all 100 benefit as long as property ownership rights are maintained and basic rules (like a constitution) are kept in place. “The rising tide floats all boats.” But give the 85 the right, by democracy, to steal from the 15 producers, and the entire island suffers. It is simple in concept – thought it appears complex in this country. But the basic principles still apply.
Millions in this county think as I – and we may eventually be snuffed out as the masses clamor to make it “fair” – and win more and more of the future elections. As this country promotes driver license registration, and free bus rides to the polls and ACORN sign-up incentives we lure more and more people who do not understand economics beyond the fact that some have and some have not, and it ain’t fair. We lure those who can be duped by the eloquent, and deep voiced, and handsome countenance. Our current celebrity enamored culture has been groomed to be drawn to those who are unworthy – and leave crooked-armed, less than pretty, less eloquent, but great men and heroes, with character, in the halls of the forgotten – subject to the covertly and overtly hostile remarks of most of the media and entertainment folks who have fixated much of America’s collective attention.
But, as said in “Clockwork Orange” – “So it goes”.
I realize that we, and I mean those who believe as I, will likely lose this war. But eventually this county will look around and wonder where are the great ones went. Jefferson would turn in his grave if he saw how far this county has strayed. He’d have called for a revolution. But it takes great men and women to revolt – we are loosing ours as they are “equalized” into the masses.
These principles are very important to me, but politics is LESS important to me than my love for my family. I will never alienate you for mere politics. We can think differently and that is okay. I love and respect any of you, in my family, who choose other than I.
But I ask, what is it that you see that I am missing? Please help me to understand and, also, to feel better and not defeated WHEN Obama becomes our president. I am not looking to change your mind or to cause you to defend why you are voting him to be our president – I really don’t expect that. You will vote for him, and he will likely win.
Just tell me how things are going to be okay or better as our country moves towards his visions and further away from mine. Or are his and mine the same and I have missed that?
This is not about you or me. This is about our kids and our precious grand kids. The world we are creating is the one they are inheriting. Is this world tending more to be one where our progeny can create and grow; can build businesses and enterprises of their own, and become great and even wealthy, by their own hands? Or will this be a world, dominated by government, where individual actions fly into the teeth of a growing, more powerful and unmovable entity that says, “No, not so fast. You need to fill out forms xxxx and yyy and pay these taxes to assure the security and well-being of that guy over there sitting on the porch or watching TV. And if you don’t, we will put you in jail or kill you.” ? — or worst.
It is they for whom I fear. It is our actions today that continue the course. A pilot knows that a 1 degree turn, now, can affect one’s destination by miles in just a short distance.
We adjust course today, by our actions, towards freedom and responsibility – or towards domination in exchange for “security”. But as Franklin said, “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
But maybe I am wrong. Frankly, I hope I am. Please help me. Your words may be comforting.
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