CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL COMMENTARY
Pro-Constitution, Anti-Globalist, Anti-Socialist, Anti-Communist, and usually with an attempt at historical and economic context ************************13th Year ----- 2009-2021*****

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Government Policies Are Bringing About America’s National Decline

Occupy Wall Street protester.  Photo: Dreamstime.com
The New York Times reports that “a deep sense of economic anxiety and doubt about the future hangs over the nation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, with Americans’ distrust of government at its highest level ever.”

Further, “Not only do 89 percent of Americans say they distrust government to do the right thing, but 74 percent say the country is on the wrong track and 84 percent disapprove of Congress — warnings for Democrats and Republicans alike.”

The distrust of government and impatience with the status quo is reminiscent of President Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” period. The cure for the “malaise” turned out to be serious changes in economic policy, a sense of cheerful optimism, and pride in America, things championed by President Ronald Reagan.

Today, the Tea Party represents a responsible citizen movement with actual ideas for improving the nation’s economic situation, and actions taken toward accomplishing an improvement. The mob known as Occupy Wall Street (or Occupy ---) demands that the government redistribute the wealth of the rich to them in the form of free college tuition, housing, health care, etc. They are in sympathy with Europeans who have demanded to keep their government benefits uninterrupted, despite the fact that their nations' governments are on the verge of default and bankruptcy.

As Chris Adamo at Renew America points out,
Throughout Europe, the spurious and unsustainable promises of socialist utopia, Ponzi schemes all, are collapsing, leaving entire segments of the population in the throes of riots and revolt. The few remaining adults on the continent are faced with the reality that the massive funding needed to prop up the sham was bound to eventually run out, and now no longer exists. As a result the dream of socialist beneficence simply cannot keep going, no matter how hysterically the short-sighted and morally vacant masses demand it.
These OWSers seem convinced that there is plenty of money to go around, if only the wealthy would “pay their fair share.” More likely, they have no clue about it except they don’t like the idea of people having more than they have – unless they’re celebrities. Actually, America’s public debt obligations are so huge that even if the rich gave up all their annual income to be redistributed, it would not even begin to solve the problem.

The challenge the GOP candidates face is this: Somehow, face up to the fact that nothing being done by the Obama Administration, nothing being suggested by OWS, and nothing the “super committee” is likely to come up with will help in the least. In fact, any of these are making and will make the situation much worse. The results of the 2012 presidential election will in all probability mean the difference between economic and currency collapse, or a real chance at a recovery that everyone can recognize as a recovery.

How the OWS protesters could support Barack Obama in view of the economic damage his administration has done, can be explained only by the fact that the protest’s money and energy is coming largely from people who have no use for America as it has been anyway, and would like to see the whole system fall. Communists, Socialists, Nazis, and fascists are eagerly awaiting what they hope will be the collapse of capitalism and the inauguration of a socialist paradise.

Economically, what they want is not only not feasible, it is not possible, unless they want something like Soviet communism, which is bound to fail. This involves the end of individual liberty and the institution of slavery. We are on Friedrich Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” already; we need to reverse this, not accelerate it. People who are willing to trade their liberty for government “benefits” will be disappointed if they get their request.

See short video depicting the ideas of Hayek’s classic book in cartoon form here. The presentation is a bit dated, but the ideas are not:


Class warfare, stirring up the mob against the supposedly unjust success of the wealthy is the classic appeal. Liberal agitators, and probably the mainstream media, are just waiting for more violent outbursts to occur.

People who want some corrections made, but not a violent upheaval, ought to consider the fact that it is possible to address America’s economic situation in a responsible way that would bring about substantial improvement fairly quickly. This involves electing a competent Republican president and a Congress that will get rid of the “super committee” and reverse their results, and face up to the task of cutting the size and scope of the federal government and reining in the ridiculous spending.

At the least, it should be recognized that Obama has accomplished nothing positive for the economy. Actually, he has brought about much economic, social and cultural destruction. Short of direct divine intervention, four more years of Barack Obama would bring about the tragic failure of American freedom and prosperity for many years to come. That’s how serious our plight is.
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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Democrats’ Last Stand? or, This Ain’t the Tea Party

The corner of Wall Street and Broadway, showin...Image via WikipediaThe Occupy Wall Street protest, trying to become a movement, is in essence another left-wing demand for a socialist utopia. Lacking identified leaders and lacking a focus on issues, and finding a convenient scapegoat in “Wall Street,” the protests appear to be an attempt to reawaken the 1960’s protests against things in general. It is basically “juvenile rabble,” as Rich Lowry calls it, and only in a very narrow and superficial sense is it anything like the Tea Party.

Those Democrats! They’ve got no record that they can run on, so now their tactic is to stir up some of those people who are always wanting to protest something (people whom Obama’s policies have failed) and direct them toward blaming “Wall Street” for their troubles. The entire Occupy Wall Street event has been to some extent coordinated, supported, and/or financed by the usual DNC suspects: MoveOn.org, George Soros, White House advisers, etc. In supporting this reprehensible mob action, the White House, already grasping at straws for some kind of election advantage, may be holding on to their last one, for they are truly scraping the bottom of the barrel with this. Rather than simply “embracing” the OWS thing, it’s more likely that they had a hand in drawing it up and implementing it. Hopefully, American voters will see the foolishness of this whole episode.

It’s as if the protesters like what Obama has done for them so far, so much that they’re wanting four more years of his kind of “change.”

The White House continues its much-used, but false, line, with more than a hint of “Blame Bush,”

“If you’re concerned about Wall Street and our financial system, the president is standing on the side of consumers and the middle class,” senior White House adviser David Plouffe said when asked about the demonstrations during an interview today on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “And a lot of these Republicans are basically saying, ‘You know what? Let’s go back to the same policies that led to the Great Recession in the first place.’” [Emphasis added]


No, Republicans are saying let’s not continue with those policies. They’re saying, we should stop bailouts, profligate spending, over-regulation, and basically get the government out of the way of prosperity. At least some Republicans are saying that. And Obama isn’t “standing with the middle class,” he’s destroying the middle class through harebrained economic policies designed to increase dependence upon government.

Funny, guess who some of Obama’s biggest donors are. Right. Wall Street firms. The “proposed” lists of demands, such as, cancelling all debt, free college education for all, etc., demonstrate the protesters’ profound ignorance of anything to do with actual economics. Of course, the Marxist supporters of OWS see it as a way to help bring about the downfall of capitalism, a goal shared by top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran, who applauds the effort.


An OWS web site referred to how they stand in “solidarity” with the people of Greece, who are just lately starting to pay the price for receiving the goodies they wanted from the government: impending default, bankruptcy and poverty. But everyone is supposed to bail them out, for reasons that are very unclear. America is already on the route taken by Greece, and if these protesters have their way, the end result is chaos, then tyranny.

The OWS protesters are a mob and are proving Ann Coulter’s point in her recent book Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America. Leftists like mobs and operate through mobs, dating back at least to the French Revolution. And that was well before George Soros and Saul Alinsky.



Fox News via The Daily Caller

Eugene Robinson, token liberal columnist for Investors’ Business Daily writes,

Occupy Wall Street and its kindred protests around the country are inept, incoherent and hopelessly quixotic. God, I love 'em.

I love every little thing about these gloriously amateurish sit-ins. I love that they are spontaneous, leaderless and open-ended. I love that the protesters refuse to issue specific demands beyond a forceful call for economic justice.

Apparently he loves the fact that some of these people are defecating on police cars and the American flag, and are otherwise creating a huge mess that some other people, who actually work for a living, are going to have to clean up. And that’s even if the OWSers don’t turn violent and start burning and looting.

To compare this thing to the Tea Party is like comparing the latest Nancy Pelosi speech you’ve heard to the Gettysburg Address or Hamlet’s soliloquy. Put simply, as Ann Coulter said it: “I am not the first to note the vast differences between the Wall Street protesters and the tea partiers. To name three: The tea partiers have jobs, showers and a point.”

But OWS too shall pass, and the sooner the better.
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