The audacity of deceit
I don’t think Barack Obama tells the truth.
Yes, voters had fair warning of this ambitious young man’s long associations with radical America-haters and self-described Communists including the literal bomb-makers of the Weather Underground (at least, those who managed to avoid blowing themselves up with their paramours in Greenwich Village in 1970.)
Even if, in “Dreams from my Father,” Mr. Obama coyly omitted much background information on his Communist mentor, Frank Marshal Davis. (How many books, exclusively about himself, has Mr. Obama now written? Should narcissism be a concern, here?)
If they listened carefully, voters could certainly have heard candidate Obama warning he was going to side with some hypothetical residents of “the rest of the world” who weren’t going to stand for our continuing to be wealthy, to heat or air condition our homes as we saw fit, that he intended to “spread the wealth around.”
I doubt electing Ron Paul president in 2008 could have saved us from our coming economic collapse, anyway, since a Democratic Congress would have treated him like the crazy uncle in the attic.
Though the fact that fewer than 4 percent of Americans will support any libertarian/Republican “smaller-government” agenda (because they object that it would mean “allowing” black folk and hippies to possess guns and pot, or whatever) does edge us pretty close to “getting what they deserve” territory, doesn’t it?
Those who were courageous enough to issue forthright warnings in September of 2008 can now stand proud — much good it’ll do us as we gaze at the wreckage which these clowns may yet make of our once-proud economy in their remaining eight months in full power.
But I still say Barack Obama lied.
The freshman senator’s whole 2008 campaign spoke of “post-partisanship,” of ending divisiveness. The clear subtext was that if Americans would merely put aside their old prejudices over race and elect a president who is half African, they’d be rewarded with a moderate, middle-of-the-road administration attempting to find bipartisan solutions that were “neither Democratic nor Republican,” but some kind of middle course that both parties could live with.
For 15 months now, instead, it’s been hell-for-leather to enact at breakneck pace the most divisive, far-left, government-growing, government-empowering agenda seen since 1913, or possibly 1933. No wish list of the radical feminists, government union goons, Socialist Workers, Reconquistas, or bow-to-the-sheik, better-red-than-dead peaceniks has been out of bounds.
(I believe someone in authority in Washington said last week we wouldn’t promise NOT to shoot down any Israeli warplanes that might attempt a pro-active strike to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb which the shrieking mullahs have said they’d use to nuke Israel. OK. What would Barack Obama’s response be, should Iran nuke Israel? A firm note? If we’re not going to intervene — and perhaps that’s wise — shouldn’t we at least stand clear?)
Meantime, a bunch of cheerful senior citizens driving their campers to “Tea Party” rallies against big government spending (and the high taxes and hyper-inflation they know such policies will surely bring) are demonized as racist Klansmen spouting hate speech.
Klansmen? There’s a real Klansman in the U.S. Senate, you know. In 1944, Robert Byrd, then Exalted Cyclops of his local KKK chapter, wrote to segregationist Senator Theodore Bilbo, D-Miss.: “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side. … Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”
If Sarah Palin or Ann Coulter had said that, I suspect it would have made the news. Yet I don’t hear the Obamacrats objecting when U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., routinely joins their narrow Senate majority. REAL Klansmen are fine, it seems, so long as they vote Mr. Obama’s way.
Hate speech? Go read the “comments” beneath any moderately conservative or libertarian Online blog or newspaper column. You will find any attempt to have a calm discussion of the topics raised by the columnist — including by those ready to marshal some contrary evidence — largely drowned out by a tiny handful of shrieking, post-every-10-minutes harridans, veering dramatically off topic to ridicule everything from the hairstyles to the mental capacity of anyone who dares question the grow-the-government Obama agenda, let alone calmly cite chapter and verse from Founding fathers who intended ours to be a government of sharply limited powers.
If one of our goals is to make race less of a consideration in American hiring, advancement, and politics, does the Left really think it will advance this goal to call anyone who challenges any part of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi collectivist agenda a “racist”?
Has it not occurred to these frantic leftists, resembling in their desperation a teenager trying to guzzle the entire bottle of whiskey before mom and dad get home, that many voters, the next time they’re considering a vote for a black candidate, might say to themselves, “I dunno. The guy looks good on paper. But later, if he does something I disagree with, will I be free to raise an objection, or will I immediately be branded a ‘racist’?”
Remember that every call from Washington for more regulation, more taxes designed to punish the rich, is an assault on freedom.
The freedom ideal would be no compulsory taxation, at all — let all keep their own earnings to invest in growing the economy, while what minimal government is required be supported by voluntary user fees.
The statists will pretend to object on pragmatic grounds. Let them first answer whether or not they agree this would be the ideal. If they do, then we can try to solve the pragmatic problems. I grew up in a small town, for example, where voluntary dues funded the ambulance and the volunteer firemen. The ambulance and the firemen would still respond to a home that had not subscribed — but that homeowner would then receive a bill for the full cost of their services. Few waited to get a second bill before signing up as paid members.
Similarly, courts and even a minimal police force (once we de-criminalize all consensual adult behaviors, and turn traffic enforcement over to the private owners of the roads) could be supported by voluntary fees, paid as a form of insurance to spare ourselves full costs should we ever find ourselves in need of such services.
But it’s pointless to try to work in good faith to solve the pragmatic objections, when they’re merely red herrings thrown out by those who REALLY mean “No, I want a big and powerful government to take away your wealth and give it to me.”
Next week: The free market made us wealthy and, of course, free. Is that why the Obama gang hates it?
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:05 am
[…] Audacity of Deceit Vin Suprynowicz I don’t think Barack Obama tells the truth. Yes, voters had fair warning of this ambitious […]
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:07 am
The red herring aspect was a great insight. It got me thinking about how statists always start their justifications for government with the police, fire departments, etc.
If I may, I’d like to offer this follow on article where I discuss your column: http://onpoliticaleconomy.blogspot.com/2010/05/but-how-would-we-pay-police.html
Keep up the good work.
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:25 am
How can you tell when a politician is lying?
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:09 pm
“Though the fact that fewer than 4 percent of Americans will support any libertarian/Republican “smaller-government” agenda”
I can only assume you meant to type 40%. Huge difference.
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:53 pm
I’m trying to remember which time it was that Ron Paul (demonstrably the most “electable” Libertarian of our era) ran for president and got 40 percent of the vote, either electoral or popular. How about “in even a single state, including Texas”? Was it when he primaried as a Republican in 2008 against Sen. John “I Favor The Bailouts, Too” McCain-Feingold, or back in the ’80s when he ran as a true Libertarian?
Dr. Paul may have cracked double-digits in the 2008 Nevada GOP caucuses, but I believe it’s the only place he did, and if 20 percent of Nevada’s registered voters showed up at those caucuses (which I doubt), 12 percent of 20 percent still isn’t 4 percent.
(For the record, thanks to a large Mormon turnout, the 2008 Nevada GOP caucuses went for Mitt Romney. But so upset were established Nevada GOP leaders — including current U.S. Senate candidate Sue Lowden — at the presence of even 12 percent upstart Ron Paul delegates at their state convention that they adjourned that convention before delegate slates to the national GOP convention — which would have included some of the Paulistas — could be chosen … and never re-convened. Think the Ron Paul Republicans are going to be turning out for Ms. Lowden this year?)
Or maybe it was Andre Marrou who got 40 percent of the national vote. Or at least 40 percent of the presidential vote in Alaska?
Or maybe Mr. Stover means polls commonly show 40 percent of American voters routinely agree with (real, principled) Libertarian calls to close down the BATF and the FBI, charging Lon Horiuchi et al. with murder for what happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco (no statute of limitations on murder, after all) and thereafter allowing dreadlocked Rastafarians and 14-year-old girls to buy machine guns over the counter for cash without showing any “government-issued ID.”
Or is it the part about getting rid of the IRS, the income tax, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that 40 percent of American voters secretly agree with? Or the part about ending the “War on Drugs” completely, pardoning all the heroin and cocaine dealers, whether or not we pay them restitution for their trouble?
What a slim majority of so-called “conservative” voters will actually go for are ill-defined siren calls to “trim costs by making government run more efficiently, more like a business, by trimming waste and fraud.” In other words, “I promise to reduce taxes and government intrusions in your life without closing a single federal department, agency or program — no matter how prima facie unconstitutional — by waving a magic wand at a really sincere prayer breakfast, and then insisting that all federal bureaucrats re-use their paper clips, write on both sides of a piece of paper, and log their toll calls.”
Voters have been buying this transparent flummery for 50 years — with government continuing to grow larger and more intrusive with hardly a pause for breath — while I’d love to hear about the national or even the statewide election where someone running on a REAL “mint gold money and cut the government by 90 percent for starters” platform won more than 4 percent of the vote.
The Libertarian Party fared so poorly in 30 years of trying that even THEY don’t run Libertarians any more — they now run Republican Drug War prosecutors for president.
“Four percent” is generous.
— V.S.
May 4th, 2010 at 9:43 am
Keep the faith. We ain’t gonna get all you long for, Vin. But I am sure we are going to really kick some Commie/ Marxist asses this November.
May 4th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
The Libertarian Party fared so poorly in 30 years of trying that even THEY don’t run Libertarians any more — they now run Republican Drug War prosecutors for president.
Which is exactly why they’ve fared so poorly and have lost almost all of their credibility. Had the LP not only vetted their candidates for office more carefully in order to prevent the Bob Barrs from running for office and ruining elections, but actually gone beyond electioneering to actually evangelize liberty, they would have probably succeeded. Instead, voters quite wisely caught on to the scam and said “We ALREADY HAVE a party full of amoral, freedom-hating frauds; it’s called the Republican Party. Who needs this Libertarian Party that can’t even get itself on the ballot in half of the states?”
Barr’s 2008 presidential candidacy drove the final political nail into the LP’s coffin. Principled libertarians (small “l”) who still up until that point hadn’t got the message quickly came to realize that the LP had been co-opted (it remains co-opted to this day, largely because even its most sincere members fail to grasp the fundamental fact that true liberty cannot be achieved by using the State’s tool of choice for coercion, theft, and fraud: that is, politics). Everything about the American political game is anathema to true libertarian principles, which explains why those within the LP most suited to political careers are also the ones who are least able to live by libertarianism’s core ideals.
May 5th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Amy, I was not addressing a specific entity – such as Ron Paul – or instance. I was merely comparing the fact that 10 to 20 percent of Americans classify themselves as libertarians (according to a quick Google search; give or take as you please, I’m sure it’s more than 4%), yet the statement in the article blankets all attempts and ideas (“any…agenda”) behind libertarian movements as having less than a 4% approval. That’s not including those who classify themselves as Republican or conservative who would also support a libertarian agenda.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:28 am
For clarity, “Amy” is Vin logged in on Amy’s computer. Note the V.S. at the end…
May 9th, 2010 at 5:21 am
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