The Issue with the Issues [Reader Post]

A recently graduated daughter of an ex co-worker sent me a mailing that read something like this:

As an educator I am a person who votes on the issues that are near and dear to my heart. I believe we should revere our elders; we need to protect and support our aging populations. I believe in also providing support for those brave enough to stand up and fight for our country and freedoms. I believe in education in order to better prepare our future leaders, scholars, workers, and in turn create a stronger nation. I believe in providing the best medical care and advances for everyone in this country, and I believe in equality for all, blacks, Jews, Latinos, women… but also gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals. Due to my beliefs, I believe that we need to re-elect Obama for four more years.

After the normal pleasantries and well wishes, I chose to respond…

…I will tell you that the only advantage I have found to aging is, Experience! And with it the acknowledgement that not all that glitters is gold.

The word issue, as it pertains to political campaigns, means a point in question or a matter that is in dispute, as between contending parties. Therefore when you say that we should take care of our elders, support our military, provide high quality education, give people access to healthcare, and insure equal rights for all, you are not talking about issues of contention, we all want to see these things addressed, the contention lies in how to best achieve them, and on that, history is on our side.

The current administration is devoid of any positive accomplishment on which to run on, and so it creates straw-man arguments filled with emotional appeals and false narratives, that allow them to prevent the casual observers and the partisan followers from keeping their eye on the ball. This is why the president continues to go to colleges and universities where our brightest and least experienced citizens are, to seduce them with idealism and a Utopian imagery of a paradisiac world that he himself knows he will never deliver.

At some point leaders need to be graded on their accomplishments, and not on their stated good intentions and ambiguities.

A man who ran as a unifying figure four years ago, has turned out to be the most divisive president in our nation’s history, never before has a president of the United States used the kind of vitriol this president uses toward those who disagree with him, he claims that the opposition is waging a war on women, Latinos and blacks, he asserts that Republicans want dirty air and dirty water, and wish to leave kids with Autism to mend for themselves; all straw-men arguments without a visage of truth.

The real issue of this election cycle can be summarized with three words:

“Liberty or Tyranny”

Do we want to enjoy the individual freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States, and continue to be a country where the rule of law and justice is equal for all? Or do we want a small group of elitist in Washington D.C. picking winners and losers from their ivory towers, while running all aspects of our lives up to and including, whether or not we are entitled to healthcare treatment, or should resign ourselves to dying for the greater good?

If you are truly an issue oriented voter, here are few you should perhaps think about.

Energy:

We do not have an energy policy, our energy policy in the past four years has consisted of giving billions of taxpayer’s money to (so called) green energy companies owned by Obama bundlers, who within a period of two years have managed to go bankrupt and keep the money received. Companies like Solindra, Brightsource, Evergreen, Beacon Power, etc.

Then there is this administration’s EPA department, whose mission seems to have been to do everything within its power to prevent us from producing any fossil fuels of any type, while giving billions of dollars in aid to Brazil and others, so that they can do what we are not allowed to do ourselves.

In spite of the administration’s roadblocks, American entrepreneurs are having a great deal of success producing oil on their private properties with a process called Fracking, yet instead of encouraging this new source of richness for our nation, the producers are already under siege by an EPA (Employment Prevention Agency), who cannot trump up enough reasons quickly enough to try and get on their way.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, 1759

Economy:

The only solution that this administration has offered to solve our economic woes has been to borrow and print more money, thus depreciating the value of our dollar and causing our country’s credit rating to be downgraded twice; something that had never happened to our country before. Just last week the Fed began with QE3 (more printing of money) in order to give the appearance of prosperity, yet this is tantamount to the Middle Ages’ treatment of draining blood from the patients to cure their disease.

You mentioned that you cared about minorities? Consider this, unemployment among blacks and Latinos has been at 12% or above for 43 months in a row, yet the president promised that with his Stimulus it would now be at 5.5%.

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world” – Thomas Jefferson

This is indeed one of my major concerns with the debt, if our political class comes to the realization that it is cheaper to go to war than to pay our national debt, I need not tell you the way they will choose to go. But that should not be our only concern, a collapse of our economy and our inability to continue to provide entitlements to an entitlement-addicted population, would be a catastrophe that could lead to anarchy and to further erosions of our freedoms. The Bismark Republic comes to mind, an episode that did not end too well for Germany and the rest of the world.

“Those who refuse to learn the Lessons of history are doomed to relive them” -George Santayana

Foreign Policy:

The administration declared that the “War on Terror” was over and to prove it, in true Orwellian fashion, it developed a “newspeak” vocabulary that avoids calling terrorism by its name.

Acts of terror are called “Manmade Disasters”, the Fort Hood massacre by Maj. Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people while screaming “Allahu Akbar”, is referred to as “Workplace Violence”. In Afghanistan we have lost 2,121 soldiers, with 1,491 of them dying since 2009, not only does this fact go unreported, but our soldiers are not even said to be fighting terrorism, NO! They are involved in an “Overseas Contingency Operation”.

We are attacked at multiple embassies in the Middle East, our ambassador and other Americans are killed, this takes place from all days on 911! And the administration can’t even bring itself to utter the word terror. It is instead running around justifying the unjustifiable, and trying to convince us that the whole thing had nothing to do with the Muslims’ world view of America, nothing to see here, this was just a spontaneous demonstration over some film no one ever saw.

The truth is that the Obama administration’s foreign policy is in shambles, and can be accurately described by just one word, appeasement; here again history has extremely harsh lessons to teach us. But there is more… Our main enemy for the last 50 years have been the Russians, yet on a recent meeting with the Russian prime minister, thanks to an “open mike” moment; the president was overheard telling Medvedev to “tell Putin that after the election I will have more flexibility”, really?

But I go on… one of the most eminent dangers that our country and indeed the entire western civilization faces today, is the rise of radical Islam and a nuclear Iran. On these challenges the administration has been nothing short of criminally negligent, their whole approach to that side of the world is absurd. To justify their assertion that the Muslims love us now that the dreaded Bush is gone, the administration is bold face lying about what happened at Benghazi.

Even after Intel sources revealed that there was no demonstration prior to the attack at the embassy, and that the head of the group that sodomized and killed our ambassador was Sufyan Ben Qumu, an ex-Gitmo prisoner who is now an Al Qaeda leader, the president disses Netanyahu in lieu of appearing at David Letterman, where he perpetuates the insult to our intelligence, by claiming that the attacks were due to some phantom movie somewhere that no one ever saw.

I am sorry but Obama does not deserve four more years, four more months or four more days. We are at a true fork on the road, and our decision will have nothing to do with what Romney or Obama may or may not have said, our decision on this election cycle needs to be more profound than that.

On November 6, 2012, our decision will be based on whether we wish to be free individuals in charge of our own destinies, or whether we collectively wish to be subjects of the state, whether we believe in equality for all, or equality of outcomes. But most importantly, on whether we have the courage to be free men and women, or whether we prefer to cowardly become parasites of the government tit.

“The secret to happiness is freedom, and the secret to freedom is courage” Thucydides (411 BC)