Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama, on December 6, 2011, spoke in Osawatomie, Kansas. What Obama said that day is STILL pertinent today. Obama, in effect, thumbed his nose at us and said that “Americans Don’t Deserve To Be Free.”
How was that conclusion drawn? Well, see, after reading this, if you agree that Obama said that we don’t deserve to be free.
Obama began his attack on freedom with this statement:
We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules. I am here to say they are wrong. I’m here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we’re greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. [emphasis mine]
I’m a bit surprised that Obama, with his penchant for mixing metaphors, didn’t quote Benjamin Franklin to try to reinforce his “playing by the same rules” message: “If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately.” But that would be quite an overreach (even for Obama), so unapplicable, so laughable that even HE did not try it!
So, let’s focus upon the “… everyone plays by the same rules” phrase. By forcing everyone to play by the same rules, freedom is attacked. We must follow government rules. We are not free to pursue our own legal rules. We are forced to “play by the same rules,” the rules Obama defines by declaring to be illegal anything he doesn’t like. HIS definition: that is the crux of the issue. That’s where coercion
comes in. That’s also how the federal regulatory agencies enter the picture, and how our freedom is attacked.
Another name for “rules” is “regulations.” Obama continued:
If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked.
Obama is saying that our economy didn’t work as he wanted it to (spelled redistribution of wealth and vote-buying) because there weren’t enough regulations, there wasn’t enough force, enough coercion to ensure (what he called) fair outcomes. But, as usual, what he says is WRONG! Consider our (over)regulated economy.
Laissez-faire is an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from government restrictions, tariffs, and subsidies, with only enough regulations to protect property rights. The phrase is French and literally means “let [them] do.” It also implies these concepts: “let it be,” “let them do as they will,” or “leave it alone.” But there hasn’t been a laissez-faire economic environment in this country since the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890. Whether that is good or bad is not the issue here.
What is the issue is that an alphabet soup of federal regulatory agencies has grown up (EPA, OSHA, SEC, FDA, NLRB, FAA, FTC, ATF, CFTC, FHA, FCC – to name some of the 430 agencies listed in the federal register). All of them force us, through regulations, to play by their rules, by what they define as legal. Yes, the regulation agencies existed before Obama became president, but it’s his use (and misuse) of them, and his blame for use of their
regulations not going far enough that attacks freedom. (The EPA-Sackett case comes to mind.)
The point here is that the above mentioned anti-laissez-faire regulatory agencies existed long before Obama came on the scene. He says, in order to blame laissez-faire, that lack of regulations (freedom) is the cause of the current economic “mess.” He is, as usual, trying to blame George Bush (and previous presidents) for why this economic “mess” exists. Neither he nor any of his policies are to blame. He is, in his own mind, perfect! Obama blames the current economic “mess” on a philosophy and policy that was abandoned over a century ago. What he says doesn’t work never, in his life time, existed.
Notice that Obama didn’t bother to define “mess,” so it is whatever HE says it is, and HE (in his view) cannot possibly be at fault for it.
I don’t remember the (fawning) MSM pointing out that little fact. Gee, did I miss that?
Now let’s extend the freedom concept further. Obama is saying that laissez-faire (absence of regulations, therefore freedom) leads to (his definition of) poverty, and that regulation (force) leads to (his definition of) wealth – forced redistribution. He is saying:
Look, we tried leaving you free to live your own life, and that didn’t work. You have to be forced, you have to have your earnings seized by the state, you have to work under our directions, under penalty of fines or imprisonment. You don’t deserve to be free. [emphasis mine]
As Harry Binswanger so powerfully, in contradicting Obama, says:
Force initiated against free, innocent men is directed at stopping them from acting on their own thinking. It makes them, under threat of fines and imprisonment, act as the government demands rather than as they think their self-interest requires. That’s the whole point of threatening force: to make people act against their own judgment.
WOW! Binswanger nails it. There is so much truth in what Binswanger says that he completely destroys Obama’s position.
Now consider what very liberal musician David Friedman said about the use of force:
The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations. [“great” here means “large”]
And, consider what Thomas Jeffersonsaid
about force:
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
So, for Obama the small child, the despot, it all comes down to regulations, to force, to coercion, in order to fairly (in his opinion) distribute limited resources. He wants more regulation. And he’s getting it through executive orders, by bypassing Congress, by forcing us to conform to his economic views, by taking away our freedom.
The problem, of course, is that the public education system has so “dumbed-down” a majority of the voting population that they cannot (and/or will not) think critically, will unquestioningly believe anything he says, and vote
Democrat regardless of the real situation. Just like Obama, voters are small children. And just like Obama, Democrats are despots.
But that’s just my opinion.
Cross-posted at The Pot Stirrer, my very conservative personal web site!
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