The upcoming Congressional election is a battle — not the war itself. The war in America, if there even is one, is over individual rights and capitalism as against the dependency of the welfare state and the ethics of self-sacrifice. The proponents of the latter have the best statesman imaginable: Barack Obama and his army of righteous allies in Congress. If Obama’s army loses even all of Congress, what will he be up against? Will he be up against people who stand for individual rights and capitalism as unequivocally as Obama stands for the welfare state and the politically imposed “virtue” of selflessness? In all honesty, I don’t think so. The new Republican Congress will probably be led by the same people who provided us the years of George W. Bush and his Republican Congress. These Republicans gave us unprecedented regulations on business following the Enron scandal and further involved government in medicine through expanding Medicare. Republicans never repeal Democratic welfare state schemes; they merely expand them. Yes, they lowered taxes, but only a small degree and only temporarily. They never justified that policy of lowering taxes on principle, by the way. They never said, “The money belongs to the people who earn it.” They simply made the dubious claim that tax cuts would increase federal revenues and therefore make the government richer. There you have it. We have two parties, each who shares the same ideal — unlimited government power — and who only seek to obtain that power by different means.
As for the Tea Party, they have the right emotion — rage — at the injustice of both parties, but we don’t yet have a positive message from them, and they don’t yet enjoy the strength in numbers to first repeal ObamaCare and then start rolling back the rest of the welfare state. The Tea Party does represent a positive trend, because their emphasis, so far, has been limited government and free markets rather than religion. Also, the Tea Party is totally right about extinguishing Big Government Republicans from the party. Let those Big Government Republicans go to the Democratic Party, where they belong, and let them all go down on that Big Government ship together. Unfortunately, the warning lights already indicate trouble ahead for the Tea Party on one issue: God. Religion must be kept a private matter, and it’s ludicrous for people who claim to support economic and other individual freedoms to propose an expansion of religion into politics. We also got that under the Bush Administration, who used taxpayer money to support “faith-based” organizations and who proposed a constitutional amendment attempting to dictate personal relationships.
Let’s face it: The only alternative to the current disaster is freedom. The only way to achieve freedom is to assert the right of people to exercise it. This includes economics. Your right to keep what you earn does not stop at $200,000 a year, or any other arbitrary amount deemed reasonable by some politician of either party. Your right to your economic accomplishments is, or should be, every bit as secure as your right to your body, your intellect and whatever you define as your spirituality. I still don’t hear anyone making these claims and that worries me. Because unless or until that starts to happen, people who despise the likes of Obama might win some important battles. But they will never win the war.