There are a few decent politicians in Washington D.C. — a few, but not many. The standard of decency refers to politicians who care about the Constitution and individual rights, rather than a career in personal power. One of these is Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
DeMint is that rare sort of man
who understands that principles are practical — that principles have power. ‘The quickest way for us [Republicans] to get back to majority is to do what we say we’re going to do,’ he says. ‘And that is to support a constitutionally limited government.’
He’s right. Republicans sometimes win elections by claiming to be “me-too” Democrats, but once in office — who needs a me-too Democrat? If a Republican is willing to spend a million dollars on a redistribution-of-wealth program, there’s always a Democrat willing to spend a trillion; and if a Republican is willing to spend a trillion, then a Democrat will show up willing to spend $10 trillion. Why on earth should a Big Government Democrat vote for such a Republican — and why should an individual rights and Constitution-supporting voter do so?
‘We didn’t do what we said we were going to do,’ he points out, regarding the disaster of the George W. Bush years. ‘So if you have the numbers but not the principles it doesn’t matter . . . I think that set the Republican Party back 10 or 20 years.’
He’s right. And given how close America was to the precipice by the end of the Bush years, this fatal compromise by the Republicans during those years may prove the end of the Republic. One more term of Obama, and there’s probably no going back. Crushing defeats of liberal socialists in 2012 and 2014, followed by massive reversals in policy by a Republican majority acting like a real second party might or might not save the nation; however, nothing less will do. I say this because the wrecking ball that Obama has proved to be for the economy will demoralize the nation to the point where it’s willing to accept anything — including even dictatorship. It’s pointless to say, “It can’t happen in America,” because America has never faced a long-term stagnant economy, an unsustainable budget deficit in the trillions, and a seriously devalued currency in all of its history. Other nations have, throughout world history — and all have always collapsed into dictatorship.
The only hope for America, even if Obama loses reelection, is a course reversal as massive as the kind of change that shook the newly formed United States at the time of the American Revolution. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see President Mitt Romney and the teary-eyed John Boehner leading such a revolution. We’re going to need a heck of a lot more than these men have to offer. Things are that wrong, and if anything I’m understating the matter. Jim DeMint is one of the only politicians Americans could trust to lead such a reversal. Of course, he’s also a realist in that he senses a presidential campaign would never get off the ground — not in a culture still buried in so much evasion, denial and stupidity. By attempting to act with integrity in the moral nightmare that is today’s Washington D.C., DeMint no doubt understands this.
What will wake people up? The persuasion of ideas will not do it. Good and great ideas are out there, as never before, but most are not listening. When a liberal or socialist spouts ideas, a majority applaud them; that’s how Obama got elected as such a “wonder boy,” claiming to stand for something new when in fact he stands for the same old collectivization and politicization of private property that has wrecked societies from the beginning of time. When anyone in opposition to liberalism spouts ideas, he’s branded an “ideologue” and dismissed as insane, evil — or both. There’s only one thing left to convince Americans: Facts; specifically, the facts of a worsening economic depression which is probably upon us. This will still not be enough for liberals, who don’t care about facts; they care only about being right, and only about their own ideology winning no matter how bad things get. The uncommitted middle are less impervious to facts, but they’re also very susceptible to the intimidation of liberals who demand that they stay true to the welfare state ideology lest unspeakably horrible things happen. (More horrible than where our current economy is headed? No answer is given.)
Democracy was supposed to prevent all this. Democracy provided the opportunity for reasonable, self-interested people to correct their errors. One thing the advocates of democracy never planned for was a culture determined to vote itself into oblivion, all in the name of prosperity. That’s what happened with the election of Obama in 2008, the man who promised prosperity via the open transformation of a once semi-free society into an outright socialist and fascist nation. Obama has made great strides in actualizing his plan, and the initial results were all predictable: Worse unemployment, growing inflation, the suffocation of business and free enterprise, and the national “malaise” once predicted by Jimmy Carter now the real-life psychology of the culture. How do most people respond? “Well, it’s not really Obama’s fault. And we certainly cannot do anything other than what we’re doing.” Absent some dramatic wake-up between now and next year, the stage is set for Obama’s reelection.
If Obama wins a second term, this will be the green light for him to truly make the United States a fully socialist nation, once and for all. And he’ll be doing the people’s will, by passivity and default if nothing else. Democracy will have failed us, because the people will have failed themselves. Is this all inevitable? Of course not. In America, much is still possible and reversals are within our reach. Our greatest days could indeed still lie before us. But not in a nation where nearly everyone is asleep.
People like Jim DeMint and the Tea Party are considered marginal, unelectable and too unreasonable to take seriously. And yet, all they’re doing is stating the obvious and demanding that the United States return to at least a shadow of its formerly free self. How and when did that become so unreasonable and so radically wrong?