To his supporters and apologists, Barack Obama is a leader of unprecedented vision.
This may be true when it comes to visions of spending other people’s money and expanding the federal government way beyond its already bloated, dysfunctional state. But it certainly isn’t true when he says that the private sector is doing “just fine.”
A major point made by free market economists is how, in a government-hampered economy, we never see all the things that aren’t manufactured, created or produced. Examples: All the new businesses that fail, or are never started, because the government has made it too expensive to do business; all the innovative steps that larger companies will not take, because government fosters defensiveness and caution in a business climate plagued by the constant threat of debilitating regulation and confiscatory taxation; all the things that would be bought by people in an economy with a near-zero unemployment rate, rather than the 8 percent or higher unemployment rate (if we leave aside the government fudging of figures) we currently endure.
A person with vision tries to imagine what might have been, and what could be. Barack looks at the paltry economic growth — more accurately defined as stagnation — and claims it’s “just fine.” His comments imply that his real concern lies with government employees. It’s the public sector he sees as under attack, and it’s the government he wants to see grow, not the private sector.
Is this really what the 51 percent or so of Americans who still plan to vote for this man actually want? They had better get their heads straight, because we’re about to get another four years of it.
It’s not just that taxes are too high and regulations are too plentiful. This was true before Barack came to office. The problem is that since Barack came to office, business has been told — repeatedly, in word after word, and policy after policy — that business and free enterprise are, by their natures, immoral. Obama ran, in 2008, on an explicit platform against “selfishness.” By this he means the personal benefit of anyone — in the private sector.
To Obama, public sector “self-interest” is good, while private sector self-interest is bad.
Somehow, when it’s union leaders or union members who gain additional money or benefits — that’s a good thing. When government employees keep jobs that are worthless, or that the private sector can no longer afford to subsidize — that kind of personal profit is a good thing. When government programs are created, or expanded, it’s considered economic “growth.” Even though this “growth” merely adds to the deficit, adds to the national debt, and stalls the very economic growth in the private sector that the public sector is counting on.
The problem with supporting a socialist, when you’re in search of “vision,” is the fact that vision does not occur in the public sector. Vision occurs in the private sector. The American government would never have been a great government were it not for the private sector which financed it, and the individual freedom and innovation — without government interference — which spawned it. American society was never perfect, and the protection of individual rights has not always been consistent. But American society always possessed more freedom (including economic freedom) than any society in history. It was ruled by law rather than by kings, but more than that: People were left alone to think, create, build, innovate and — yes — make a profit. This led to what the country became, and what the country in some measure still is.
Since Barack came to office, the government has continued its relentless expansion and deficit spending begun in prior administrations, including the most recent Republican one. Barack has taken that reckless spending and debt and expanded it beyond what anyone thought would ever happen. Is this what his supporters call “visions” of hope and change?
That’s not even the biggest damage Obama has done. The biggest damage Obama has done is to step on the ambitions and dreams of what might have been, but will never be thanks to his attitude that self-interest, personal profit and capitalism itself are evil and bad. By telling people that “greedy businessmen” are the ones bringing us down, he’s telling people that the quest to be productive and profitable is somehow wrong, and will be punished by the federal government whenever possible.
In Barack’s world, it’s morally superior to be drawing a government check. The productive people whose efforts made the check possible? No worries. They’re doing “just fine.”
In Barack’s America, the best and the brightest are demonized, minimalized and marginalized. The recipients of government favors are the heroes. If this isn’t economics and morality turned upside down, I don’t know what is. Yet it’s what America is becoming, under Obama’s vision.
Imagine if America had started out this way. Imagine if the Declaration of Independence had read that individuals are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — as the government defines it, and with 50 percent or more of the profits going to the government.” Would a free people have fought a Revolution for this principle? And later a Civil War? Not likely.
History will show that Obama’s administration did great damage to the morale of the American economy. This, in turn, kept the economy from recovering or flourishing like it might otherwise have done.
You cannot lead a free country if you hate freedom itself. Obama hates capitalism, he resents business, and he hates the values of innovation and, yes, self-interest which fuel them. These qualities make people less dependent on people like him, and dependence is what social welfarism is all about. How in the world can he provide any kind of vision to get the country out of its continuing mess?
He doesn’t care about the country, not the country we have known. He cares about his constituents who live off the productive efforts of part of the country. Obama’s vision, unmasked, relies on the “vision” of a parasite living off its host. That’s no vision, especially not for America.