Less interesting than the second debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are the words of a former Obama aide on the Internet the very same day:
‘People say the reason Obama wouldn’t call [Bill] Clinton is because he doesn’t like him. The truth is, Obama doesn’t call anyone, and he’s not close to almost anyone .. It’s stunning that he’s in politics, because he really doesn’t like people. My analogy is that it’s like becoming Bill Gates without liking computers.’
It’s easy to believe this is true. Why? Because Obama’s entire ideology and policies, while in office, have been ones of hating people. That’s what socialism is — hatred of people. No, not “people” so much as … individuals.
Leftist socialists are very fond of groups. Obama delighted at the question in tonight’s scripted “town hall” debate which asked about the discrepancy in pay between men and women. His answer, of course, was: More government, more subsidies, more regulation, more lawsuits and more law. Group rights are always the answer, to Obama and others like him.
Romney had a much better answer: A growing economy is the best thing for women. Unfortunately he stopped short of identifying the only system that can grow the economy: Unhampered capitalism. However, he got close enough to the point that, when contrasted with Obama’s answer, his position was fairly clear.
This points out not so much the difference between Obama and Romney as the fundamental difference between two systems: Socialism and capitalism. Socialism cares a great deal for the group, or more specifically for favored interest groups. Capitalism cares for the individual. No strident and consistent proponent of Big Government socialism such as Obama could care much for individuals. To such a mentality, they’re cogs in a wheel. Individual lives are a means to the end of — in theory “the people”; in practice, the power class who runs the government.
Unfortunately, both Romney and Obama advocated for the principles of socialism during this debate. Neither would admit it. Romney repeatedly said he wants the top 5 percent of earners to continue to pay 60 percent of all taxes. By what right are some taxed at higher rates than others? By no rational right, and by nothing stated in the U.S. Constitution. It was Karl Marx who declared, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The difference between Romney and Obama is that Romney wants to cut that principle off at a certain point. For Obama, it’s open-ended. America will never recover economically until we evolve into a system where each produces according to his ability, and keeps what he earns according to his own judgment. Generosity and charity will never be against the law — but never, in a free society, a requirement of the law either. (Not that government handouts and the red tape involved remotely resemble anything like generosity.)
The remarkable thing about this election is that someone like Obama can actually have a chance of winning over the majority of the people. Nobody who sacrifices the individual for the sake of “the people” or “the little guy” should ever have the upper hand. With just a little bit of thought, even the average Joe should be able to figure out that “the people” are nothing more than a large number of individuals. With few or no rights for the individual, the well-being of “the people” hardly matters. America became a great society and a wealthy economy precisely because it respected the rights of the individual. These rights are embodied by the system of hands off capitalism. The more the government puts its hands on capitalism, the more prosperity for everyone — the “little guy” and the middle class most of all — correspondingly suffers.
Yes, Romney is right that Obamacare is already killing millions of jobs. Yes, Romney is right that oil and energy companies should be free to drill, to free us from the religious barbarism of the Middle East as well as to grow our economy. Yes, Romney is right that government does not create jobs. Yes, Obama is dead wrong when he claims that tax cuts — returning money to the wealth creators who make jobs possible in the first place — are “not needed.” Obama is likewise dead wrong when he states that government programs and “tax credits” grow the economy, not the constant and everyday efforts of individuals in the private sector.
This debate isn’t really between Romney and Obama. It’s between the moral superiority and economic practicality of the individual over the collective. The collective is represented by the politicians and parasitical power-mongers — those whom Obama epitomizes, and Romney tolerates. The individual is represented by the free markets of capitalism and, at root, the uncoerced and free-range, thinking human mind — which Romney vaguely endorses and the sulking, sneering Obama resentfully credits (at election time only, never in his policies).
If Americans remain disappointed with the leaders our system keeps producing, they’re right to feel this way. But the principles at stake are of life-and-death importance. Obama has demolished those principles at every turn.
Does Obama hate people? Of course he does. People are individuals — and it’s individualism with which he’s at war.
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