Is Hoping Obama Fails Hoping America Fails? Part 2

Barack Obama, Cory Truax, Founding Fathers

Last week I gave you my reaction to our dear leader being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Within that column, I illustrated to you the media’s gratuitous reaction to those challenging whether or not the president merited the honor. You may remember that I closed by mentioning MSNBC’s Screamer (Ed Shultz) recited this line we heard over and over again around the Inauguration:

Conservatives and Republicans want President Obama to fail, and if Obama fails, America fails.

And that’s our topic today. Many of us conclude intuitively that this statement is laughably false. But why? Below, I’ll outline why Shultz and the rest of the Left are plainly mistaken in this claim.

DEFINE THE TERMS

The first step in fleshing this out is to define the terms. And the most important term in that claim is not — sorry, Mr. President — Obama. The most central term is “America.” I believe that when the Left refers to America they are referring to an abstract concept wholly different from the concept those on the right hold.

This conflicting definition of “America” is the foundation of this argument (whether or not hoping a president fails means hoping the country fails). For the liberal, “American success” is characterized as approval from the rest of the world, a vast network of social welfare programs, heavy regulation on business to both “fight climate change” and simply impose punishment for “unfair” achievement, the empowerment of labor unions, and a radically secular culture.

That’s the Left’s agenda. And that’s the Obama administration’s agenda. Thus, when a liberal hears me say, “I hope President Obama fails,” they hear, “You hope our laudable and honorable agenda items fail. And if our agenda fails, America fails.”

But I don’t believe that’s true.

In fact, for reasons I’ll outline below, I believe the precise inverse is true. If President Obama is successful in forcing through any of the current five health care reform bills, passing Cap-and-Tax, signing the Hate Crimes Bill (insidiously attached by Democrats to a war-funding bill), or in taking over any more companies, America as we have known it for over two centuries burns to ashes.

HOW I DEFINE “AMERICA”

I believe I could literally write a book on all of the qualities I believe compose what we know as “America.” I have compressed, though, all of those thoughts into four points. These are the four attributes that are absolutely essential to American identity:
1. Human liberty
2. Private Property
3.Limited Government
4. Rugged Individualism/Personal Responsibility

HUMAN LIBERTY

America’s absolutely fundamental building block and reason for coming into existence is liberty. We take for granted the magnitude of gravity attached to this truth: We are an incredibly unique people in the history of all mankind. No other people group that we know of in the history of time was established on the same intellectual footing as we were.

The predominant governance theories in the generations leading up to the Enlightenment produced a paradigm in which mankind was the subject and servant of the governing authorities. All rights and opportunity were dispersed in a top-down model.

But then came the late 18th century American Colonialists. Our Declaration of Independence also serves as our most compelling oral argument for human liberty and autonomy for all men.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

For the first recorded time in human history, a people claimed that a higher power than kings or rulers gave them individual liberty. Simply, people had liberty for no other reason than they were born to have liberty.

The Obama agenda, though, I believe is an affront to the concept of liberty. I have written specifically about this charge, so I’ll just refer you to that instead of re-writing the arguments. Nevertheless, on this, the essence of America — the rare an incredible value of FREEDOM — President Obama succeeding in his agenda necessitates the failure of America’s founding concept.

PRIVATE PROPERTY

Many Americans don’t know that the Declaration’s endowed rights almost said, “Life, Liberty, and Property.” Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay established private property as vital to the new American spirit repeatedly in The Federalist Papers. Post-Revolution culture, moreover, as illustrated in Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, held private property as a primary value.

Maybe most importantly, our intellectual founding fathers wrote extensively about private property being a basic building block of a new civil society. Some went so far as to theorize that government’s only proper role is insuring the protection of each individual’s private property. Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke — without whom America would have began quite differently — dedicated massive portions of their intellectual labor to the concept of private property.

This fundamental American concept, though, once again, doesn’t find any friends in the Obama administration. The administration has actual Marxists (Van Jones) and Mao-supporters in it. The administration is full of folks hostile to private property.

The president’s hostility to private property doesn’t end with his associations, albeit. In 2001, then-State Senator Obama complained about the civil rights movement’s failure to bring about the redistribution of wealth. And we all heard him during the campaign tell Joe Wurzelbacher that we needed to “spread the wealth around.”

Still, the evidence doesn’t end with associations and words. In a genuinely practical and pragmatic way, the Obama agenda seeks to confiscate wealth from earners and give it to non-earners. The most popular health care bill — the Baucus Bill — institutes several new taxes. The entire idea behind this “health care reform” is to have those who already have health insurance and are satisfied with it (me) bank roll health care for those who don’t want it or can’t afford it.

That single agenda item alone illustrates the administration’s antagonism to our most sacred of private property: our money.

LIMITED GOVERNMENT

I know. This seems redundant. To have human liberty and private property, government must necessarily be limited. Nonetheless, this concept should be specifically enumerated when defining America at its most basic core. The Founders were specific and careful to limit the role and power of government through our social contract and my favorite non-sacred document: the United States Constitution.

The Founders carefully named and structured each branch of government and their responsibilities. The Congress’s duties are quite specifically named in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and President’s role is defined just as well throughout Article 2. And just in case there was any confusion, we were quickly given a Tenth Amendment that says that whatever power isn’t SPECIFICALLY given to the federal government belongs to the States.

American government is (supposed to be) minimalist in nature — as small as possible and imposing no intrusion on the citizenry.

Every administration since Woodrow Wilson, however, (and a few before his) has disregarded this concept. This president is one of the most egregious in this offense, though certainly not the only offender. In less than a year in office, the President has given us a new record deficit by a long shot and government jobs have actually GROWN while private sector jobs have plummeted.

But that’s the practical growth. We also can establish the president as ideologically hostile to the elemental principle of limited government. The president has said specifically that he believes ONLY GOVERNMENT can provide stability within the tenuous global economic circumstances (That is, he said that before needing a popularity boost and flip-flopping).

RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM/PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

The reason founder and second President John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other” should be fairly clear.

In a civil system based on, above all else, human liberty, the people in that system must be PERSONALLY moral, responsible, and selfless. The incredible degree of freedom in which early Americans lived wouldn’t have worked for a people who disregarded their PERSONAL responsibility to themselves, their families, their neighbors, the poor, and the country as a whole. The success of the American experiment relied completely on the un-coerced conduct and character of the citizens.

Moreover, a quality bred into the consciousness of Americans was that we, our own selves, were our greatest asset. Americans used to believe that WE were our greatest chance at success, wealth, stability, or any other desirable goal.

This administration, however, along with ideological Leftism as a whole, insults that spirit as too individualistic, jingoistic, selfish, and/or naive.

This administration is trying to establish through expanded social programs a Western-European paradigm: that government is the parent of the citizen, taking care of all needs. This paradigm denigrates everyone involved. Instead of individualism and personal success and the satisfaction and pride that comes with it, the Obama administration — through handouts — is creating dependency.

True AMERICA is the citizens succeeding without government. Obama’s America features government choosing those who succeed and fail.

To close this point, I want to offer you two videos. Both make my point in stark fashion, and both make me unbelievably sad for my country and angry at liberalism.

First, check this news story from Detroit with the amount of people lining up to BE GIVEN MONEY. In a State run almost exclusively be liberals for decades, in a city run by liberals for decades, we have created an attitude and culture where the people actually think they NEED government to support them.

I want to go to these people and tell them they need no one but themselves, that THEY can succeed through their own talent, potential, and hard work. I believe this to be true. And this belief is essentially American.

Now, here’s the video that makes me both incensed and devastated all at the same time. Watch it first, then get my commentary.

First, I’m angry that Thomas Jefferson was so correct when he said this: “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”

A political party in America has intentionally created a class of people that believe they need government to survive. Consequently, these folks say openly that they voted for Obama because they knew he would GIVE them money they DID NOT earn. That’s the angering part.

But I’m also saddened because, once again, these people don’t need government. They don’t need a president to help them. They have the potential to create the next Microsoft or Apple or Ebay or Honda. But we’ll never know how many incredible ideas we’ve been robbed of by liberals creating a culture of dependency.

CONCLUSION

Hoping Barack Obama’s policy agenda fails directly correlates with hoping America leaves it current state and returns to its glory days. To say it plainly, if Obama succeeds, America fails.

Hoping Obama succeeds in imposing his ideology isn’t hoping AMERICA succeeds; it’s hoping to turn America into Great Britain without the accents. If the Obama administration, has a successful four years, America will not just “change” forever. America will cease to be America. A truly fundamental transformation will have taken place.

And I intend to do everything I can to stop that transformation.

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Cory Truax @ October 18, 2009