An insightful Ronald Reagan said the following, deserving a place on the wall of every home in America: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
I would argue we are a couple of generations in the hole by Reagan’s measure. What should concern every American is widespread ignorance of and apathy toward the basic principles on which this country was founded: a democratic republic form of government, limited government, the free enterprise advantage of capitalism, individual liberty and protection of private property rights.
If you want evidence of America’s drift far away from our founding principles – assuming you need more than budget-strangling socialist entitlement programs — look no further than the shallow thinking throughout our presidential election cycle.
Exhibit A is Barack Obama, but while some are winding up their spring-loaded racist accusations, he leads my list for reasons other than what you may think. I don’t care what race he might be, though I care quite a lot what actions he takes as President, and there is plenty on that score to argue America has no greater enemy than this President.
But Obama himself is not the problem. There have always been and always will be extremists like Obama on the left and right fringes. The problem is the growing number of people who get excited enough to vote for him, never mind that he had never run so much as a hot dog stand before becoming President, never mind the extreme leftists and even anti-Americans with whom he associated, and perish the thought of measuring him by the standards of those American basic principles summarized above. Those who committed to vote for Obama because he is black have wallowed in the luxury of calling us racist for daring to voice our objections to his outrageous actions in office. How convenient.
You could argue the people are generally shallow, which illustrates my point, but our media is harder to excuse for failing to ask Obama the tough questions they would surely ask a Republican, and for their willful blindness for seven long years. If you asked me why, I would surmise the predominately liberal media crowd does not love Democrats nearly as much as they despise Republicans, ergo the cover.
A few years ago a Florida college professor gave his students a drafted proposal on taking private property for the public good, mechanisms for equalizing wealth among the people, etc. Students overwhelmingly concurred with the ideas, since they were feel-good notions in theory even if they fall apart by the application of human nature and self-interest, and the students were shocked to find they had voted for the foundation of Marx’s Communist Manifesto. And we wonder why politicians get away with their collectivist attitudes in a country founded on individualism.
Now comes Bernie Sanders, proud socialist, getting legs on the Democrat side by recommending nanny-state goodies for the people like guaranteed vacation and sick time, free college tuition, rights to free healthcare, a 90 percent tax on wealthy income, radical redistribution of wealth and other things with cost adding up to unknown trillions. Because as we all know there is a bottomless ATM in the sky for those with the stones to tap it, right?
It would be no surprise that Sanders would attract some whose brain-dead votes are to be had in exchange for goodies since some citizens aren’t even aware of American principles.
But as Sanders’ crowds continue to swell, I have to wonder where are those who check their emotions with the hard-thinking standards of self-restraint required to hold true to notions like the sanctity of private property and the bankruptcy of socialism since, as Margaret Thatcher said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
The other problem with socialism is people’s natural self-interest that becomes manifest in dangerous concentrations of power and control of money.
Where are the people, I have to wonder, who learned in school how capitalism harnesses the self-interest of individuals to generate the most powerful economic and productivity engine the world has ever known? To paraphrase commentator George Will, “For those who want an explanation for wealth and income inequality, the answer is one word: ‘freedom.’ Those who apply their sweat, intellect and determination will achieve considerably more than those who don’t.” And therein lies a summary of the virtues of capitalism.
How many Americans, I have to wonder, really appreciate capitalism these days? Are the masses becoming rapidly mesmerized by the enticing veneer of socialism by having no foundational belief in capitalism in the first place?
Has our government school system failed completely to teach the redeeming qualities of capitalism amidst our national fits of pathological sensitivity that compels teaching the relative equality of our system versus all others? Have we finally and fatally damaged our capitalist roots with the cumulative weight and strangle-hold of liberal regulations?
University Professor Peter Boettke poses a thought-provoking question. “If you bound the arms and legs of gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him down with chains, threw him in a pool and he sank, you wouldn’t call it a ‘failure of swimming.’ So, when the markets have been weighted down by inept and excessive regulation, why call this a failure of capitalism?”
Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus has said many times he is glad they built the company in the early 1980s because doing so in today’s regulatory environment would be near impossible. That should worry every American, especially while Democrat presidential candidates one-up each other on promising more new regulation.
I suppose presidential politics have always been messy, but we should at least be able to expect our news media to be sufficiently grounded in American principles to ask pointed questions when candidates make promises that conflict with the restraint implied in those principles.
In fact, an absurdity that tires me quickly is our media’s and public’s focus on each candidate’s “position” on immigration, abortion, international trade and on and on, as if a newly elected president had a magic wand to enact his wishes, contrary to the reality that his personal views are a world apart from the congressional action required to enact change.
Another absurdity is so-called debates. They could be more accurately be called game shows, with time limit rules, buzzers, warning lights, gotcha questions for Republicans, softball questions for Democrats and little substance in the search for a zinger sound bite.
Only in a Democrat debate could a candidate so far left as Bernie Sanders provide Hillary Clinton a truck-wide opening to defend capitalism. That should make you scratch your head since just one of her campaign ideas is $35 billion per year of free college tuition.
Clinton made a short leap from there to support a Georgia lawsuit seeking special in-state tuition status for illegal immigrants categorized as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. That means their illegal parents brought them here illegally, they have lived here illegally and attended school, but their deportation has been put on hold. Their lawsuit for entitlement to favorable in-state tuition rates was argued Monday before the Georgia Supreme Court.
Liberals would argue those “undocumented” youths should not be penalized since they were not at fault they were brought here illegally. Conservatives would counter with boo-hoo, fault be damned, we need to preserve favorable in-state tuition rates for citizens and legal immigrants. Conservatives might go further to suggest illegals should not be able to take a college classroom seat in our country at all, even at out-of-state tuition rates.
What a concept – stop pouring American resources in a trough for the world to feed! And I would add the loaded word “undocumented” is intentionally misleading since it suggests they only lack paperwork, which is not true at all for illegals.
Coming last in my traipse through election neuroses to Donald Trump seems fitting since I would bet legions of shrinks would love to get a look past his hair to the inside of his head. You have to love a bold guy who plows right past the popular socialist label to call Bernie Sanders a communist. He isn’t bashful.
I was wrong about Trump being a summer flash in the pan, though my concerns about him remain. The bold and brash is what voters on the right seem to love, especially since so many of us are desperately tired of flaccid Republicans in Washington. Their only redeeming quality is that Democrats are so much worse, and that does not inspire.
The trouble with Trump, though, is too much chest-thumping and minuscule substance. I have watched a few recent televised interviews and, ignoring his Obama-like narcissism and thin skin, The Donald seems to have the attention span of an immature gnat, flitting through four or five subjects before a sentence is finished, with nothing in any of them to take to the bank. I don’t think it’s intentional. He seems to be unable to focus on a given subject to any depth, and that is worrisome.
Trump has one redeeming characteristic that makes him the right’s version of the shallow Obama phenomenon in my opinion – he is likable, which matters quite a lot for masses of voters alienated from the party’s mainstream.
You can blow away a lot of the baloney of the presidential race with likability, because when the voter is in the booth alone deciding which lever to pull, the feeling of likability might trump thought on issues nearly every time. Pun intended.
Maybe the likability factor will save us from Hillary, because she isn’t.
If we don’t get back on Ronald Reagan’s track of focusing on the founding principles of America though, maybe even Hillary can’t make it much worse than the damage already done.
[Terry Garlock of Peachtree City occasionally contributes a column to The Citizen. Email him at [email protected].]
