Friday, November 10, 2006
Swinging Pendulums…and, America Joins the E.U.
Before anyone falls for the mainstream news hype and thinks that what happened in the recent election was some groundbreaking, revolutionary, historical turn of events, they should read Charles Krauthammer's recent interesting and insightful observations regarding past elections.
Like most Libertarians and Conservatives, I'm not thrilled about characters like Nancy Pelosi holding considerable legislative power that will ultimately further constrain the private lives of individuals and punish the actions of society's most productive forces. I doubt if it will benefit the country much that every word and action of the President will now be scrutinized with costly hearings or attempts to impeach. Of course, in this "making nice" warm-up period everyone in the new power center is saying that no such legislative animosity is on the agenda. Anyone who believes that, after years of non-stop hate Bush hyper-mania is seriously deluded about the nature of Leftism.
Beyond my disgust over the inevitable agenda of Democrats, I have to say that my response to the election results is ultimately, "oh well." I can't really get all that excited about the issue. I agree with Neal Boortz who, on several occasions, said the Republican Party got what it deserved. Indeed, they have not been a party of limited, decentralized government – at all. But now the voters have empowered an alternative; a European socialist model of mega bureau-social schemes that seeks to punish success and achievement and reward an endless list of conjured "victims" -- and that's just their domestic program.
To be sure, the power of congressional committees that will now be headed by the left is unsettling to those of us who favor limited government, respect property rights, and admire individual initiative, but let's face it; the country is beyond the point of return on these issues. Too many people "love big brother," or at least get enough in government checks that it keeps them from complaining about a little thing like loss of liberty.
We should be able to guess the result of a Democrat empowered foreign policy by whom, overseas, expressed pleasure in the party's success – communists, socialists, and terrorist organization "spokespersons." Basically anyone who hates the U.S. and would like to see it weakened, harmed or eliminated was happy to see Democrats gain political power – no surprises there. This doesn't mean that Democrats are terrorists or communist, but they come suspiciously close in their acceptance and sympathies toward some of the most unsavory political systems, and they certainly haven't been noted to take strong stands or call for the use of strong measures against any of America's sworn enemies. That's right; Islamo-fascist and communist dictatorships are our enemies. They're not "people with a different view who we can talk to, compromise with, trust, and join with in peace."
My ultimate hope – and it's a real possibility – is that the radical neo-Comm wing of the new Democrat party will wear out their welcome rather quickly. Bill O' Reilly is right when he speaks of a conflict between "San Francisco values" and common citizen's values. A few too many honest proclamations from Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, or Al Gore and the Democrats will be toast in the next election.
If this election had gone the other way we'd see massive street protests no doubt contesting the election's results, complete with cries of how it was "stolen." Screams of "Nazism" would be heard and placards of Bush with a Hitler mustache would be seen in rallies everywhere. It's to conservatives' credit that, when they lose, no such nonsense occurs. There'll be plenty of whining on blogsites and talk-radio but for the most part, when conservatives (or, in this case the often not so conservative, Republicans) lose, they typically accept that they slipped up and continue to address the individual issue that have always been there anyway. It's not as if the government before this election was modeled on libertarianism – or even the constitution for that matter. The American government has been a top-heavy monolith of growing socialist encroachment upon individual liberty for quite some time now under both dominant political parties. The only difference between the parties that really counts now is their attitudes toward foreign enemies and the clear and present war we are in, not just with Islamo-fascism but its many friends in authoritarian governments and socialist dictatorship wannabes (i.e. Hugo Chavez) across the world.
For all intents and purposes, America has now symbolically joined the E.U. which is why Euro-leftist's have publicly praised the election's results (just as many of them have praised Yasir Afafat and Fidel Castro).
The course of action now should be for libertarians to keep telling Bureaucrats, Democrats, and Republicans to mind their own business. Republicans themselves should get their act in gear and get back to some serious philosophical roots that favor limited decentralized government. They may also want to address some serious issues in the wings, like illegal immigration.
The left in general should just keep on doing what they've always done; hate the U.S. for it's free enterprise system while sucking as much blood from said system as they can – remember, they are superior human beings – kind of like a master race. Now we have an even greater opportunity to obey their philosophy of…obedience to the state.
We've been able to hear the left's acerbic rhetoric from the media, entertainment, and academia for some time now. The new (i.e. Soros, Moore, Dean) Democrats are now going to have an opportunity to put some of their "ideas" into action. In the end, the same public that just gave them power is likely to be very disappointed in what they've done.
…oh well.
