Post by AztecWilliam on Jul 15, 2010 21:20:37 GMT -8
I am very much afraid that Krauthammer is right. Obama may not have nine lives, but he may well be sturdy enough not only to win reelection, but also to make any future GOP victories meaningless. How meaningless? Well, that requires some explanation.
Let be explain by way of a hypothetical. Imagine that I, or John Stossel, or someone else of a similar libertarian bent were to become absolute dictator of the U.S. Any one of us could do many things, but whatever we would be likely to do (believing in libertarianism) would not preclude a radically different course for the country in the future.
The Left, on the other hand, has a different goal. Whereas libertarians want government to be efficient, frugal, and definitely limited, those whose champion is now Barack Obama, want to introduce an almost totally different contract between government and citizen. In short, those on the Left believe in the wise autocrat theory of government. The government knows best, it's all for your own good, what's the matter with Kansas?. . . etc. The result of that would be a citizenry predominantly made up of people beholden to and demanding support from, the federal government. I.e., the dependency model instead of the model of the self-sufficiency model that characterized the citizenry of this country for two centuries.
That type was made up of people who were too proud to ask for help. The new collectivist man, on the other hand, has no real pride and believes it is right for society to meet his needs. The traditional appeal of Republican values (which, not incidentally, were pretty much the values that most people held for those two hundred years), much less the values of the Libertarian Party, would be of no interest to the masses of folks who are convinced that they cannot survive on their own. Do I have to add that the latter type typically never asks him or herself who is going to pay for those government programs that the masses demand?
Once the changes that the Left has in mind have become fact, there will be no going back short of a complete breakdown of society followed by a new dark age and the slow, painful climb back up to. . . to what? Liberty and limited government? One can only hope that would happen. But, of course, that would be far in the future.
The collectivists on the Left do not value personal liberty above all else. They value equality of outcome. Health care may become crap, but if it's as crappy for Bill Gates' family as it is for yours, that's fine. (Of course, there is no way in hell that Gates', with all his money, would ever play by the rules and let his Mom or Sister die while waiting in line for a transplant, but that's another story.)
All right, that's enough of an introduction. Krauthammer is not as apocalyptic as I am, but he is thinking along the same lines.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/15/AR2010071504593.html
AzWm
Let be explain by way of a hypothetical. Imagine that I, or John Stossel, or someone else of a similar libertarian bent were to become absolute dictator of the U.S. Any one of us could do many things, but whatever we would be likely to do (believing in libertarianism) would not preclude a radically different course for the country in the future.
The Left, on the other hand, has a different goal. Whereas libertarians want government to be efficient, frugal, and definitely limited, those whose champion is now Barack Obama, want to introduce an almost totally different contract between government and citizen. In short, those on the Left believe in the wise autocrat theory of government. The government knows best, it's all for your own good, what's the matter with Kansas?. . . etc. The result of that would be a citizenry predominantly made up of people beholden to and demanding support from, the federal government. I.e., the dependency model instead of the model of the self-sufficiency model that characterized the citizenry of this country for two centuries.
That type was made up of people who were too proud to ask for help. The new collectivist man, on the other hand, has no real pride and believes it is right for society to meet his needs. The traditional appeal of Republican values (which, not incidentally, were pretty much the values that most people held for those two hundred years), much less the values of the Libertarian Party, would be of no interest to the masses of folks who are convinced that they cannot survive on their own. Do I have to add that the latter type typically never asks him or herself who is going to pay for those government programs that the masses demand?
Once the changes that the Left has in mind have become fact, there will be no going back short of a complete breakdown of society followed by a new dark age and the slow, painful climb back up to. . . to what? Liberty and limited government? One can only hope that would happen. But, of course, that would be far in the future.
The collectivists on the Left do not value personal liberty above all else. They value equality of outcome. Health care may become crap, but if it's as crappy for Bill Gates' family as it is for yours, that's fine. (Of course, there is no way in hell that Gates', with all his money, would ever play by the rules and let his Mom or Sister die while waiting in line for a transplant, but that's another story.)
All right, that's enough of an introduction. Krauthammer is not as apocalyptic as I am, but he is thinking along the same lines.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/15/AR2010071504593.html
AzWm
