Posted by
Hard Right with No Apologies on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:18:51 AM
- Since the earliest days of the fledgling American colonies, our nation has faced and overcome myriad dangers. The specter of famine and disease nearly ended the infant colonial outposts before they were fully launched. Indignant natives across the continent took rightful umbrage at being replaced and wreaked murderous havoc for decades. Border disputes with Mexico and battles with Caribbean pirates along the south Atlantic and Gulf coasts tested the young nation's ability to defend itself. On two horrific occasions, America has been savagely attacked and destroyed, once by the Japanese in 1941 and once by Islamofascists in 2001. Even now, we face imminent danger from Islam, a political ideology disguised as a religion which claims the indisputable right to requre submission and/or execution of all the world's people in order to achieve its goal of world domination.
Irrespective of external threats, however, the most dangerous times we have faced in the last two centuries have arisen from internal dissention. Most notable was the Civil War, where the question of the economic and social value of enslaved human beings caused a cataclysm which claimed over six hundred thousand lives and threatened to cleave the nation in two.
Today we are confronted by the enemy within. There is NO greater danger to this country.
This enemy, though it had been brewing for decades, began to bloom midway through the last century. On January 11, 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, serving in his fourth term as President of the United States, delivered his annual address to the American people as a "fireside chat" radio broadcast. Liberal historians have labeled this speech the most important address of the twentieth century. Others have termed it the beginning of the era of destruction of the American ideal.
Roosevelt, secure in a virtually lifetime presidency, came out of the closet as it were and declared a new society based upon socialist tenets--although he certainly didn't identify it as such. No longer was he content to lead the nation that had been created by the Founding Fathers and entrusted to his care. No longer was he satisfied to respect America's founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Calling the imminent victory of World War II a guarantee of "mere survival," Roosevelt boldly declared that a new and sacred obligation had been imposed upon the American people. And what was that "sacred obligation"? Roosevelt defined it as Security, capitalizing the word as though it was deserving of worship. Declaring that America had moved beyond the days of formation and survival, he decreed that it was now high time to ensure Security for all Americans by guaranteeing economic, moral, and social protection.
By virtue of that speech, Roosevelt added Security to the defining American principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Moreover, he declared Security the king of all freedoms. No longer were free speech, the right of free assembly, the right to worship freely, the right to a trial by jury (free if necessary), and the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure sufficient for the grand design of an enlightened America that he had in mind. By his speech, Roosevelt became the opener of Pandora's Box. He introduced the cancer of the administrative state, which necessarily presupposes the establishment and rampant growth of an entrenced intellectual, political, and bureaucratic elite who are sooooo much smarter than the rest of us, don't you know, and who arrogate never-ending power unto themselves to reign over the American people in order to provide Security.
In so doing, Roosevelt had become more French than the French. Their Revolution of 1789 resulted in the national ethic "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality"--literally, a kind of "everybody's free, everybody's everybody's friend, and everybody's equal" mode of thinking. It is not possible to be more socialist than that. In creating their new non-monarchical society, the French failed to recognize the wisdom of America's Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and others had put aside all idyllic pretensions of the human pshche and declared it for what it is: self-centered, self-motivated, empowered by God and not by government, and energetic in the pursuit of self-defined happiness. With this clear understanding, they wisely perceived that no system of government will succeed as well as that which provides basic protection (i.e., real security) and then steps out of the way of all those self-motivated citizens.
In such an environment, people can eagerly go about furthering their personal goals and enriching themselves without fear of attack. In such an environment, market forces arise and prevail which ensure price protection, energetic and often brilliant innovation, and abundant opportunity for improving one's lot in life. In such an environment, man can truly be free, and security is a natural byproduct of his own hard work and production. In such an environment, the rising economic tide heightens the national standard of living in a way the rest of the world never dreamed and stands in awe to observe.
But because some people are "more" than others in any society--more energetic, more motivated, harder working, smarter, and yes, more privileged--some boats in the rising economic tide have fared worse than others. Some have sprung leaks and floundered. Inequality will do that. The Founding Fathers said, in effect, "Okay, boys, there's your new society. Now you elect a government which will keep you safe but not bother you with burdensome and unneccessary rules, regulations, requirements, and high taxes. Then go get it!" Those who are unable or unwilling to go get it are necessarily dependent upon others to ensure that their boat stays afloat, even if it will never become a cruise ship. In the fundamentally brilliant and insightful view of the Founding Fathers, those "others" are family, religious institutions, and charitable organizations, but definitely NOT government.
This was not good enough for Roosevelt. Rightly perceving that some are not as successul in the game of life as others and declaring that situation unacceptable, he declared the following new "rights":
* The right to a useful and remunerative job
* The right to earn sufficient income to provide adequate food, clothing, and recreation
* The right of every farmer to grow and sell his produce at a profit
* The right of every businessman to trade in an atmosphere free from monopolies
* The right of every family to a decent home
* The right of everyone to satisfactory medical care
* The right to adequate protection from difficulty resulting from old age, illness, sickness, or unemployment
- * The right to a good and free education.
With these new liberties, Roosevelt was standing America on its head. In effect, he was prescribing that the haves--those who achieve success--must guarantee the well-being of the have-nots. The mechanisms for this new order are massive taxation, which transfers wealth from the haves to the have-nots, and a bureaucracy to coerce such transfers.
President Ronald Reagan, who may well be regarded over time by objective historians as one of the five best American Presidents, attempted mightily to reverse Roosevelt's colossal mangling of the American ideal. In his first inauguaral address, Reagan said "In this present crisis (of high and mounting taxation, massive inflation, crushing rates of interest, and inflation, all caused by inept government manhandling of the economy and obsessive bureaucratic interference with people's lives), government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." The unelected elite spawned by Rooseveltian theology (a fair description; after all, liberals--who compromise most if not all bureaucrats--worship the government of man, not God) was severely undermining the ability of the American people to "go get it."
The legacy of Roosevelt's grand plan of socialism for America lives on, manifested in the persons of liberal politicians, elitist academics, and entrenched bureaucrats who are like a parasite eating at its host, the American people.
Next week: the psychology of a liberal.
Posted by Hale Meserow
March 26, 2007