Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy.
Tags: 2012 elections, Class warfare, Dr. Robert Owens, equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, Obama abandons Whites, Obama socialist agenda, Obama transform America, Obamacare, Social democracy
United we stand has long been part of the inner strength that enabled America to rise from thirteen disjointed colonies on the edge of lonely sea to the pinnacle of power.
Some people believe in the Six Degrees of Separation Theory: that everyone in the world are six or fewer steps away from each other and that a direct line such as “a friend of a friend” can be drawn to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. Some people believe all of us are in this thing together, and that diversity is our strength and I am he as you are she as you are me and we are all together.
Even if we’re all connected in ways we cannot know I believe the world is filled with strangers. Take a ride and as you pass through country, town, and city you’re constantly presented with the faces of people you’ll never know, all of whom have lives and families that will never know you or your life or your family. Every day we see people we’ve never seen before and will never see again. They rise out of the mist beyond the pale of our personal knowledge and are immediately submerged again never to rise again. Our only and forever our only connection will be that one fleeting moment when we moved through a single frame of the separate sagas of our lives.
Unlike Cain I do believe we’re our brother’s keeper, and unlike Scrooge I believe we should help our brothers in need instead of seeing them boiled in their own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through their hearts. However, unlike the rhetoric of Marx, Lenin, and ex-President Obama I don’t believe that life should operate on the basis of from each according to their ability to each according to their need, or as we say in America today, spreading the wealth around.
In other words, I’m not a socialist. I believe in personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity. I found myself out of phase with the Progressive Clique which successfully maneuvered its way to power using the education system, the media, and until 2016 uninformed, uninvolved, and emotional voters.
Out of phase or not, I believe in the equality of opportunity which gives everyone a shot at success as opposed to the equality of outcome which the Progressives and their fellow travelers wish to foist upon us, which gives everyone the assurance of mediocrity. No matter the consequence, no matter the sacrifice we must stand up for what we believe or we’ll stand by while our nation is transformed into what we won’t be able to believe is still called the United States of America.
Day by day the bean counting pencil pushers, who make up the nameless faceless bureaucracy that is the Deep State, grind out rule after rule and regulation after regulation. President Obama’s signature piece of legislation, Obamacare churned out thousands upon thousands of pages of federal requirements all meant to fill in the blanks in a 2600 page bill that we had to pass to find out what was in it.
Hope and change became bait and switch. In 2012 Mr. Obama wasn’t even trying to win votes from those who disagreed with him. He wasn’t trying to change minds. He was trying to buy votes. He bet that generations of entitlements had finally birthed the lumpen proletariat that his theories of government proclaim must exist for History to reach its summit. He bet his second term on the belief that there were enough people dependent upon the government that they would vote for a handout instead of voting for a hand up. He bet that America had been dumbed down enough and bribed enough to trade our heritage of freedom for the yoke of a guaranteed something instead of the opportunity for everything.
Class warfare, penalizing success, dividing America into interest groups and voter blocks this was the strategy Mr. Obama thought would win as he worked to build a coalition of leftist intellectuals, government insider and those convinced they were disenfranchised. Looking at the polls it appeared he had the solid core of 40+% who will vote for a Democrat even if he is the devil himself. The question was would the unengaged and uninformed voters who could at least hope he would change combined with the illegals and the dead who at least get to vote in Chicago be enough for him to win?
Of course it didn’t hurt that the Republicans nominated a stiff who threw in the towel after winning the first debate.
Remember what a second Obama term looked like?
He won on the basis of a promise to double down on social democracy, a complete disregard for the checks and balances meant to maintain the balance of power between the branches of government, and a desire to totally transform America.
After the last four years of the Obamanation when he ruled by one unconstitutional decree after another and no one opposed anything he did what is left of the America we’ve known? How will we ever get back to where we came from? No entitlement once enacted has ever been repealed. The size of government never shrinks. The power it usurps from the people and the States is never surrendered.
What’s a constitutional libertarian independent to do?
A world filled with strangers keeps getting stranger all the time. No matter how many degrees of separation actually exist we should never be as divided as the Progressives and their identity politics try to portray us. We’re Americans. We can do better than this. Reject the siren song of free entitlements which are never free, and embrace the liberty our forefathers won for us. Let’s renew the great experiment in human freedom and strive to see our nation rise again as the last best hope of man that it was meant to be. The shining city on a hill that can light the way to a future worthy of free men and women held together by unity not disjointed in our separation.
Even if it takes more than six degrees of separation to connect to others what does it matter how connected we are to people around the world if we are in terminal disagreement with our fellow Americans? As a nation we’re divided between those who want to strive to achieve and those who thrive because they receive. The Progressives have bred generations of passive takers who believe they’re entitled to the fruit of others’ labor. They pay no taxes so they don’t care how high taxes go. They have no conception of paying for what they have, so they don’t care about the national debt. They see America as a vending machine, so they don’t believe in our unique place in History. They desire a shabby world of bread and circuses based on equality of outcome, so they don’t long to be all they can be.
Those of us who want America to be what America has been and what it should be, the home of the brave and the land of the free can’t let divisions divide us anymore! We must unite to save liberty or we will stand alone at the end of the day. We may be strangers to one another. We may not know each other but if we’re fellow believers in personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity we must unite over what connects us to save what has always made us E PLURIBUS UNUM.
A final thought: Just as we have prospered as no nation before through the application of “United we stand” so too will we reap the results of its mirror image: “Divided we fall.”
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2017 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
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Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, equality of opportunity, Equality of result, liberal media, Mainstream Media, media bias, Obama’s agenda, Progressive agenda, socialism, socialist agenda
The most insidious result that central-planning and the overabundance of government control that it requires is not the maladjustments that it inevitably creates in the economy. It is not the crony capitalism and bureaucratic nepotism that it always fosters. It is not the smothering blanket of nanny-state regulations that strangle creativity. It is not even the tendency to one-party rule even when camouflaged behind a two party system that is in reality two heads of the same bird of prey. It is not a system which may actually contain only two parties if you believe there is the government party and the country party.
No none of these missteps on the way to an illusionary utopia are the most insidious result of any system no matter what it is called that is some variation on the socialist theme of “From each according to their ability and to each according to their need.” Instead the most insidious result of the effort by some to control all is a change in the character of the people.
When government regulation becomes an all-embracing web of minutia that requires lawyers, accountants, and other translators of government-speak to comprehend, when safety-nets become hammocks, and when the do-gooders believe that they know what is best for everyone reaches a tipping point people begin to expect others to do for them what they used to do for themselves. A nation of self-reliant, go-getters can be changed into a sea of slugs on the dole constantly crying and voting for more.
The descendants of the pilgrims and the pioneers are content to wait for their government check and their food stamps as long as there is a game on their flat screen and minutes left on their obamaphone. Militant apathy has ossified the sinews of a once great people. So many people don’t care about anything beyond their creature comforts, the most basic of which are guaranteed, that the will to succeed has been squashed.
When you guarantee success and everyone gets a trophy just for showing up few will strive to do more than is required. When success is punished by the ridicule of the media and the inequality of government policies such as a progressive income tax that says, “The more you make the more we take” few will strive to do more than is required. When college entrance quotas and set-asides say, “We don’t seek the best and the brightest we look at race and gender to pick the winners and losers” few will strive to do more than is required. When government subsidies and tax-breaks say, “If you have connections the government will hold back the crushing reality of the market at tax-payers’ expense” few will strive to do more than is required.
In America today we are surrounded by low-information voters who either don’t pay any attention to affairs beyond their life or who get their news exclusively from the Progressive controlled Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media. Their opinions are scripted for them by the progressive group-think of corporate hacks constantly building a narrative to advance their utopian agenda. If it doesn’t fit it doesn’t print. If they don’t like what you say it will never play. America’s once dynamic free press transformed into a one-sided monologue reciting over and over, “Government knows best.”
Our government controlled and increasingly standardized education system works hard to say as some of my students have; “a ‘D’ is good enough.” Or, “At our school we receive an attendance diploma it just means we were there it don’t mean we learned anything.” Assignments such as I witnessed in a 12th grade Political Science class, “Watch Michael Moore’s film, ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ and then write an essay on how many ways Bush lied to trick us into invading Iraq” show indoctrination has in many places swallowed education. Circumstances such as these tend to stifle those who would drive innovation and promote those who are just along for the ride, pass the mediocre while holding back the brilliant.
We have moved from a capitalist system to a mixed economy and now under a president who promised to fundamentally transform America we are lurching into a socialist system in all but name that seeks to ensure equality of result instead of the equal opportunity which has traditionally been the seedbed of America’s meritocracy. We have transitioned from a small limited government, a representative republic that operates on democratic principles into an all-powerful central government that operates through a massive bureaucracy. Executive orders are used to make end-runs around Congress and the Constitution. Unconstitutional and illegal recess appointments are used to avoid the scrutiny of a Senate confirmation. Our borders are for all intents and purposes open like an automatic door at Wal-Mart. Forgetting what Ronald Reagan told us, “A nation without borders is not a nation.”
Norman Thomas, an early Socialist candidate for President said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” And as Lenin said, “Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.”
Step-by-step we have journeyed from being a people birthed in rebellion against tyranny, a people who founded the world’s first experiment in a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Until a nation founded upon a written constitution which guaranteed limited-government, personal liberty, and economic freedom has become just another failed utopia that is spending itself into oblivion as the band plays, “let the good times roll.”
At a time like this it is good to remember some of the wisdom of those who have gone before:
Noah Webster said, “There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government.”
Alexis de Tocqueville said, “The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.”
Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”
Barry Goldwater said, “A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.”
AND
Alexander Tyler said, “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship”
A word to the wise they say is sufficient.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
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Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.
Tags: Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Dr. Robert Owens, Equality before the law, equality of opportunity, equality of outcome
In the Declaration of Independence a new thing entered the world, a country founded upon the idea of equality. The Old World consisted of societies built upon hereditary class and entrenched privilege. Beginning with words that still burn within the breast of Patriots, this great document proclaims two types of equality.
Based upon the first clause, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” the first type is equality before the law. We all stand before the bar of justice on the same footing. There aren’t different laws for different classes. The definition of murder is the same for the homeless person, the mechanic and the billionaire. This equality, a natural part of our creation proclaims that neither classes nor other artificial divisions will ever be recognized in law or enshrined through legislation.
Based upon the second clause, “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” the second type is equality of opportunity. Everyone is entitled to their life and the fruits of it. Each of us has an equal right to the liberty of action, the freedom to choose our life’s path and to make our own decisions. And each of us has the right to pursue happiness. In almost all other lists such as this from the period, many of them written into state constitutions by the same people who wrote the Declaration, this is the right to own property and the happiness here is assumed to mean the right to use our own talents and the things they gain for us for our own benefit as long as we do not injure nor hinder others.
These rights and the equality they express were later protected by the Constitution. Congress shall not confer titles of nobility. Congress shall not pass bills of attainder convicting groups or individuals without a trial. Through the use of these and other negatives the Framers sought to secure Americans the possession of the equality proclaimed by the Declaration. The Bill of Rights went even further in declaring what Congress could not do in the attempt to guarantee the continued exercise of the equality granted by our Creator. The mechanism the Framers used to keep freedom alive was limiting government for they knew governments gain power by subtracting freedom from individuals.
However, it needs to be noted that the limitations placed upon government as a means of securing the equal rights of citizens in no way states that there should be a leveling of all people or that there will not continue to be distinctions and differences among them. This was never stated and never intended for the belief in or vision of a population with standardized talents, inclinations and goals does not match reality. There are as many different sets of these as there are people. In each individual, life should be open to choice. The only boundaries being that we do no harm nor proscribe the choice of others. This is the level playing field of creation, a pure equality of opportunity to be harvested in proportion to the Creator’s gift of talents and our investment of time and effort.
As long as the role of government is limited, and as long people are free to operate within the informal social arrangements of a non-regimented, non-stratified society there’s no tension between equality of opportunity and liberty. This quest for equality of outcome has become a social goal adopted as a reason for destroying society as it is in the name of society as a small cadre of radicals thinks it should be. In the aftermath of economic or societal collapse, revolutionaries, or in the case of the American Progressives “Evolutionaries,” will seek to erect in the place of popular government a bureaucratic tyranny devoted to leveling all to the lowest common denominator. Except of course for the levelers themselves who rise by deciding who gets what, and it’s the deciders who always seem to get the most. For, some perceive that equality of all is not the same as the equality of some, or as the ruling pigs in George Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm declare, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” This reflects the subversion of equality of opportunity into equality of outcome or as it’s termed by Progressives equal opportunity.
To build this monument to mediocrity the philosophers of progressivism subtly change the meaning of equality. Instead of the opportunity for all to succeed it becomes the certainty of everyone getting a trophy for showing up, a diploma for attendance or a check for not working. Built upon the premise that if all are created equal all should end up equal thus denying the goal of equality the chance to go as far and as fast as talent and hard work can lead.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College and History for the American Public University System. http://drrobertowens.com © 2010 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net
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Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 