The election season is heating up and challengers are making headway. So, here comes the name-calling by media hot-heads. The boiling point was quickly reached when Keith Olbermann called a Tea Party candidate a liar and a traitor, declaring that the challenger should be arrested and jailed.
This is, sadly, not unexpected.
In the 20th century, what was once considered radical and extremist became mainstream. The common sense wisdom of America’s founders was thrown out for imported philosophies like socialism and “dirigisme.” The leading intellectuals at the start of the century, many educated in Germany, took home doctrines of limitless government and added a can-do American spirit, creating Progressivism and then the New Deal.
Big Government went from the thing most feared to Our Friend.
Then, in England, a socialist noted that this alleged Big Brother could be awfully cruel, the opposite of fraternal. An Austrian economist explained how even well-intentioned government, if unlimited by a rule of law, could send us all down the road to serfdom. A backlash began.
Though increasing numbers of intelligent, concerned citizens began to doubt and then decry the growth of government, government continued to grow. And establishment opinion called supporters of limited government “extremists” and “radicals.”
Now, as government spending lurches beyond all sanity, it’s the establishment that appears extremist.
Expect a few skirling kettles to boil over this season. And then boil dry — and empty. Like the establishment’s big government philosophy itself.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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“Expect a few skirling kettles to boil over this season. And then boil dry — and empty. Like the establishment’s big government philosophy itself.”
I sure hope so. I’m afraid; however, that too many voters think that (since they pay no or little income taxes, or work for the government itself) it’s better to vote for more government, as they think they’ll more successfully use the government to live off others.
There are far too many who vote for those who support or advocate for bigger & more involved government. However, there is a growing number that recognizes big government for the tyrant it really is. The Tea Party movement is part of this. But, only a part. The rest of the movement is among average citizens who belong to no group or organized movement. The time is coming when the truth about our recent economic collapse is told. Many now realize that capitalism is not bad, nor was it solely responsible for the economic mess. In fact, it was the application of radical socialist policies intermixed w/ capitalism that brought about this mess. Liberals say the Community Reinvestment Act was not responsible for the mess. However, there are all sorts of direct evidence that this act was directly responsible for the creation of the volatile credit derivatives. Those derivatives were created using toxic mortgages. Mortgages that should never have been issued. The fact is those mortgages were an enormous amount of money that had been festering for twenty years or more. The fact is, the rules were relaxed even more during the Clinton administration. Then the flood really began. We had investors actually hedging their bets that these
‘investments’ (sic) would fail.
I do not want unbridled capitalism w/ no regulations or limitations. I want balance. We did not have balance when lenders are compelled by law to make loans no lender would ordinarily make.
In the end, there is no socialist economic policy that has succeeded. In Europe, governments face serious deficits created by entitlements they cannot afford. America has a similar problem w/ Social Security & Medicare & Medicaid. Europe’s situation is worse than ours. Ours could be corrected “IF” we could modify SS w/ higher retirement ages, limiting benefit payouts to those in need & not to those whose income in retirement is over $100k annually, and by allowing a “SMALL” percentage of younger people to invest a “SMALL” part of their SS taxes to personal investments. No one over 50 years of age would be affected. No one. But, demagogues attack this & tell the elderly conservatives are trying to take away their SS. Its despicable.
Anyway, we need to make government smaller & less intrusive. We need to cut spending & not just on entitlements, but on many of our socials programs that just suck up money but produce meager results, if any.