Four More Years for the Unwitting Authoritarian

[Trades]

Thought this was a good article.

Four More Years for the Unwitting Authoritarian

Andrew Napolitano|Nov. 8, 2012 7:00 am


Only in America can a president who inherits a deep recession and whose policies have actually made the effects of that recession worse get re-elected. Only in America can a president who wants the bureaucrats who can't run the Post Office to micromanage the administration of every American's health care get re-elected. Only in America can a president who kills Americans overseas who have never been charged or convicted of a crime get re-elected. And only in America can a president who borrowed and spent more than $5 trillion in fewer than four years, plans to repay none of it and promises to borrow another $5 trillion in his second term get re-elected.


What's going on here?


What is going on is the present-day proof of the truism observed by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, who rarely agreed on anything in public: When the voters recognize that the public treasury has become a public trough, they will send to Washington not persons who will promote self-reliance and foster an atmosphere of prosperity, but rather those who will give away the most cash and thereby create dependency. This is an attitude that, though present in some localities in the colonial era, was created at the federal level by Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, magnified by FDR, enhanced by LBJ, and eventually joined in by all modern-day Democrats and most contemporary Republicans.


Mitt Romney is one of those Republicans. He is no opponent of federal entitlements, and he basically promised to keep them where they are. Where they are is a cost to taxpayers of about $1.7 trillion a year. Under President Obama, however, the costs have actually increased, and so have the numbers of those who now receive them. Half of the country knows this, and so it has gleefully sent Obama back to office so he can send them more federal cash taken from the other half.


It is fair to say that Obama is the least skilled and least effective American president since Jimmy Carter, but he is far more menacing. His every instinct is toward the central planning of the economy and the federal regulation of private behavior. He has no interest in protecting American government employees in harm's way in Libya, and he never admits he has been wrong about anything. Though he took an oath to uphold the Constitution, he treats it as a mere guideline, whose grand principles intended to guarantee personal liberty and a diffusion of power can be twisted and compromised to suit his purposes. He rejects the most fundamental of American values—that our rights come from our Creator, and not from the government. His rejection of that leads him to an expansive view of the federal government, which permits it, and thus him, to right any wrong, to regulate any behavior and to tax any event, whether authorized by the Constitution or not, and to subordinate the individual to the state at every turn.


As a practical matter, we are in for very difficult times during Obama's second term. Obamacare is now here to stay; so, no matter who you are or how you pay your medical bills, federal bureaucrats will direct your physicians in their treatment of you, and they will see your medical records. As well, Obama is committed to raising the debt of the federal government to $20 trillion. So, if the Republican-controlled House of Representatives goes along with this, as it did during Obama's first term, the cost will be close to $1 trillion in interest payments every year. As well, everyone's taxes will go up on New Year's Day, as the Bush-era tax cuts will expire then. The progressive vision of a populace dependent on a central government and a European-style welfare state is now at hand.


Though I argued during the campaign that this election was a Hobson's choice between big government and bigger government, and that regrettably it addressed how much private wealth the feds should seize and redistribute and how much private behavior they should regulate, rather than whether the Constitution permits them to do so, and though I have argued that we have really one political party whose two branches mirror each other's wishes for war and power, it is unsettling to find Obama back in the White House for another four years. That sinking feeling comes from the knowledge that he is free from the need to keep an eye on the electorate, and from the terrible thought that he may be the authoritarian we have all known and feared would visit us one day and crush our personal freedoms.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/11/0...witting-author

[Warfish]

If you cannot beat the system.

And you cannot change the system.

Make the most of the system.

[FF2®]

Let the whining commence.

[Trades]

Originally Posted by FF2®

Let the whining commence.

Wow that article is considered whining?

[sg3]

Originally Posted by FF2®

Let the whining commence.

Do you know where we can obtain some violins we can lend out for the next FOUR MORE YEARS!

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

[DeanPatsFan]

Originally Posted by sg3

Do you know where we can obtain some violins we can lend out for the next FOUR MORE YEARS!

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

So OblameBush can play them while America burns?

[JoeyStylez]

Originally Posted by DeanPatsFan

So OblameBush can play them while America burns?

I guarantee you America will be in an even better place four years from today than it is right now. I GUARANTEE YOU.

Meet me here on November 9, 2016 so I throw in your face just how wrong you will be.

[Jungle Shift Jet]

Originally Posted by JoeyStylez

I guarantee you America will be in an even better place four years from today than it is right now. I GUARANTEE YOU.

Meet me here on November 9, 2016 so I throw in your face just how wrong you will be.

Why is America much worse today than 4 years ago?

[chiefst2000]

Originally Posted by JoeyStylez

I guarantee you America will be in an even better place four years from today than it is right now. I GUARANTEE YOU.

Meet me here on November 9, 2016 so I throw in your face just how wrong you will be.

Your concept is that an America 20 Trillion in debt is a good thing? 1 Trillion per year in interest payments helps us somehow? More .0005% returns on treasuries helps retired people that don't happen to have union pensions live well off of their savings? Medicare and Social Security 4 years closer to bankruptcy is good for people?

Child please.

[HessStation]

Dems,
Can one of you please explain to me how he's wrong? What do I have to look forward to? Thank you.

[Bonhomme Richard]

Originally Posted by JoeyStylez

Meet me here on November 9, 2016 so I throw in your face just how wrong you will be.

Aren't you a pleasant chap.

[Warfish]

Originally Posted by JoeyStylez

I guarantee you America will be in an even better place four years from today than it is right now. I GUARANTEE YOU.

Meet me here on November 9, 2016 so I throw in your face just how wrong you will be.

Better how, specificly?

Cite a few specific metrics that will be better in 4 years, and how they're going to get better, and how (specificly) Obama will deserve the credit, and maybe you'd have a point.

This is so common in politics, and it's the same issue I have with "Climate Change" as it's discussed amongst the proles. Vast oversimplification.

As if only one factor went into anything as complex as our economic/political system. But when it comes to politics, by gosh, we're going to state with unequivocal passion, that "X did it". Specifics, apparently, are for fools.

[sg3]

Joey

Why bother

The majority of Americans voted as we did and our President was reelected handily


Some posters who were sure it wouldn't happen can't accept that their beliefs are not those of the majority of Americans. Virtually ALL these posters are also good Americans who believed a different person should have won the election. I applaud them for supporting their beliefs and taking part in this great democracy

Sadly there are two of them and really only two who despise the President not for anything he has said or done but hate the person they call "B. Hussein and Oblunder" strictly because of the color of his skin. These two ( no names necessary) are reprehensible and deserve the scorn of all Americans

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

[HessStation]

Originally Posted by sg3

Joey

Why bother

The majority of Americans voted as we did and our President was reelected handily


Some posters who were sure it wouldn't happen can't accept that their beliefs are not those of the majority of Americans. Virtually ALL these posters are also good Americans who believed a different person should have won the election. I applaud them for supporting their beliefs and taking part in this great democracy

Sadly there are two of them and really only two who despise the President not for anything he has said or done but hate the person they call "B. Hussein and Oblunder" strictly because of the color of his skin. These two ( no names necessary) are reprehensible and deserve the scorn of all Americans

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

Cool. So what, in your opinion, is wrong about the article and what do we, as Americans, have to look forward to under Obama's second term?

[Jungle Shift Jet]

Originally Posted by sg3

Joey

Why bother

The majority of Americans voted as we did and our President was reelected handily


Some posters who were sure it wouldn't happen can't accept that their beliefs are not those of the majority of Americans. Virtually ALL these posters are also good Americans who believed a different person should have won the election. I applaud them for supporting their beliefs and taking part in this great democracy

Sadly there are two of them and really only two who despise the President not for anything he has said or done but hate the person they call "B. Hussein and Oblunder" strictly because of the color of his skin. These two ( no names necessary) are reprehensible and deserve the scorn of all Americans

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

I know Skippy, Argumentum ad populum makes you "right", and besides, radical Islam is a race!

[sg3]

Originally Posted by Jungle Shift Jet

I know Skippy, Argumentum ad populum makes you "right", and besides, radical Islam is a race!

Sorry no time for bigots anymore

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

[Jungle Shift Jet]

Originally Posted by sg3

Sorry no time for bigots anymore

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

One is only a "bigot" to a knee-jerk(off) know-nothing.

Too bad your workplace didn't spontaneously combust on 9/11 like mine.

Now go away and bang your head off your prayer rug.

[sg3]

Muslims
African Americans
Hispanic Americans

The list keeps growing

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[Sharrow]

Seems a bit over-dramatic to me. All of these writers, pundits, and bloggers should all take a little time off to get over their post-election depression, and then come back fresh after they're over it.

[PlumberKhan]

Originally Posted by Sharrow

Seems a bit over-dramatic to me. All of these writers, pundits, and bloggers should all take a little time off to get over their post-election depression, and then come back fresh after they're over it.

Over dramatic.

A prefect way to describe the mountains of MaxiPad posts here since Tuesday.

The butthurt defies logic. Might need some cream to sooth it. They lost. Why? Because they suck. Their ideas suck. They suck. Hence why they lost. Unless they realize that they suck and make a concerted effort to not suck, they will continue to suck for years to come.


Sent from my 8.6 acres and 4 bedroom house with waterfront views using fireworks...