Today we inaugurated the new President. We elected the one who promised to do nice things for everybody, rather than the one who promised to assure our freedom.
That’s who we elect now: people who tell us how nice they are and how generous they’ll be with other people’s money after they get elected.
President Bush’s approval rating was around 25% going into the election, and he was excoriated in the media. He wasn’t the Presidential candidate of his party, but because of his supposed influence, we threw his party’s Presidential and VP candidates under the bus in the election. This is how we express our disapproval of Republicans.
Congress’s approval rating was about 11%, and both houses were run by the Democrats. So in the election we showed them how furious we are with them by re-electing almost all the ruling party’s incumbents and by increasing their margin as well. This is how we express our disapproval of Democrats.
Our response to Congress’s approval rating looks like an anomaly at first. If we were so disapproving, why wasn’t there a 100% turnover in Congress? But the explanation is simple. We disapprove of every other district’s representative and every other state’s U.S. senators, but we are enamored with our own rep and our own senators. So, while we wish everyone else would replace their scoundrels in Congress, we don’t return the favor.
Back to the President. The new one is a very nice guy. He wants everyone to be comfortable from cradle to grave. He’s a rich lawyer who has also been a lawmaker. Lawmakers in this country who are nice guys have nearly a century of practice making laws that steal from Peter to pay Paul, so they can always count on the support of Paul.
But Paul isn’t just a poor fellow down on his luck and in need of a hand. Lawmakers who force this redistribution have selected, for our forced charity, such recipients as Planned Parenthood, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the usual parasites like that, but now also big banks who get to keep paying their millionaire executives’ salaries.
I have a different idea who should receive my charity, starting with the poor fellow down on his luck and in need of a hand. I also favor people who are disabled. (Really disabled, not the wannabes with contrived disabilities like tobacco addiction or self-inflicted obesity.)
I want a President who has read the Constitution and who doesn’t find it confusing – who can comprehend that the only responsibilities of the federal government are to provide for the national defense, conduct foreign affairs, regulate inter-state commerce (when necessary), and coin money. (Real money, not promises to pay, but that’s a subject for another day.) I want a President and a Congress who are concerned for my liberty, not my access to credit. I want a government that protects everyone’s freedom *to* do things, not one that presumes to protect everyone’s freedom *from* discomfort.
But I didn’t get that President or that Congress this time around, and neither did you. So I hope you enjoy the comfort you have voted for. I hope the wealth of others lasts long enough that you enjoy your comfort all the way to the grave. I didn’t vote for the overtly nice guy, because his being nice isn’t what mattered to me. It doesn’t fulfill my sense of duty to God and my fellow man, as it apparently does for a majority of my fellow citizens, to give other people’s money to government-approved entities like the UN, Harvard University, and ACORN. It fills my sense of duty to give of my own time and my own resources to someone whose NEED has made an impression on me. The more my meager wealth is whittled down, though, to support organizations I don’t believe deserve my largesse, the less I have to offer those I encounter who are in need.
I would also be deeply ashamed to vote a certain way on the premise that I personally could expect a handout as a result. I vote according to how we are governed by those we elect, not according to who pays me more for my trip to the polls.
See this: Obama Inaugural.
