In 1962, Ronald Reagan gave a pivotal speech that defined him.
The speech is full of memorable phrases that are as relevant today as when he said them.
This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down: [up] man’s old — old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
And do you think of Obamacare when he says:
the full power of centralized government” — this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.
We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.
The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.
Watch:
I just received this in an email from my broker:
What the 2011 tax changes mean for you.
• When you sell equities (such as stock) acquired in 2011, we will be required to report details about your gain or loss to you and the IRS on Form 1099-B. (Mutual funds, ETFs, fixed income investments, and options will be affected in subsequent years.)
Barack Obama’s policies are becoming crystal clear. Those policies are shutting down the American Dream, shutting them down in favor of a country that looks less like Capitalism, and more like Marxism.
Obama made his point of view very clear on CNBC”s Town Hall program on Monday 9/20. In response to a question about raising taxes (termed “extending the Bush tax cuts” to deride them), Obama clearly outlined his rationale for raising taxes on “the rich”, those families making over $250,000, and keeping cuts to an already lower-tax group:
- “You probably didn’t get a raise” (i.e. you deserve it, I’m on your side in this class struggle).
- “You’re more likely to spend it”. (Keynesian economics — we want spenders, not investors).
So this is a clear class-warfare stance: Those who invest must have their money confiscated; we’ll give tax breaks to some only if they spend it. (The government will make the investment decisions.) The proletariat will live from pay-check to pay-check and spend all they have. And that is “good”, according to Obama.
This is a doctrine straight out of the words of Karl Marx:
Marx argues that in capitalist society, an economic minority (the bourgeoisie) dominate and exploit an economic majority (the proletariat). Marx argues that capitalism is exploitative, specifically the way in which unpaid labor (surplus value) is extracted from the working class (the labor theory of value), extending and critiquing the work of earlier political economists on value. Such commodification of human labor according to Marx, creates an arrangement of transitory serfdom. He argued that while the production process is socialized, ownership remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This forms the fundamental contradiction of capitalist society. Without the elimination of the fetter of the private ownership of the means of production, human society is unable to achieve further development.
In order to overcome the fetters of private property the working class must seize political power internationally through a social revolution and expropriate the capitalist classes around the world and place the productive capacities of society into collective ownership. Upon this, material foundation classes would be abolished and the material basis for all forms of inequality between humankind would dissolve.
Obama, through his words, clearly sees the world as a struggle of classes, between rich and poor in the United States. He views himself as someone who has been chosen to lead the revolution, as intelligent and benevolent enough to make the tough decisions to fundamentally change America.
Thomas Sowell commented last week on this class warfare and how the Left has twisted words to advance their argument:
Among the many other catchwords that shut down thinking are “the rich” and “the poor.” When is somebody rich? When they have a lot of wealth. But, when politicians talk about taxing “the rich,” they are not even talking about people’s wealth, and what they are planning to tax are people’s incomes, not their wealth.
If we stop and think, instead of going with the flow of catchwords, it is clear than income and wealth are different things. A billionaire can have zero income. Bill Gates lost $18 billion dollars in 2008 and Warren Buffett lost $25 billion. Their income might have been negative, for all I know. But, no matter how low their income was, they were not poor.
By the same token, people who have worked their way up, to the point where they have a substantial income in their later years, are not rich. In most cases, they never earned high incomes in their younger years, and they will not be earning high incomes when they retire.
A middle-aged or elderly couple making $125,000 each are not rich, even though politicians will tax away what they have earned at the end of decades of working their way up. Similarly, most of the people who are called “the poor” are not poor. Their low incomes are as transient as the higher incomes of “the rich.”
Most of the people in the bottom 20% in income end up in the top half of the income distribution in later years. Far more of them reach the top 20% than remain in the bottom 20% over the years.
The grand fallacy in most discussions of income statistics is the assumption that the various income brackets represent enduring classes of people, rather than transients who start at the bottom in entry-level jobs and move up as they acquire more experience and skills.
But if we are going to base major government policies on confusions between medical care and health care, or on calling people “rich” and “poor” who are neither, then we have truly accepted words as the money of fools.
The American Dream, as Dr. Sowell states, is the ability to start poor, work hard, save and invest to build up a nest egg that allows you, perhaps someday, to invest in a business and employ others … in the process becoming financially well off. It’s an ebb and flow … a process, that relies on your skills and determination.
If the government policy is to ensure that if you have excess income, you spend it, and that investing is bad … how can anyone climb the ladder of success when Big Government is removing the rungs?
The dream has its foundation in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
So why would President Obama “slip” and leave out the “their Creator” in a speech last week?
Back to Marx’s view on religion:
Although Marx was intensely critical of institutionalized religion including Christianity, some Christians have “accepted the basic premises of Marxism and attempted to reinterpret Christian faith from this perspective.” Some of the resulting examples are some forms of liberation theology and black liberation theology. [Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for 17+ years] Pope Benedict XVI strongly opposed radical liberation theology while he was still a cardinal, with the Vatican condemning acceptance of Marxism.
Obama and the people that he surrounds himself with all lean to Marxism, and if allowed to carry on extending their consistent polices, will end the American Dream … perhaps for our lifetime.
