After listening to NPR on the way home (I couldn't get the usual AM radio "hate" station that Boortz is on), and hearing Obama cited as a "real supporter of the Second Amendment, who isn't going to raise taxes on the small business owner," I came to some depressing conclusions:
We have a national news media, particularly the NPR, who idolizes socialists and Marxists, but ridicules capitalists and the 'Austrian' economists - one which flatters the "intelligentsia" enough to earn their allegiance, even if they spew out nonsense, incorrect 'facts' and bias - because "It's NPR - they are unbiased - and they tell me I'm smarter than the ordinary person because I listen to them, so it must be true - I am CHOSEN to lead society."
There is a difference between urging the residents of your high-rise apartment building to all get fire extinquishers and keep them in their kitchen, versus ARRESTING them if they DO have one. This is the essence of "gun 'nuts'" vs. "gun control" - tell me now, which it the NUTTIER - and which is more dangerous to the public safety?
There is a difference between some kid who can't take time off from watching youtube and cable television and texting his/her friends about the latest moviestar gossip, and an old geezer who actually reads and thinks about (and experienced) history, when it comes to evaluating a political candidate. Yes, "we" are hard on McCain, because we know from bitter experience that Republicans tend to say they'll lower taxes and don't, and tend to say they'll de-regulate and don't, but we DO see the voting records, we DO understand the economic concepts involved, we DO know enough history to at least feel he is DEFINITELY the lesser of two evils. I am beginning to understand why originally, only MEN could vote (most women vote for a pseudo-'father' figure who will 'provide' for them, which isn't a legitimate government responsibility), and only property owners (who have something at stake, or have actually worked and achieved something). Sorry if that makes me politically obsolete/incorrect.
"Our" only debate is whether we shoud "settle" for the lesser of two evils, or push for an ideal 'Libertarian' candidate. And this is a legitimate debate, unlike any real "debate" between a typical imperfect Republican with the news media pointing out every flaw, vs. a typical socialist Democrat, with the news media ignoring any flaw. The leftists can't really debate the merits of their candidate, because they can't even conceive that he would have ANY flaws, or that some "old white guy" (...now, remember, they aren't racists, like "we" are...) would have ANY virtues.
On the other hand, "they" (the teeny-boppers and twenty-somethings, as well as the older ones who are simply ill with envy, hate, and jealousy towards anyone who has more material things - the irony being they insist it is the evil "Capitalist Republicans" who place disporportionate value on money and things) don't care if Mr. Anointed blatantly LIES - for their only "information" comes from mainstream kid-media, and Obama is an expert and charismatic speaker (reminds "us" of some earlier ones, say in the 1930's...) and they fall for it hook, line, and sinker. They have in the past (Carter, Clinton), and when it turns out wrong, they have the audacity to blame "us" - for not "regulating" enough or for not supporting enough the "tax the rich" policies. Heck, they even blame "us" for causing the Earth to get warmer (it is ok to fudge the 'data' if it is really cooling, and totally ignore any warming which happened before George Bush was elected) and even give us 'credit' for causing Mars and other planets to warm, just because we are too dependent on oil. "We" are really more powerful than we realize, I guess!
It is NOT POLITE to point out that while McCain may be a "politician" and an "old white guy" - that Obama is an out-and-out LIAR, race-baiter, and elitist. It is NOT POLITE to point out that Obama really DOES propose to tax the middle class out of existence (we ARE the "richest 10%" because about half the citizens in this country don't have ANY income - they are children, nursing home residents, and inmates!), or that he really DOES want to outlaw firearms ("but he SAYS he doesn't" cry the kid-voters, too LAZY to actually look up his voting record, because they are too BUSY texting each other about how silly Palin's hairdo is - these people are really going to be great voters and citizens!)
No matter how much socialism fails, the "answer" is always MORE socialism.
Socialism is like heroin - when you "come down" - the answer is always that you'd be fine if you just had a little MORE.
In the final analysis, do you think we really will survive as a "free nation?" Welfare moms crank out babies at about three times the rate of married or employed women. About 50% of our population doesn't even pay any taxes - they are children, in nursing homes, or able-bodied people leeching off those of us who actually WORK for a living. If there is only ONE hard-working, 'high-earning' taxpayer for around eight "dependents" on the system, are the 7/8ths of voters going to vote for political candidates who support "individual responsibility and freedom" or someone who supports "taxing the rich" and "helping the 'disadvantaged'"? We're doomed.
All the welfare leeches, corporate (and union - sorry if it offends some) leeches, and government employees combined, constitute a force in sheer numbers far in excess of those who value freedom and responsiblity. With tons of "anchor" and "welfare" babies cranked out who serve as nothing more than "constituents" to a cradle-to-grave government, who are "educated" by a public school system which fosters dependence, shirking of responsibility, and resentment of achievement, there is no way those of us who have children we raise responsibly, school correctly, and hope to hand down a world and nation good to live in can win.
Sure, we will always exist as a loose-knit cadre (we're too "fiercely independent" to ever get truly 'organized') of folks living somewhere in the hills who value freedom, but until something moves the social order into total crisis, (one that the government hasn't created merely to come along and 'solve') we will be in the shadows and marginalized. If that happens, the bedlam which follows (look at other nations who have had social/political/environmental/economic meltdowns) isn't something easy to resolve, or morph back into a freedom-loving nation once again. I know some Libertarians who assume that when "the big collapse" happens, they will ride their white horses out of the hills and re-organize our society along more Constitutional lines, but if history and human nature are any indication, they will be assaulted by unintelligent mobs of television-raised materialists, the horse butchered and eaten, and the rider killed.
Yes, each of us has family members and maybe kids who "get it" - but can they counter the LEGIONS of drooling welfare-statist IDIOTS who will shuffle to the polls in six weeks and vote for whoever NBC and MTV tell them is the Messiah? Our family has six members, and we ALL "get it" - but I know a dozen college kids who think Obama is the Savior, and another half-dozen adults who are so consumed with class-warfare that they believe it is more important to take a dollar from Bill Gates than it is to let the guy down the street keep HIS dollar - they are so materialistic and consumed with hate and envy that they are willing to turn our entire nation into a third-world dictatorship if it means they get to take down the guy down the street who "has too much" - assuming of course that as self-anointed 'experts' on public policy, they will be among the priveleged class who doesn't have to wait in line for soup, or clean water, or health care. Those things are for the peasants, who the liberal/socialist ones say they represent, yet abandon to the pickings when the going gets tough.
I fear we had our opportunity for the past two centuries, and we've blown it - courtesy of the easy living of the 20th century, the seduction of television, and the general shirking of individual responsibility. Our ancestors must be depressed. I have ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary war, and every war since, who at least on some level APPRECIATED freedom, and were willing to risk their lives to keep it, even in wars whose context was not always innocent; ancestors who endured the Great Depression and earlier hard times, who believed you as an individual should WORK for what you needed, and not steal it from others through "taxes" or wheeling-dealing lobbying and regulating your competitors out of business. They would surely be ashamed of, and embarrassed by, our current society.
How do you educate and prepare your children to live in a socialist police-state and succeed, without 'programming' them to be selfish, deceitful 'players of the system' which is to destroy them? If you teach them history, economics, political science, and raise them to be individuals who believe they have the freedom to choose their path in life, the freedom to own property, the freedom to speak their mind, and the freedom to protect themselves, they are likely to go down in flames as "examples" set by the socialist police-state down the road.
I'll shut up now, but sometimes you just have to 'vent' when you see the mindless nonsense that passes for public radio, and public policy. I know our ancestors had to deal with famines, grizzly bears, hostile gangs of looters, and all manner of disease they had no treatment for, but sometimes I envy the straightforwardness of it all - if you got the knife in the grizzly, the battle was over. Ours has just begun, and it is being fought in the realm of electronic media, and 'judged' by the under-thirty crowd, which like it or not includes millions of total losers and leeches.
Pray for our children.
