People cannot value the loss of something they never knew they had.
As the fall out from Election Night 2012 continues, the right has descended into a nasty round of infighting once again. Fiscal conservatives point the fingers at social conservatives for the loss. Social conservatives point the finger right back, and warn of the right slowly sliding into a party of “leftism light”. The Tea Party is pointing fingers at the GOP establishment for the loss. Yet others are blaming Mitt Romney’s campaign for not being dirty enough, or in the last 48 hours, for the massive failure of Romney’s technology system known as ORCA. Yet others are placing the blame on the libertarians, and Ron Paul and Gary Johnson supporters, who they feel took votes away from Romney.
Regardless, many seem to be missing a vital point of what Election 2012 Night told us.
And what that is, is simple: That too many Americans are amazingly unaware that their liberty and their freedom are being stripped from them slowly but surely in the name of “fairness” and the “social safety net”. The idea of having the government provide for their lives, to support them throughout the entirety of their lives, does not disturb them. This is a very big problem, and one that may not be corrected until America is facing some very dark days indeed.
In truth, it comes as no surprise. The following examples I’m about to share about how this mindset has permeated American culture may be called racist by some. So be it. It’s reality, and it’s reality that’s caught on tape.
How can one, or how can a movement, make a convincing argument that BIG government always shades towards the tyrannical, and is perhaps one of the most dangerous conditions any people can face when you have people like the “Obamaphone” lady, or, from a few years ago, the “Obama money” lady. Popping up in late September, the Obamaphone lady was captured at an anti-Mitt Romney rally, and a short interview with her revealed that she had acquired 30 government issued cellphones, and that that reason alone was why people should vote for Obama. This disturbing exchange can be found here.
The three-year-old clip of the “Obama money” lady is just as disturbing. In that clip, a woman is interviewed and is asked what she’s doing. She simply replies that she’s there to get some of that “Obama money”. When asked, where that money comes from, or what it truly is, she has no answer really, other than to say that she wants that “Obama money”. This shed lights on a mindset that apparently has infected tens of millions of Americans, and that is the idea that the government should provide money to people for reasons unknown, other than apparently that’s just how it should be.
This clip, which was released today, shows college students outside of the White House on election night. Once news spread that President Obama had won a second term, they break out into chants of “Karl Marx”, “socialism” and, not surprisingly, “Obamaphones.” More than anything, this shows that this mentality that government and the ideas of madmen whose theories have been proven to be awful again and again in the last hundred years or so, run across all socioeconomic and racial lines.
To me, what was perhaps the most disturbing in the run-up to the 2012 election and the argument between free-market capitalism and either socialism or communism, is how little impact the words of immigrants in the U.S. who escaped socialist or communist countries, had on the majority of people. In this Business Insider article, a young woman who escaped El Salvador tells of her efforts here in America to educate people about how badly it goes for EVERYONE when either a socialist or communist regime takes over a country. A few highlights of the points she makes include the facts that :
Socialism ended her mother’s small business in their home country. Led people to want to remove free enterprise and individual rights to create “equality.” Politics made business owners move to other countries and stopped job creation where these businesses started (especially pertinent considering the flood of stories about business closing and laying off people in scores in the three days since the election)
They tried to warn us, multiple times, about where we’re heading. Late in the election cycle, Hungarian-born Thomas Petterfy released a powerful ad warning of the ills that befall ALL people when socialism or communism is implemented in a country. This Businessweek post outlines Petterfy’s story, and his thoughts on what is happening in America as we speak.
Now the fact that these two immigrants, who have directly experienced the hardships and misery of socialism and/or communism had little impact on a national scale, tells us much.
But perhaps what it tells us the most is this : That people cannot value the loss of something they never knew they had. And it appears now, more than ever, that Americans are not aware of and do not value their personal liberty, their freedom, their sovereignty, anymore.
To wrap this all up, one famous quote of one of our Founding Fathers has been running through my mind in the days since America decided on socialism and big government for the next four years. It’s the anecdote about Benjamin Franklin being asked by a woman what exactly was it the Founders had created during those fateful days leading up to the creation of this country. His reply was simple, and dramatic.
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
And sadly enough, it appears we finally lost it.