(Above: President Barack Obama delivering his speech at the 2013 Ohio State University Spring Commencement)
One of my greatest recollections of my college years was the amazing abundance of left-wing politicos present on campus. These were not merely your run-of-the-mill Democrats, either. I can recall this one time during the fall semester of 2011 -- the next to last semester of my undergraduate career -- I was at the university center preparing to attend a speaking engagement to be delivered by Black Panthers co-founder Bobby Seale. Seale is a militant left-wing extremist whose Black Panther party carried around copies of The Little Red Book, or the handbook of philosophical teachings behind the People's Republic of China's leader from 1949 until his death in 1976, Mao Zedong. The story I am telling you, however, involves other students, not Seale, the Black Panthers, or The Little Red Book. While waiting on the presentation to begin, I was in the hallway in front of the auditorium when several very Bohemian individuals were standing near me. Being lonely and deciding to be nice and talk to them, I approached them and began to converse. The first girl with whom I spoke was a freshman from what I recall, and she was an art major. She was very idealistic, and did not really speak much about politics, which meant that I did not question her political beliefs despite my suspicion that she was a leftist. We spoke for a while, then several more of her friends walked over to where we were standing and joined in on the conversation. One girl was a also freshman and dressed like a common whore, and the guy with her was dressed in what one would think of a communist revolutionary would don during the Chinese and Cuban communist revolutions: in green fatigues and a military cap, as well as having the stereotypical red, stringy beard. By this time, I began to get uncomfortable because although what I was associating them with was a perpetuation of a stereotype, there is one thing I have learned about such things: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are, it is a duck. And then, my worst fears were confirmed: the guy with the green fatigues and beard handed me a flier and invited me to a meeting of "The Progressive Party." At this, I was both disgusted and at the same time wondering how I would, in a tasteful manner, decline his invitation in a pleasant, polite way. The moments of thought did not last long, for I handed back his flier and simply said, "I'm sorry, but I am not a Progressive. I am a conservative with Libertarian leanings." Surprising, the fellow was nice about the whole thing, apologized to me, and we went on our separate ways. I would see those people around campus a lot during the course of the rest of the year, but I never spoke with them again. Every time I saw one of their fliers stapled to a bulletin board in the arts and sciences building or on a street corner, I associated it with those guys. Those people were kind and gentle, but I could not see myself associating with them because our political beliefs were so diametrically opposed to the others.
I can remember many other instances in college where I encountered leftists, both as students and, sadly, as professors attempting to indoctrinate their students into believing in their adopted ideology. Probably the most vivid memories I have of professors doing this occurred during my first two years of school. During the spring semester of my first year, I took a Western Civilization class with a professor who was a liberal. She would always go out of her way to talk about her political views to the class, often distributing copies of articles from the left-leaning magazine called The Nation. This one time, though, the professor began to criticize how George W. Bush "stole" the election and would ruin the economy that she believed Bill Clinton had made right. After so many minutes of this, I grew exhausted of this one-sided dialectic diatribe and made a comment that Clinton's economic prowess came under the influence of a Republican-controlled Congress, and that now the growth of the economy had stalled and unemployment was increasing, President Bush would have to cut taxes and lower interest rates in order to clean up the previous president's mess. Following this, I made the comment, "The liberals in the United States are too extreme." To this, the professor, flustered, replied back sharply, "I think the liberals in this country aren't liberal enough." The only thing I could say to that was, "WOW!" and left things alone, not wanting to risk damaging my grade. Much like the encounter with the Western Civilization professor, the other professor, who taught Political Science, used to make snide comments to the tune of, "George Bush stole the election!" He was a great professor, but sadly misguided.
The above two paragraphs serve as a great segue into the crux of what I want to talk about: President Obama's commencement speech to the graduates at The Ohio State University and the qualities of deception with which they are imbued. It is a time-honored tradition at most major universities for there to be a guest speaker at commencement; sadly, I do not remember who spoke at my commencement ceremony, and the only thing I recall him to have said over and over was something related to "big orange." The Ohio State University is one of, if not THE largest single campus university in the country, and as such, it commands a lot of attention. How the president wound up speaking at Ohio State's ceremony is a complete mystery to me, but he did, and he did not mince words as far as what he had to say. You can read the complete account of his speech in this article in the The Blaze.
The president implored the graduates to do "great things" like rebuilding a still-feeble economy and fighting poverty and climate change -- typical liberal comments not uncommonly found on college campus. But it was the following which appear to be the president attempting to backtrack his previous actions through the passage of various laws and his executive orders and foreign policy which I seem to find most disturbing:
"Still, you'll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works, or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule is just a sham with which we can't be trusted.
We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems, nor do we want it to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government.
[...]The cynics may be the loudest voices—but they accomplish the least. It’s the silent disruptors—those who do the long, hard, committed work of change—that gradually push this country in the right direction, and make the most lasting difference. [Emphasis added]"
These are truly words of a politician lulling the future of this country into a false sense of security, for that is the way the Democratic party has always operated since the days of Franklin Roosevelt. The Democratic party, going back to the Woodrow Wilson administration, has a long, sordid history of subjecting the American people to its whims, starting with the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1912. However, the biggest increase in the role of government in the lives of people came under Franklin Roosevelt, when he increased taxes in order to pay for the copious government programs he implemented when he entered the Oval Office in 1933. In his inaugural speech, Roosevelt spoke of how he could fix America, how the government could do this, and how the government do that. It is during this speech that he spoke one of the most immortal lines in the history of the presidency: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." So going back to the FDR administration, we see examples of a Democrat much like Obama is today attempting to achieve a status not unlike Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union upon the Bolsheviks' storming the Winter Palace in 1917 by promising the government would act on this, would do that, and then to quell any fears of those who might feel his plans were too grandiose and may require that the people may have to sacrifice some of their liberties in order for his plans to be implemented, he said that line. It was shortly thereafter that each American was issued a Social Security number, a novel concept and something that so many of his supporters were duped into believing would be a positive thing since it was all part of the Social Security Act that would give all Americans upon retirement a monthly income. Little did the duped American population know that it was now part of a vast database of numbers in which the government could keep tabs on their work, tax, medical, school, and even military records. Socialism had made its way into American society, and the average citizen was too enthralled by Roosevelt's thoughts of Utopian grandeur that the federal government, led by the "New Deal" Democrats, would be the saviors of America, not the hard work of the American people to realize that he or she had just sold his or her soul to the government.
Many "New Deal" Democrats, my grandmother included, credit Roosevelt as being the solely responsible party for bringing America out of the Depression. How wrong they are! Even in 1941, America was still experiencing near-record levels of unemployment, and no matter how many government works projects or social welfare programs were created by the FDR administration, nothing worked until the start of World War II, an event which may have been brought about by a series of treasonous activities by Roosevelt. Whatever the case, the war brought America out of the Depression, not Roosevelt's socialist policies, with domestic manufacturing prowess being the ultimate catalyst behind the economic growth as well as the U.S.'s being the first military to win a war on two global fronts. Still, Roosevelt, being a great politician, went to his grave taking credit for being the nation's savior, and as was mentioned earlier, many people were duped into believing this because socialism is an attractive political and economic system. The problem those people had, however, was that with the short existence of said system being the case, they had not the opportunity to realize that socialism does not bring about economic growth nor a real increase in jobs. No socialist country in Europe has ever experienced this, even today; the Soviet Union, the most extreme form of socialism in human history, went bankrupt because the economy could not support the needs of its population since profits were confiscated by the state and the initiative the people in its society needed to work -- namely earning wages that were indicative of the profession in which they endeavored -- was taken away all in the name of evenly redistributing income ; Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward" in China resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese citizens due to famine because of unrealistic demands of the communes and its workers to produce food and raw materials -- again, this was another nation bent on redistributing income evenly and quashing any motivation for the people to exist as anything other than robotic "cogs' in society's machine; and lastly, modern-day Europe, which, while not communist, does not experience the same type of capitalist growth as the United States because many industries in those nations are owned by the government.
I can name other examples of the Democratic party attempting to play the part of the coy, well-intending political apparatus. Lyndon Johnson spoke of the "Great Society" that he wanted to transform the United States into; he also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Medicare Act, as he was, without a doubt, the most liberal president American had had since the FDR administration. Jimmy Carter wanted to ram through Congress a bill that would create a socialized national health service like what exists in Europe and Canada. Bill Clinton managed to get the Brady Crime Bill passed that banned a class of assault rifles under the guise that this would make America safer; he and his wife, former New York Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, also championed the creation of a national health service. Lastly, there is President Obama, who passed the Affordable Health Care Act ("Obama Care") and is trying to get more firearms banned, a more extensive firearm background check system in place, and would like to create a national firearm registry -- all under the pretense that this will make America safer because guns and not people are what is committing the violent crimes such as the one in Newtown, CT.
No, Mr. President, you are wrong, and you are telling a big lie! For the past 80 years, the Democratic party has passed state and federal legislation under the pretense that they will take of you -- but they have all come at a price. The first thing a Democrat usually does when he runs in his first election is promise to take care of the people by either keeping taxes as they are for the middle-and-lower classes while raising them for the top wage earners in America so they can pay for these programs. They promise to take care of the poor, particularly the urban minority poor, by subsidizing them more or creating jobs within the federal government behind Affirmative Action laws, saying that the party wants to lower the income gap between rich and poor, including for black and Hispanic citizens. Little is mentioned about the armed forces, which is their weakest area. They will increase funding for education, labor, commerce, etc., so that they may perpetuate the myth that a government that, through Keynesian economic practices, subsidizes teachers more as well as funnels money into the workforce is a government that wants society to be harmonious and great -- hence the Johnson idea of the "Great Society." All of these things the president has done, and so much more, that has been detrimental to the economy, the self-esteem, and the initiative of the American people. And let us not forget how twice in the past five months he has either done or proposed to raise taxes on the middle-class.
No, Mr. President, you are wrong, and you are telling a big lie! The Constitution is under attack, with few of its directives being obeyed by the Obama administration. I can think of four amendments within the Bill of Rights the president is trying to wipe out right off. Let me name them for you:
- First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
- Second Amendment: A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
- Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
- Tenth Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or the people.
The Democrats have always sought to curtail these four amendments, for it is these four which prohibit them from creating a nation of martial law and a code not unlike that of British "common law." With the First Amendment, the left has attempted to violate each of the principles described in it -- the Democratic party has sworn that if religious institutions do not recognize same-sex marriage, it will seek to take away its tax-free exemption, and just last week, and high school track and field athlete in Columbus, TX, won a race, made a gesture suggesting he was thanking God for his success, and as a result, he was penalized for his act because the referees deemed it to be "excessive celebration." That right there is the effect the liberal lunatic fringe has had on American culture. Also within the First Amendment is the issue of free speech and the press, where the party has a greatly heavy influence within the media whereby probably 80% of all news outlets in America are run by people or organizations who align themselves with the Democrats, and thus the majority of opinions the American people read about or watch on cable TV news networks are reflections of a left-wing bias institution, and those news outlets that are conservative usually find themselves the object of the liberal media's ire and wrath. Mostly on this, though, is the issue of political correctness and the demand by the liberal media that people fall in line with the perceived majority of the population -- or, rather, the liberal mainstream media. Those persons who fail to speak in a politically correct fashion, or who, in exercising their First Amendment rights, decide to speak of something racially-charged that is consider disagreeable with the liberal establishment, find themselves the target of social ostracism and retribution, and often suffer severe social and professional consequences. Truly, the liberals are running this country, and have for 80 years.
The Second Amendment has been under attack since the early 20th Century. In 1924, fully automatic assault rifles were banned during the era of Prohibition. This was Washington's answer to the rise of violent crime, the emergence of widespread mafia activity, and yet another example of the federal government honestly believing that, just as it did with the ban on the selling, possession, and production of alcohol that it could solve society's problems. The more conservative politicians back then realized the following year that taking away the liberties of the people will merely result in a backlash creating a black market for the object in question, and thus with the advent of said laws, the crime rate increases. Thus, the Twenty-First Amendment was passed that ended Prohibition, but nothing was done to reintroduce such firearms into society as the Thompson sub-machine gun that were banned. In the 1990's, President Bill Clinton managed to ram through Congress the law above called the Brady Crime Bill which banned a class of semi-automatic rifles. And now there is President Obama, who said to the graduates at Ohio State's commencement it should ignore the voices speaking of big government and tyranny, further encroaching on the people's Second Amendment rights by trying to ban all assault rifles, instituting a full and far-reaching background check system, and establishing a national firearms registry. Sadly, there are people who want the president to do this because the prevalent wisdom within the liberal establishment is that it is guns that cause the problem, with little emphasis placed on the person(s) who commit(s) the crime(s). Many media outlets -- CNN, notorious for being a moderate-to-liberal news network -- are reporting that several Republican senators are facing a backlash from their constituencies for voting against the bills on gun control. To me, regardless of whether or not this is true, there are some things our government cannot sacrifice in the name of meeting public opinion, and those things are usually located in the Constitution. Liberals such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wish to dissolve the Constitution and create a "common law" system as was mentioned above whereby the government can act unchecked.
The Fourth Amendment is an area that over the past ten or eleven years has been trampled upon with growing regularity by both Democrats and Republicans, for it was President George W. Bush who created the Office of Homeland Security and had passed the Patriot Act in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. With that happening, America became a police state, with the federal government now having at its disposal a tool I consider tantamount to what the Nazis used, like the Secret Police and the Gestapo. President Bush unnecessarily created a new department within the Cabinet that costs the taxpayers more money to fund when those responsibilities could have been delegated to both the FBI and CIA. With President Obama, those powers his predecessor bestowed upon Homeland Security were expanded, as there have been reports of drones flying over Louisiana. Also, should Obama ever manage to pass legislation banning the selling, possession, and production of firearms to and by civilians except in the case of police and military personnel, there is little doubt within my mind Homeland Security will be the branch who will carry out the dubious task of attempting to collect the firearms of said civilians. If the Second Amendment is abolished, the Fourth Amendment under the guise of "probable cause" will be utilized to carry out the task of collecting the people's weapons. It is those two amendments, then, that could ultimately lead to civil war and the overthrow of the heads of government since there are over 80 million owners of firearms nationwide.
The last amendment I will talk about, the Tenth Amendment, has been violated ever since the republic was born. Conservatives and Libertarians look at Constitution and obey the laws literally as they are provided by it, though the Republicans (conservatives) tend to not pay heed to the part of the Constitution dictating that there be a separation of church and state very well. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to have such a loose interpretation of the document that they tend to make the rules as they go. In fact, majority of the amendments that have been passed since 1791 when the Bill of Rights were formulated have been initiated by such a type of interpretation. The Sixteenth and Eighteenth Amendments, for example, should have never happened, and yet they did. The Sixteenth Amendment, as I have mentioned in other blog entries, gives the federal government the authority to impose a graduated income tax on the population, and was influenced by Populists and Progressives in American society during the latter 19th on into the early 20th Centuries. The president who pushed for this law, and thus the ultimate creation of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), was Woodrow Wilson, who was arguably the first liberal Democrat. He was also in power at the time the Eighteenth Amendment was passed, which instituted Prohibition as the law of the land. As with the previous three amendments I mentioned that have been coming under attack by the Democrats for years, this law is a victim of the left through its reach into the mass media, brainwashing the population into believing that if it will be willing to give up its liberties, the government as run by them will take care of them. Most laws that are passed by the federal government, not to mention most of the constitutional amendments post-Bill of Rights, are unconstitutional by dent of the fact they violate the spirit and directives of the Tenth Amendment. However, the power of public opinion can be overwhelming, and it often gets in the way of the type of freedom our Founding Fathers guaranteed Americans in 1787, 1791, and in future generations through the original document and the original ten amendments.
I have always said during the course of my years paying attention to the ebb-and-tide of politics that the best politicians in American history are the modern Democratic party members dating back to Franklin Roosevelt. The Democrats hold the ultimate trump card over the Republicans -- they always say they will give the American people things if only they vote for them. The Republicans have only known one period of prominence since FDR took the oath of office in 1933 -- from 1980 - 1993, when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were president. While Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush occupied the White House for more than one term, the vast majority of time a political party has held the position as Commander-in-Chief has been by a Democrat. Roosevelt was president for more than 12 years, and had he not died in 1945, he could have served as president however long he chose. Harry Truman was highly unpopular as president, but he served eight years in the White House and won a shocking presidential election over Republican challenger Thomas Dewey. John F. Kennedy was president for over two years, his term, of course, being cut short by his assassination on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, TX. Lyndon Johnson succeeded JFK and served as president from 1963-1969, when his level of unpopularity due to his foreign policy on Vietnam led to a vote of no confidence by members of his own party and he thus did not run for president in 1968. Jimmy Carter served as president from 1977 through 1981, when he was ousted in a landslide victory by Ronald Reagan because of an economy experiencing stagflation and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. Bill Clinton served two terms as president, but the administration was marred by several scandals, most notably the Monica Lewinsky affair in the late 1990's that led to him being the first president to be impeached since Andrew Johnson some 130 years earlier; at the end of his administration, the economy began to go into decline again. And lastly, there is Barack Obama, who won reelection last November despite a poor record on the economy, Obama Care, and the emergence of the Benghazi scandal.
It should be noted that while the Democrats have always relied on the American people to relinquish their rights in order to "uphold" their end of the bargain of "taking care of them," their policies rarely bear fruit either domestically or in foreign policy. President Obama's economic stimulus package he rammed through Congress has failed to create jobs in the fashion that is so desperately needed. When he entered office in 2009, unemployment was near 9%, or approximately 8.9%, the highest rate of unemployment since early in the Reagan administration. The current unemployment rate sits at 7.5%, with the Democrats gloating because it is the lowest reported total since 2008. However, it should be noted that there are now fewer people attempting to look for jobs because it has become increasing more difficult than it was when he entered office to procure a job, and what jobs are being found are paying less than they did five years ago; there are also growing numbers of people becoming unemployed now than there were before, making the job growth reports tainted with deceiving statistics. With the planned implementation of Obama Care less than a year away, I expect the unemployment rate will only grow higher because of the inability of small business owners to pay for the benefits the law calls for, and thus it will create greater poverty since people will be paying out a substantial portion of their paycheck every month just to cover the premium (the cheapest plan costs about $1,000 a month). Democratic lawmakers in the Senate -- namely Sen. Harry Reid and Sen. Max Baucus -- have lamented the fact Obama Care will be "a train wreck" to implement. Shortly after this admission, Baucus announced he will not seek reelection in 2014, while Sen. Reid brazenly said that he could fix the problem of implementing the problem by having the American people be taxed more in order to pay for everything. It is this kind of thinking that has gotten this country into the hole to begin with. Most Americans want rid of Obama Care, but the Democrats in Washington are determined to implement it as the law of the land just as they have so many other socialist laws. And Obama has nothing to worry about because his turn is up in 2017.
Over the course of President Obama's presidency, the shift of political action in Washington has been toward socialism. What the liberals do not understand is there is no such thing as public money. Someone has to pay for all of the socialist programs implemented into law, and that someone is the American taxpayer. Promises by President Obama to uphold the part of the Bush tax cuts for the middle-and-lower classes have been broken, first by the Fiscal Cliff Agreement back in February, then by his budget proposal that called for increased taxes on the middle-class. As has already been mentioned, Obama Care is highly unpopular among the people of this country, for it is too expensive to implement and will ultimately cost the economy more jobs. And now there is the Benghazi scandal looming overhead that will be a subject of another article. The corruption of this administration is appalling, yet so many Americans are willing to relinquish their liberties in order for the president's policies to "work." No, Mr. President, you are wrong, and you are telling a lie when you say that we should not listen to the voices warning us of big government and tyranny! You are as close of a leader as we have ever had to being a tyrant. This article just sheds a light on some of what you have done.
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