America’s Success Requires Obama’s Failure

“So this is how liberty dies – to thunderous applause.” – Padme Amidala, Star Wars III

Weeks after cheering throngs wept in jubilation over the election of Barack Obama, dissenters are now being urged to support the president-elect and come together as one.

This is a splendid idea if you want higher taxes and more regulations to further damage our economy, a weakened military, rationed healthcare (some call it “universal”), and a myriad of other disastrous policies that trample our freedoms.

Pray for Obama’s success if you want him to “fundamentally change America” into a place where you exist to fund the government’s every whim. Instead, legitimate government exists to protect our rights to life, liberty, and property so that we can pursue happiness.

That’s what our Declaration of Independence articulates, and what our Constitution guarantees. But the First Lady in waiting said that we need to change our tradition and our history. With what would she propose to replace our two sacred documents?

But as long as the majority wants to transform America, perhaps we should also change our name while we’re at it. The United Sates of America is so yesterday, and the name itself carries terrible baggage. I suggest we make a subtle name change. How about O-merica instead?

Imagine classrooms across the country singing, “O-merica, O-merica, Obama shed his grace on thee …”

And speaking of brotherhood, it’s interesting that even with the collective loss of our minds, from sea to shining sea, voters rejected same-sex marriage. Evidently, Americans didn’t want the fruited plains to be too fruity.

But I digress. Back to the name change.

You: “O-merica is better off under Obama.”
Friend: “Did you say, ‘O-merica’?”
You: (Plausible deniability): “Huh?”

Here’s the problem: Too many Americans don’t understand that we did not vote for a benevolent dictator, we voted for a president. And presidents don’t have the constitutional authority to issue commands from on high. They don’t “run the country”; they preside as the head of government and head of state with powers limited by the Constitution.

Or, at least it’s supposed to work that way. But ever since FDR, presidents have put government ahead of people. The current president Bush has been a colossal offender. Under this administration, the federal government has grown 40 percent. Congress has a $3.1 trillion annual budget.

To put that in perspective, you’d have to stack $1,000 bills 68.9 miles high to reach $1 trillion. And we’re told they don’t have enough of our money. The future vice president says we’re not patriotic if we don’t yearn to be taxed even more. Doesn’t Washington have enough? Wouldn’t it be patriotic for Congress to thank us and curtail its runaway spending?

Obama says he wants to spread the wealth around so everybody has a chance to succeed. But by what ethical code is it OK to plunder people of their earnings and wealth in order to give it to others? After government overhead costs and special interest payoffs, it’s more like spreading the crumbs. Dollars are taken out of the economy, confiscated and chopped up. It’s a terrible misdirection of resources – it will cause less employment and raise costs for everyone.

This is evident to anyone who understands that benefits come with costs. Government doesn’t create wealth, it takes it away. A government job is paid for with chopped up dollars that could have created more jobs in the real economy. Obama will injure the goose that lays the golden egg – American enterprise.

That’s why I hope Obama fails. But with the unchecked power of a liberal Democratic Congress and future leftist Supreme Court justices, he will probably succeed. Thunderous applause will become a smattering of claps. More jobs will be outsourced to countries that respect private property.

I don’t know how we got here. But I’ll resist a government that insists free people exist for its purposes. I’ll remind people that legitimate government exists to protect our rights so that we can pursue happiness the way we see fit.

Barry Goldwater echoed our Founding Fathers when he said, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.” In the same spirit, supporting a president who seeks to subvert the Constitution in pursuit of socialism is no virtue.