Posted on 09/19/2012 6:34:03 AM PDT by raptor22
The Republican challenger speaks an uncomfortable truth — that it's hard enough to beat an incumbent president without almost half the electorate feeling dependent on him for some kind of government benefit.
The conveniently timed release of a video taped in May and leaked by Mother Jones in September has the usual suspects in the mainstream media chattering that Mitt Romney's candidacy for president is now doomed.
Even if it is true, you just can't say that 47% of Americans are dependent on government and that they're hard to reach politically because of that.
In one clip, Romney describes how his campaign would not try to appeal to "47% of the people" who will vote for President Obama "no matter what."
They are, he says, "dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them."
No doubt there are people who are dependent on government due to circumstances beyond their control. But it's been a main thrust of this administration to make as many people dependent on government as possible — witness ObamaCare — and its motives haven't always been pure.
This is the administration from which comes a steady drumbeat of class warfare, that rails against the evil "1%" while seeking to redistribute their wealth, that supports the mob action of Occupy Wall Street, attacks those preaching personal responsibility as asking people to "fend for themselves" and tells the people who roll up their sleeves rather than hold out their hands, well, "you didn't build that."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
A great closing paragraph.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money,” Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote about America. Mitt Romney is merely warning us that day may soon be at hand.
Nothing is so unwholesome and inhumane and will so completely blast the human spirit, stunt individuality and inhibit development as the forced, unnatural inertia of adults retained in a state of dependency
Romney’s made the inexcusable political mistake of telling the plain truth. Except for Geithner and Rangel, the 47% that don’t pay taxes are, fortunately, less likely to vote than the 53% that do pay taxes. I fear for the republic when truth is seen as slander.
If you don’t pay taxes, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
There’s another issue though in all this and it will work to Mitt’s advantage. The 47% group are not self identified. A large percentage know there are leaches, but it’s not themselves - It’s their lazy brother in law. And their pi$$ed at him. It seems that everybody needs somebody to look down on.
Isn’t forcing one group of people to work, and pay taxes essentially the same as forcing them into a state of slavery? The working people are essentially “enslaved” to provide for the comforts, entertainment, food, shelter and medical care.
Meanwhile, those who are benefiting from the taxes have an insatiable appetite for more and more “free” benefits that encourage them to seek less responsibility for their own well-being, and demand more goods and services for their entertainment.
People are incredibly hypocritical.
The 47 % has within it about 27 % who love Romney.
This whole thing will shake out in Romney's favor...'The candidate with the guts to tell it like it is... etc., etc.,'
Thanks to Mother Jones and all those other doobie-smoking Journ-o-lists who wrote this copy and debuted it for Mitt free of charge.
Way to go stoners!
Or as they used to say in the 1950s:
"Smooth move, Ex-Lax!"
And Mitt Romney defends virtually the entire apparatus that creates, fosters, and perpetuates that dependency.
I feel like the kid who points out that the wannabe emperor has no clothes. It’s so obvious.
A substancial number of the 47% are the elderly, and these people participate in the voting process in numbers far greater than their percentage in the population. A great deal of these Sr. Citizens see America going the wrong way, and will vote for Romney; however there are also life-long Democrats, who will tow the party line.
For some, their intellectual capacity does not allow them to view their political leanings with any more seriousness than they give to a Sports Team. If you are a sports fanatic, it doesn't matter what season your team has had, what crimes various players have committed, how many children the coach has molested ... they are "your team" and you stick with them through thick and thin. Unfortunately, this mentality is predominate throughout the DNC - the DNC is "their team" and no matter what happens, no matter if Obama was nuking US cities at random - they will support the DNC with their dying breath.
-- James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
Yes. Case in point, my wife and I are in our late sixties and both of us get a SS check. I could be considered to be in that 47%. (although I do still have a tax bill)
However I’m certainly not stupid enough to vote for Zero to save my SS. Zero will gut SS. If we don’t cut out the fraud that’s exactly what will happen.
There are lots of “plain truths” which are politically incorrect to say.
Examples:
over 70% of black babies are born out of wedlock.
more black men are in prison than in college.
An ideal situation for raising children is being raised by their married biological parents.
illegal aliens broke numerous laws in the first place to be here in our country.
The earth has had numerous ice ages, and we have been experiencing “global warming” ever since the end of the last ice age. But all of these happened before the industrial revolution, so can’t be blamed on man. Which implies that natural cycles are part of today’s global warming, if it even really exists.
There are other things which you just aren’t allowed to say.
Americans should hold fast to the Founders' ideas of liberty instead of allowing its leaders to plunge it into European-style socialism.
From the Liberty Fund Library is "A Plea for Liberty: An Argument Against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation," edited by Thomas Mackay (1849 - 1912), Chapter 1, excerpted final paragraphs from Edward Stanley Robertson's essay:
"I have suggested that the scheme of Socialism is wholly incomplete unless it includes a power of restraining the increase of population, which power is so unwelcome to Englishmen that the very mention of it seems to require an apology. I have showed that in France, where restraints on multiplication have been adopted into the popular code of morals, there is discontent on the one hand at the slow rate of increase, while on the other, there is still a 'proletariat,' and Socialism is still a power in politics.
I.44
"I have put the question, how Socialism would treat the residuum of the working class and of all classes—the class, not specially vicious, nor even necessarily idle, but below the average in power of will and in steadiness of purpose. I have intimated that such persons, if they belong to the upper or middle classes, are kept straight by the fear of falling out of class, and in the working class by positive fear of want. But since Socialism purposes to eliminate the fear of want, and since under Socialism the hierarchy of classes will either not exist at all or be wholly transformed, there remains for such persons no motive at all except physical coercion. Are we to imprison or flog all the 'ne'er-do-wells'?
I.45
"I began this paper by pointing out that there are inequalities and anomalies in the material world, some of which, like the obliquity of the ecliptic and the consequent inequality of the day's length, cannot be redressed at all. Others, like the caprices of sunshine and rainfall in different climates, can be mitigated, but must on the whole be endured. I am very far from asserting that the inequalities and anomalies of human society are strictly parallel with those of material nature. I fully admit that we are under an obligation to control nature so far as we can. But I think I have shown that the Socialist scheme cannot be relied upon to control nature, because it refuses to obey her. Socialism attempts to vanquish nature by a front attack. Individualism, on the contrary, is the recognition, in social politics, that nature has a beneficent as well as a malignant side. The struggle for life provides for the various wants of the human race, in somewhat the same way as the climatic struggle of the elements provides for vegetable and animal life—imperfectly, that is, and in a manner strongly marked by inequalities and anomalies. By taking advantage of prevalent tendencies, it is possible to mitigate these anomalies and inequalities, but all experience shows that it is impossible to do away with them. All history, moreover, is the record of the triumph of Individualism over something which was virtually Socialism or Collectivism, though not called by that name. In early days, and even at this day under archaic civilisations, the note of social life is the absence of freedom. But under every progressive civilisation, freedom has made decisive strides—broadened down, as the poet says, from precedent to precedent. And it has been rightly and naturally so.
I.46
"Freedom is the most valuable of all human possessions, next after life itself. It is more valuable, in a manner, than even health. No human agency can secure health; but good laws, justly administered, can and do secure freedom. Freedom, indeed, is almost the only thing that law can secure. Law cannot secure equality, nor can it secure prosperity. In the direction of equality, all that law can do is to secure fair play, which is equality of rights but is not equality of conditions. In the direction of prosperity, all that law can do is to keep the road open. That is the Quintessence of Individualism, and it may fairly challenge comparison with that Quintessence of Socialism we have been discussing. Socialism, disguise it how we may, is the negation of Freedom. That it is so, and that it is also a scheme not capable of producing even material comfort in exchange for the abnegations of Freedom, I think the foregoing considerations amply prove." EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON
There is also a disturbingly large cohort of the voters who worry overly about voting for the winner. It’s almost like betting on the Super Bowl; people want to pick the winner rather than vote for the person who best represents what the voter sees as ideal.
Outstanding post.
New tagline ...
Americans need to review their Constitution's roots and ideas in order to understand that allowing self-appointed or elected leaders to justify themselves as qualified to "take" what Americans citizens work to earn.
May I share the following reprinted with permission essay?
"Man ... must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator.. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature.... This law of nature...is of course superior to any other.... No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force...from this original." - Sir William Blackstone (Eminent English Jurist)
The Founders DID NOT establish the Constitution for the purpose of granting rights. Rather, they established this government of laws (not a government of men) in order to secure each person's Creator endowed rights to life, liberty, and property.
Only in America, did a nation's founders recognize that rights, though endowed by the Creator as unalienable prerogatives, would not be sustained in society unless they were protected under a code of law which was itself in harmony with a higher law. They called it "natural law," or "Nature's law." Such law is the ultimate source and established limit for all of man's laws and is intended to protect each of these natural rights for all of mankind. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 established the premise that in America a people might assume the station "to which the laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them.."
Herein lay the security for men's individual rights - an immutable code of law, sanctioned by the Creator of man's rights, and designed to promote, preserve, and protect him and his fellows in the enjoyment of their rights. They believed that such natural law, revealed to man through his reason, was capable of being understood by both the ploughman and the professor. Sir William Blackstone, whose writings trained American's lawyers for its first century, capsulized such reasoning:
"For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the...direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws."
What are those natural laws? Blackstone continued:
"Such among others are these principles: that we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render to every one his due.."
The Founders saw these as moral duties between individuals. Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"Man has been subjected by his Creator to the moral law, of which his feelings, or conscience as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him .... The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature, accompany them into a state of society . their Maker not having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation."
Americas leaders of 1787 had studied Cicero, Polybius, Coke, Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone, among others, as well as the history of the rise and fall of governments, and they recognized these underlying principles of law as those of the Decalogue, the Golden Rule, and the deepest thought of the ages.
An example of the harmony of natural law and natural rights is Blackstone's "that we should live honestly" - otherwise known as "thou shalt not steal" - whose corresponding natural right is that of individual freedom to acquire and own, through honest initiative, private property. In the Founders' view, this law and this right were inalterable and of a higher order than any written law of man. Thus, the Constitution confirmed the law and secured the right and bound both individuals and their representatives in government to a moral code which did not permit either to take the earnings of another without his consent. Under this code, individuals could not band together and do, through government's coercive power, that which was not lawful between individuals.
America's Constitution is the culmination of the best reasoning of men of all time and is based on the most profound and beneficial values mankind has been able to fathom. It is, as William E. Gladstone observed, "The Most Wonderful Work Ever Struck Off At A Given Time By he Brain And Purpose Of Man."
We should dedicate ourselves to rediscovering and preserving an understanding of our Constitution's basis in natural law for the protection of natural rights - principles which have provided American citizens with more protection for individual rights, while guaranteeing more freedom, than any people on earth.
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom." -John Locke
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
Exactly.
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