Government Lite or Government Big Gulp

Townhall.com ^ | November 9, 2012 | John Ransom

[Kaslin]

"I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise." In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth. - Fyodor Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov

Reject them.

Reject the people like Sean Hannity who would have you believe that somehow America’s changed to socialism.

“The reality is that America is changing…the allure and the appeal of socialism and redistribution of wealth has taken hold with about half the electorate,” he said according to a blog post on CNS by Gregory Gwyn-Williams.

He continues: “I think we have to face a reality that maybe America is no longer the center-right country that it once was…America has been conditioned now to be an entitlement society.”

The illusion that we haven’t been marching down this road, redistributing wealth, abusing so-called “entitlements,” as well as taxpayers, for at least as long as I have been alive has been propagated for too long by Republicans such as Hannity.

The truth is that if socialism is redistribution of wealth, then America’s been socialist for quite a while.

When the federal government guarantees student loans, mortgages, retirement and healthcare- yes, healthcare has been guaranteed in this country for as long as we’ve required emergency rooms to treat anyone who walks in- that’s socialism.

Cradle-to-grave socialism; covert socialism perhaps; but socialism.    

I like Sean Hannity very much. But he needs to know why he’s wrong if we expect to get a different result.

Look, we have an historic opportunity to roll back government, to kill the New Deal, to reclaim the American Dream still, but not if we treat the moment as an hysterical opportunity.     

Every two years I am told that “this election is the most important in history.”

And then I am told that because it’s so important that I should lower my standards just this much in order to support a guy- or gal- who can win, but won’t represent any substantial policy difference from his opponent.

For every Obamacare that’s out there, there is an equal and odious Romneycare. For every Dodd-Frank, there’s a Sarbanes Oxley. For every McCain-Feingold bill… well, there’s a John McCain and Russ Feingold.   

Obama? He is just a continuation- albeit also an acceleration- of policies that have been enacted under Republican and Democrat leaders alike for the past 70 years. 

There’s a twin-headed elite in this country represented by guys like John McCain and Russ Feingold who would have you believe that the only thing preventing us from building heaven on earth is a good CBO score. By their policies they make the comparison between Obama and Romney to the average voter, one of competence not of core.  

The story of this election is how America turned its middle finger on both parties, except perhaps around the margins.

“You hate each other so much? Then fine, you’re married to each other for the next four years.”

Both parties tried to play a $2 billion practical joke on the nation with their ads, and web sites and never-ending emails.

But the voters have had the final laugh on this, giving us a continuation of the uncivil union we have damned ourselves to- more or less- for the last 12 years.

And why?

Because the party of small government was actually the party of a-little-smaller-than-the-Democrats government; and the party of fiscal responsibility, as Democrats called themselves in 2008, couldn’t even pass a budget.

Remember all the money we’d save by withdrawing troops from Iraq? Under Obama we are spending as much money in Iraq every day as we were during combat operations under Bush. Plus we ramped up the war in Afghanistan, set ablaze Libya, and, coming soon…Syria. And don’t fool yourself: Libya and Syria are example of the worst products that bipartisan policy produces in D.C.    

In short, there is very little to like about Tweedledee or Tweedledumb (the “b” is both intentional and interchangeable).

This sick system, and the people who run it, are broken.

And to fix it, we need to break it up.

We need an alternative to Government Lite or Goverment Big Gulp.I look toward Rand Paul.      

[zeugma]

BFL

[TalBlack]

“Obama? He is just a continuation- albeit also an acceleration...”

Don’t forget the ‘power angle’, the dismissal of the Constitution for the supremacy of the state. It ain’t JUST socialisim for socalisim’s sake.

[Red Badger]

We can’t buy a big soda, but we can have all the Big Government we can stand..................

[Louis Foxwell]

The founders required peoperty ownership as a condition of citizenship. If government dependents were ineligible to vote with exceptions for military retirees the electorate would be immensely different. In fact, if government were not in the compassion business we would not look the same. Until that can occur we will not be able to be a constitutional government.
The federal government has no business providing welfare, food stamps, educational loans, education, health care or a myriad of other entitlement programs. They are each and every one strictly unconstitutional in that they conflict with the limited powers of federal government. States may provide such services. The federal government may not legally do so.