The Bipartisan Road to Hell on Earth

"[T]he lesson should be constantly reinforced that though the people support the Government, Government should not support the people..."

~Grover Cleveland

I have only supported two candidates for president, both with equal chances of becoming president, Ron Paul and the ghost of Grover Cleveland. While above quote may be taken merely as an outmoded statement of political philosophy from another era, actually it is a simple statement of fact. Government has nothing and cannot make anything without first exacting the resources of the people through taxation, either outright or through monetary inflation. If we concede any legitimate functions of government, defense services essentially, then we concede that government will need revenue for the "careful and economical maintenance of the Government which protects..." Any government expenditures beyond what is necessary for its legitimate constitutional functions can only be financed by "indefensible extortion".

When one of the most delightfully apolitical persons I have ever had the pleasure of knowing proclaimed membership in Obama's "bandwagon of hope", it confirmed by belief that we are entering a new and foreboding era. Do not be mistaken, hope for the future is a necessary part of life. The problem with Obama's brand of hope is that is yet another iteration of hope in the government as a messiah that has brought so much death and destruction in the last century or so.

When Joseph Stalin died in 1953, it took until 1956 for Nikita Krushchev to make his de-Stalinization speech in which he coined the term, "cult of personality". For Krushchev couldn't simply blame the Soviet Union's problems on Stalin; the official USSR philosophy, dialectal materialism, decreed that the clash of impersonal "forces", the dialectic between capital and labor, determine history. In order to blame Stalin for their problems, Krushchev invented the concept of the personality cult which can derail temporarily the inexorable train of the dialectic.

The hard rock band of the 1980s, Living Color, in their song "Cult of Personality"expanded the idea of the cult of personality to include not only brutal dictators like Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao but also FDR, John F. Kennedy and even Ghandi. Barack Obama is the latest personality cult. He is the emptiest suit, no mean feat in a polity which twice put George W. Bush into office, to ever be elected president. Obama edited the Harvard Law Review yet published only one anonymous article in it. He was a college lecturer for a decade without bothering to publish one academic article (in his defense it should noted that lecturers are often not on a "tenure track" which would require publishing) . He was a civil rights attorney but is the counsel of record on exactly zero cases. It seems that his glowing personality is all that he has needed to be "in demand".

We have lived through huge expansions of government power based the idea of government as our savior: We have had Woodrow Wilson, the academic, and his "progressive reforms", then Franklin D. Roosevelt, the patrician, and his "New Deal", Lyndon B. Johnson, the political arm-twister, and his "Great Society". Most recently we have been treated to George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" and his nonsensical "war on terror". To believe any of these misadventures could have succeeded in their stated goals required a suspension of one's ability to use common sense. One sign that common sense has flown out the window is when bipartisan political strife has been put on hold.

Rahm Emanuel recently touted the bipartisan nature of Obama's first legislative victory, albeit before even officially taking office:

"Even before president was elect--sworn into office, he got a major piece of legislation passed. He--and it was not popular. I mean, you would not call the play that we did out of the huddle, the first play, throw an 80-yard pass. Usually you do things that you build up your political support. He did it in two significant ways: made a decision, the legislation was passed with bipartisan support; and most importantly, not done with the type of rancor and political posturing that has been done over the years."

The word "bipartisan" is a cover word often used when politicians realize that the people have lost what little faith they ever had in them and they must deliver another short-sighted band-aid solution to some crisis that they created themselves. So now, "economists from across the political spectrum" favor Obama's massive, necessarily pork-laden, and economically and fiscally destructive $800 billion stimulus package.

We have been for a long time living out the truth of Grover Cleveland's wise words: "Once the coffers of the federal government are opened to the public, there will be no shutting them". Obama's stimulus package is only the latest and most grotesquely absurd exposition of this truth. So what of hope? Obama supporters can hope all they want. The simple fact of the matter is that Obama has not a clue how we got into the mess we are in and has no idea how to get us out of it. His attempted cures will be worse than the disease.

So keep drinking the Kool-Aid and believing that Barack Obama can make one and one equal three; we who still know better must continue to drink our coffee black and keep on in the spirit: Dum spiro, spero, while I breath, I hope.