Jon Stewart recently interviewed Lou Dobbs and asked him a very good question that deserves a much better answer than what Dobbs was capable of giving.
Mr. Stewart posed this thought:
“People have apparently lost their minds. There seems to be a panic that we have lost the fabric of our society and I’m having trouble getting a handle on what has happened that is so drastic that people would think it’s tyranny or fascism or Hitler-esque or Stalin-esque or any of those things that…uh uh.”
Dobbs’ reply was weak and does not properly capture the true answer to Stewart’s excellent question.
For starters, it could be the exorbitant amount of money that has recently been spent by the government that will almost surely turn us into the Weimar Republic part 2. Watch this video and understand one thing that is “drastic” that would cause “panic”:
This video doesn’t even include the new unconstitutional health care plan and he still gets to 174 mph. As was pointed out in the video, that is adequate reason to freak out. Where the national debt sits now we could take all the money that every Fortune 500 company made in profit last year and not be able to pay off the current debt in 140 years of doing that. With the pedal to the metal on spending we have a real problem.
Next up is the personal beliefs and associations of the new leader. Contrary to what people said during the campaign your associations do matter. It is the old “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future” bit. When the man sits in a church with a leader spewing hateful anti-American and anti-Semitic type stuff for 20 years, he is either an idiot, or deaf or he agrees with it. To think that the crazy Jeremiah Wright waited for when Obama was gone to go off is just stupid. I can see it now: “Is Barack here? No. OK good, cause let me tell you about how America Sucks and is crawling with those damn Jews.” It isn’t just Wright either the Ayers thing is still a viable issue and I do not buy the whole “He is just some guy around the neighborhood” defense. Especially when you find out that Valerie Jarrett’s and Bill Ayers’ parents were good friends. Obama claims Jarrett is like family and Valerie and Ayers have connections since the time they were childhood playpals. Then you have all the nutjobs that have been selected for positions. There is the large group of upstanding, honest, hard-working Americans who evaded their taxes in key positions. Then you have the population control people, the media controllers, the communist and Maoist types. These things are all concerning to someone who doesn’t want to live under such a government. Obama himself said of his time in school, “I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students, the foreign students, the Chicanos, the Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets” He has also said he wants to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” Americans don’t want to change the fundamentals of the country, they want the politics and the politicians to fundamentally transform, but not into Marxists. I think those are reasons enough for people to panic.
Stewart seems to be viewing things with partisan eyes and seems to believe that the people who are stirred up are just out to get Obama. He has a short memory for how low Bush’s approval was and all the hullabaloo from back then. The truth of it is that the changes to America and the ignoring of the Constitution started a long time ago and have happened so gradually that people didn’t notice much. Things have happened recently that have made many Americans go back and look into what exactly is off. Many people may have read the Constitution for the first time in their lives and now understand that they have been getting ripped off. They may understand more now that States and individuals should have a much bigger role than the federal government. Stewart misunderstands the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. (Watch segment 3 of his Dobbs interview) He thinks that “All men are created equal” = You must help everyone through government control. It is completely devoid of any logic to believe such a thing. The only role of government is to protect fundamental rights. A fundamental right is something that can be claimed without forcing or requiring anyone else to do something. (More on that another day)
When speaking of getting back to fundamental rights and smaller government Stewart states:
“That is, in some ways, idealistic flattery. You know when you watch kind of the stump speech of like a Sarah Palin who will say, you know, ‘It’s time we got government out of our lives and lowered taxes and increased freedom’ We’ve been sold that. That was the 8 years of the Bush administration. ‘I’m gonna lower your taxes I’m gonna bring freedom’ and that was disastrous for us.”
It is amazing to me that anyone thinks that George W. Bush brought us smaller government which failed us. The lowering of taxes had nothing to do with the housing collapse. Smaller government, lower taxes, less intrusion and more freedom are not just idealistic flattery they’re real things that we must get back to. The central government is much too powerful and has taken powers that were never theirs to take. In doing so they have taken power from states and individuals. People today just don’t notice how much trouble the government causes. All of societies problems can be traced back to two things; morals and government. Who prevents real competition in health insurance and then invents a new way to bring health insurance competition? Who makes too many hoops and waiting to become a citizen or limits the number of guest workers and makes it fairly difficult to be a guest worker and stirs people up to fight about illegal immigrants? Who gives married people special treatment over unmarried people, thus not treating them equally and then watches the fight over a word which some see as giving them new rights when redefined? ‘Government’ is the answer to all these questions which means government is not the answer to any of our problems, but the limiting of it is the solution that is needed and many people are finally seeing why the founders of our nation concluded that same thing.
Keep up the good stuff, Dave. When will most people stop being morons?
When they stop being people and start realizing that all of us are morons, we just chose different areas to be moronic about.
Oops. I should have said, “When they stop being ‘average’ people.” Or maybe when “average” starts meaning well-educated, but not dogmatic in knowledge.