In January of 2014, the President of the United States of America uttered the phrase "I've got a pen and a phone", referring to his ability to sign Executive Orders and to call non-governmental organizations in order to influence their messages and decisions.
Obama's approval rating was horribly low at the time (RCP [1]), his signature health insurance law was an unmitigated disaster on every level (Heritage [2], TownHall [3]), his foreign policy was impotent at best and a "total shambles" at worst (FPRI [4], WaPo [5]), and every single economic indicator was plummeting (Forbes [6]). Even the moderates in Congress were balking at supporting his insane and corrupt initiatives. (Not because they cared about the country, but because they didn't want to lose their comfy seat in the next election... but the end result is the same). And yet, instead of stopping to assess the damage and attempt to figure out actual solutions, he boldly forged ahead.
Recently, this attitude was echoed by sentiments uttered by Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton:
"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society.""Who needs individual rights?" is the underlying message. In their race for power and influence, our leaders and candidates are so willing to trample on the individual liberties, that they don't even realize the horrifying implications of what they say - or how clear those implications are to anyone who's studied history and knows where this kind of thinking leads.
The phrase "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone" will go down in history as one of the most odious things ever said by the president of a supposed republic. This level of detachment from the wishes of the people, and the sheer contempt for the very legal framework that grants him the power he so casually employs, indicates one of three things.
Either Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton truly are as monumentally narcissistic as some critics proclaim them to be, or they live in a delusional bubble, surrounded by sanitized reports and fawning adoration from the lapdog media.
It's a viable option, considering that Obama hasn't actually accomplished anything in life prior to being appointed to the highest office in the nation because of the color of his skin, and Hillary has a record of ethics violations and potential felonies stretching back 40 years. The woman was fired from the Watergate investigative committee for ethics violations. Ask yourself, "what does it take for a lawyer, in Washington, to get kicked out of a committee, for ethics violations?"
The third, and most disturbing, possibility, is that the likes of Obama and Hillary are not narcissists per se, or inept pretenders whose staff keep them carefully isolated from reality, but that they're fully aware of the effect their agenda is having on the nation, and they continue advancing it with a clear mind and definite intent.
At this point, let's stop for a second and ask, "why would the leader of a vibrant, economically successful nation, want to destroy it? What is the end goal?".
If historical precedent is anything to rely on, the end goal of intentionally collapsing the economic and social structure of a nation has only one purpose - to overthrow the existing system of government and replace it with some form of Statism or dictatorship.
Statists have learned from past experiences. They understand that trying to institute sudden and radical changes in a country that codified freedom into its foundation documents, and whose citizens possess not only awareness of that freedom but the weapons to resist any attempt to eradicate their rights, would be doomed to a swift - and bloody - failure.
So, instead, they set upon the path of gradual changes, each one designed to take away just an imperceptibly tiny slice of freedom. Like a prisoner using a spoon to scratch away the mortar between the bricks, and eventually weaken it so the bricks can be removed, they're scratching away at the legal framework of this nation, with "commonsense" restrictions on this and "fair" adjustments to that.
“The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.” - Adolf Hitler
On the surface, it didn't seem to make sense for Barack Obama to proclaim that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America. After all, if you love someone, you accept them for what they are, you don't set upon transforming them. Granted, there are differences between romantic love and patriotism, but the underlying principle is the same. You find something or someone that fits your innermost desires and standards so perfectly that you want to spend the rest of your life with them, and to defend their uniqueness.
On the surface, it didn't seem to make sense for Hillary Clinton to say that individual rights must be subservient to the needs of society, either. So why would a Presidential candidate proclaim a wish of transformation? Why would a Statist disclose their motives, so early in the game?
My theory is that Obama and his campaign advisers honestly believed at at the time, there are more potential supporters of Statism-by-any-name (Communism, Marxism, Socialism, Fascism, etc), than there are Americans with conservative values who would rather have the government stick to managing foreign policy and economy, and leave management of things like social issues and healthcare to the states, as the Constitution originally intended. The same goes for Mrs. Clinton.
As Francis W. Poretto (Liberty's Torch [7]) pointed out,
I see a tyranny of the minority taking shape. No matter how I squint, I find it difficult to see anything else. A tyranny of that sort is unstable. Under the pressure of the dynamic of power-seeking and the swelling resentments of the oppressed, it will devolve into either a self-perpetuating oligarchy or a violent revolution. Sometimes the former outcome is only a precursor to the latter.Considering the outcome of the past 2 Presidential elections, and the degree of public support for government measures that abrogate individual rights (gun control), it appears that the Obama advisers' assessment of the proportion of Statism-supporters to American-patriots was correct. There are enough people living in America (I will not call them "Americans", because their core beliefs are diametrically opposite to the values that built this country) who will gladly support the continued expansion of government and the deliberate abrogation of individual rights.
Sad as it may be, there are, at this point in time, enough people in this country, who will choose politics over conscience, and self-interest over patriotic duty. There are enough passive moochers who will blindly vote for whichever party gives them the most handouts, while the economy is burning down around them.
These people generally lack the motivation to commit any sort of effort to a cause, but can be mobilized with the proper messaging from their overlords. The more troubling symptom is the increasing number of active and vocal haters, who do have the motivation to destroy other people's freedom. All they need is an excuse, and when the media says "sic 'em, boy!", they leap into action.
Whether the call to action is a general one, like the "eat the rich" message of Occupy Wall Street (emboldened by our Comrade President's judgment that "at some point, you've made enough money"), or a specific targeting of an individual public figure, the underlying pathology seems to be the same: there are individuals to whom respect for another human being, their efforts and their rights, is subsidiary to political affiliation. They will gladly destroy someone's image or property for the sake of promoting their agenda. They see their opponents as "rednecks", "teabaggers", or, if the opponent happens to be female, "cunts".
Trading conscience for politics has consequences. The war between good and evil is not waged on a battlefield, but in every person's heart. Once a person crosses over that boundary, once they lose respect for others - especially over an ephemeral thing like politics - it's very hard to return to conscience. This is, perhaps, the worst aspect of the Statism virus - it turns a man into a monster, without his realizing it.
This is how Stalin was able to control 200 million people with only 30,000 or so KGB agents - for every agent on payroll, there were 5, 10, 100 people on the street who were willing to turn in anyone they suspected of being an "enemy of the people". The power of the State was multiplied a million-fold. The informants knew what the consequences would be for those they turned in - torture, prison sentences of 10, 20, 25 years - and they still did it. Party affiliation overrode conscience.
“A new taste had been acquired and a new appetite began to grow. [...] from the very first years of the Revolution we saw to it that those lackeys and servants of former capitalist bosses were kept in line by healthy suspicion and surveillance by the workers.“ - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [8]To any person with a conscience, such actions are abhorrent and beyond consideration. But to a sizeable segment of the current population of America, they've become acceptable, both externally and internally.
This is the result of an intentional destruction of morality - the creation of an entire class of monsters who will not hesitate to seize and destroy property, call for rape and humiliation of their opponents, and, when the State gives the go-ahead, will subject "the enemies" to any other form of "punishment" they choose. After all, once you don't consider them an individual, they have no rights.
A pen, a phone, and a mob of monsters, just waiting for the call.
These are the tools of our tyranny.
References:
- RealClearPolitics, "President Obama Job Approval", January 2014. Retrieved from http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html
- Heritage Action for America, tag archive: "Obamacare stories", various dates. Retrieved from http://heritageaction.com/tag/obamacare-stories/
- TownHall.com, search results: "ObamaCare", various dates. Retrieved from http://townhall.com/search?q=obamacare
- Foreign Policy Research Institute, "Principle and Prudence in American Foreign Policy", Mackubin Thomas Owens, January 2014. Retrieved from http://www.fpri.org//articles/2014/01/principle-and-prudence-american-foreign-policy
- Washington Post, "Obama’s Foreign Policy Report Card for 2013", Max Fisher, Dec. 31, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/12/31/obamas-foreign-policy-report-card-for-2013/
- Forbes, "Barack Obama's Presidency Is A Complete Failure By His Own, Self-Imposed Standards", op-ed by Peter Ferrara, Dec. 31, 2013. Retrieved from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/12/31/barack-obamas-presidency-is-a-complete-failure-by-his-own-self-imposed-standards/ - Liberty's Torch, "Writing On The Wall Dept.", Francis W. Poretto, Jan. 24, 2014. Retrieved from http://bastionofliberty.blogspot.com/2014/01/writing-on-wall-dept.html
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "The GULag Archipelago", Part I: The Prison Industry, Chapter 2: The History Of Our Sewage Disposal System, Page 43.
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