by Ted State –
When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic. ~ Ben Franklin.
What was really lost in this election was not the GOP hopes and dreams of a new future. It was actually a lot more than that. What was really lost was the sense of the American individualist spirit. No more pulling yourself up by your bootstraps (if you are lucky enough to find a store that has them), no more starting a business (apparently we really didn’t build it) and no working hard to get ahead (at some point you have made enough money.) Instead of all that, the people voted to give themselves more at the expense of others and that is a much more serious loss than the mere presidency.
Economists have long theorized that there would come a day where the people riding in the cart would outnumber the people pulling the cart and that day has arrived. Congratulations Democrats. You did it. Free healthcare, free cell phones, food stamps, section 8 housing and a whole host of free goodies are now not only the law of the land, they are what the people have come to demand and worse, what they have come to expect.
With the President’s victory these attitudes of entitlement, which have been coming more and more prominent in the last few years, will be institutionalized over the next four years. If you think 75 million people on food stamps is a lot, you ain’t seen nothing yet! We will soon look back to the good old days when there were “only” 75 million people on food stamps and the debt was “only” 16 trillion. Si se Puede. People will soon never remember a day when they didn’t get food stamps, when they had to pay for healthcare and a sense of personal responsibility will be looked at like todays teenager looks at a record player. “I was told once that this black circle has music on it but why didn’t the people back then just download it to their government provided cell phone for free?”, wonders the American teenager in 2016 as he waits in a long line for healthcare.
6 trillion in new debt, 8% unemployment, $4 a gallon for gas, and a dead American ambassador should have been a slam dunk for Mitt Romney, Chris Christie or your local dog catcher to defeat this sitting President. Could Mitt Romney have run a different campaign?
We are now a nation of takers and not makers
He could have gone after Reverend Wright. Or gone after the Libyan disaster. Or really hit the economic mess harder. Or spend even more money. Yes he could have done all of these things. Would the outcome been any different? No. Many Republicans bemoan the fact that Mitt Romney was not conservative enough. Many Republicans bemoan the fact that Mitt Romney was not moderate enough. Interestingly, both trains of thought are incorrect because the tipping point is here and there may be going back. It really did not matter what Mitt Romney said, how much he spent or if he leaned more right or came back to the center because the age of the responsible adult is over. This election was a titanic shift in the makeup of the American ideal. We are now a nation of takers and not makers and to flip that paradigm back to the way it was for the last 200 years is going to be difficult if not impossible.
When my side loses the election, I often try to find some kind of upside. However, this time, I find myself especially depressed because this was more than an election. This is the end. We can’t simply work harder or plan for 2016 because the social paradigm has shifted and there might not be anything to fight for. The tide of people expecting free stuff will wash over any GOP effort to turn it back to the way it once was. O don’t worry, there won’t be riots in the streets or gas lines or anarchy – unless there is another hurricane. There will be an America in four years, there won’t be a civil war and Texas will not leave the Union (but you would have to sympathize with them if they did) but it won’t look anything like the America we grew up in. It will be fundamentally changed into something foreign that can’t be changed back.
Will America come to its senses and turn the ship around?
Will America come to its senses and turn the ship around? That remains to be seen. America is the land of optimism and better days are always ahead of us, so most Republicans will say we will turn this around. But after this election, one thing is certain. It is about to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. The concern that everyone should have is that the government will give away so much free stuff that people will simply keep voting for the status quo because of the fear of losing what little they have and then our ship of state will be at best a banana boat republic or worse laying at the bottom of the ocean leaking food stamps, free healthcare and solar tax credits.
People love them some free stuff and they do not care how much the evil rich have to pay so they can get theirs. Ben Franklin was right. There are now more people voting themselves free stuff that there are people to pay for said free stuff. To paraphrase another great leader, Margaret Thatcher, “The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of China’s money.” I fear we will soon find out what happens when we do run out of other people’s money.
HT: American Thinker
The thing that puzzled me is the leadership of the left who have pushed for this. The socialist ideology simply doesn’t work. I realized, though, that I was not cynical enough. It works well enough for a few generations of leadership to enjoy power and wealth at the expense of everyone else before the whole system either collapses or has to move back in the direction of individual responsibility. I can only conclude that the leadership of the left cares about nothing but themselves, their own lifestyle and the exercise of power for its own sake.