by 
A Brief History Lesson
In 2001, four airplanes were hijacked and ran into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. At that moment, a President that had campaigned on domestic issues was forced to change course and deal with foreign issues. The United States retaliated against the perpetrators of the attack in Afghanistan and the President declared an access of evil that included Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
Quickly it was brought to our attention that Iraq had long been believed to have weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological—or some combination of the three) and because the world could not trust the dictator of the land, he had to be removed.
As the initial battles were won, and no WMD were found, the Administration continued to attempt to persuade the American public that measures had to be taken to ensure our safety. The critics claimed that the President and Vice President were only attempting to scare the public. The same was true for the next election.
The phrase “the Politics of Fear” were used in the Democratic Campaign’s commercials, as their contender attempted to persuade the public that he too could keep us safe.
Fast Forward to the Present
Today we have a President with an ambitious agenda. He was rated the most liberal politician in the United States Senate, though most people could not see past the color of his skin. He ran on the theme of “Hope and Change,” and we’re definitely seeing the change part.
With every announcement from the President’s team, the stock market has fallen. The world is in panic—not because the situation is that grim, but because our President believes that the only way he can pass his extremely liberal agenda is through panic:
Why does Obama preach gloom and doom? Because he is so anxious to cram through every last spending bill, tax increase on the so-called rich, new government regulation, and expansion of healthcare entitlement that he must preserve the atmosphere of crisis as a political necessity. Only by keeping us in a state of panic can he induce us to vote for trillion-dollar deficits and spending packages that send our national debt soaring.
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So, having inherited a recession, his words are creating a depression. He entered office amid a disaster and he is transforming it into a catastrophe, all to pass every last bit of government spending and move us a bit further to the left before his political capital dwindles.1
The problem is that it’s only going to get worse. The President is digging us into a hole—a hole that it will take generations to get out of. Because if we follow his logic, that the way to get out of a recession is to borrow and spend more money that we do not have, we will continue to repeat this pattern until our dollar is totally inflated, we’ll all work for the government, which will be owned by China.
I’m specifically asking those of you that disagreed with President Bush and the war in Iraq to take special heed. You believe that we went in for the wrong reasons, and we were brought there by an irrational President that used fear to scare us into doing something we shouldn’t have. What is your excuse to support a President who just passed the largest spending bill in the history of this country, who wants the government to take over banks and your health care, and is doing this all through the use of the same tactic.
How will you feel when you wake up a couple years from now just to realize that it isn’t as bad as it was made out to be, and your guy used panic to get his way with the nation?
- Dick Morris, It’s Obama Spreading Panic [↩]
You know what would make me feel good about this? If they were able to balance the new spending against existing or expected revenues. I can think of no corporation or even a mom & pop store which can survive if it continues spending without working out sources of income to match the spending.
If the President can put up a detailed plan explaining how all this debt is going to be paid back, then fine. If he can’t do that, then he’s got no right to spend the money – regardless of whether or not armageddon is waiting outside the door.
@Ling: And the problem is that he tries to balance it with projections and things that will come 5 or 10 years down the road– no one knows the future.
But your comment spurred another thought in my mind– another comparison, if you will. One of things that Pres. Obama ran on was “sticking to our core, moral principles” when it came to the War on Terror. That’s why he signed something to stop torture and wanted to close Guantanamo Bay. But in the same token he’s violating core principles by spending our great grandchildren’s money. It’s not right, but each President seems to have a way to justify doing what’s not right for the “greater good.”
This whole playing on people’s fear has really angered me, and I never thought about the Bush comparison, but it really is a double standard, isn’t it?
See, Min, this is why I am glad you are back. This is twice in the past two days you’ve brought something new to my attention that I wasn’t aware of. Thanks for your perspective.
Rachels last blog post..Apathy, Folgers, and a Prayer Request
@Rachel: Well, I’d kinda been avoid this stuff for much the same reason that you expressed in an earlier comment– there’s just so much there and so much to say, and there are so many people talking about it… Sometimes you want to tune it out!