It's Not Over!
The sad truth is that we’ve become two distinct Americas. One is still the land of opportunity, with a strong constitution to restrain its central government, and preserve the liberties of its people, and the other is a nation in which the Constitution means nothing, and the Federal government grows ever-larger and increasingly uncontrollable. Whether we re-elect Barack Obama, or instead place into that office a person of substantially different character is now the matter at hand. Looking over the field of officially-entered Republican candidates, it’s difficult to imagine how any of these will make any substantial difference.
We need the sort of leader who understands that to erase the chasm between the two vastly disparate countries, and to re-unify this country, it is going to require a consistent, driving effort by an honest and trustworthy servant as well as the people of that nation. At present, we are embarked on a collision course with some sort of civil unrest. The differences between the two Americas has triggered the acceleration of collapse for one, and ascendancy of the other. To set this country on its proper course, and to repair the America we had known, it’s going to take a person of courage to say to the American people that the right must be done at the expense of the easy. At present, there is only one potential candidate for president who has experience in managing such reform, and turning a government away from corruption. Sarah Palin may represent this country’s last real chance at restorative rather than transformative change for at least a generation.
Barack Obama was elected president in a time when Americans were disgusted with his predecessor, George W. Bush, who gave lip service to our America while servicing the other. Obama arrived after two years of his own party’s control of Congress, and the usual big spending had become colossal spending in a very short time. His party’s vision of America is one of a nation in decline, with government waiting to catch everybody who falls, or prop up those who had never stood on their own at all. History assures us that if government grows in this way, it eventually squeezes dry the heart of the private sector, leaving that engine of our prosperity to feed from an ever-shrinking lifeblood of wealth(formerly born of production,) since they are prevented from creating any anew. Between Federal, State and local governments, nearly 50% of the amount of the private sector’s annual production is devoured. Worse, if you consider how much the Federal government spends, that number grows to something near 60% of the GDP.
That’s an unconscionable amount of spending, but the borrowing also has negative effects on the private sector, which is you. Every dollar borrowed by the Federal government is unavailable for businesses and individuals to finance their own growth. Worse, since the borrowed dollars are printed into existence, each one created from nothing diminishes the value of all those already in circulation. This sickening spiral of spending can have only one ultimate result: The complete bankruptcy of the nation. First, they will cut defense, leaving you open to attack from foreign enemies. Next, they’ll begin to cut the administration of justice at and the prosecution and incarceration of criminals here at home, leaving you subject to an increasing crime rate that will savage you further. Eventually, they will have no choice but to begin cutting expenditures to their various constituencies and special interest groups, and this will cause mayhem and rioting as people unaccustomed to being told “No, get a job!” will begin to revolt at the notion that after all these years on some dole or other, they will finally have no choice but join the rest of us at work. When we hit this stage, and make no mistake, we’re nearing it, there will be virtually nothing and no one who will revive the nation’s too-cold corpse. That is where one of the two Americas exists, and it’s the one on the rise. The problem is that in destroying the other America, the one we’ve loved, their version also destroys itself. This is Barack Obama’s America, in vision, and as is becoming all too apparent, quite sadly also in fact.
The other America, the one you had known(and the older you are, the more fully you had known it,) is on a steep decline. The land of opportunity and production is rapidly being replaced by an all-encompassing welfare state. You had once known the ability to start a new business, or set out on a new venture, or go for broke and return to the land and try your hand at farming. There were inventors and innovators in every direction you looked, producing marvelous new things, and more importantly, new ideas on how to improve the lives of not only Americans, but people in all nations. Some of you may remember the first televised “Superman” and the “Truth, Justice and the American way” for which he nobly stood. 50 years of big government’s Kryptonitic bombardment have reduced that former hero and the country for which he once stood, to a devolving, dilapidated remnant. It was once said that “In America, anything is possible.” Now it may be properly stated that anything government permits may be possible, provided one has submitted the proper forms, and greased the right governmental palms.
Now comes an opportunity for restoration under the leadership of a person who has endured the attempts of big government’s minions to destroy her. Sarah Palin is unlike other politicians precisely because she possesses the strength of character not only to identify these problems, but also to begin doing something about them. Much of what you’ve come to know about her, that could lead you to doubt her, has been created by the campaign against her. How is it, you may ask, that one woman from a distant state, remote in nearly all ways, could come to be such a threat that she must be destroyed at any and all costs? The answer is really quite simple: It’s a matter of ethics.
Sarah Palin rose to preside over the government of the State of Alaska. The state’s greatest resource, apart from its people, has been the natural wealth of energy trapped beneath its vast, frozen expanses. That wealth of resources didn’t attract only those who wished to earn a living, and were willing to do without luxuries to do so, but also a class of people who made their wealth in managing these resources on behalf of well-heeled interests. The resources of the state were largely at the mercy of these interests until the lady from Wasilla arrived to begin asking some tough questions. Sarah Palin realized that the state was being stolen from its people, who were suffering at the hands of those who had no real interest in the state or its people, but were instead creatures of Washington DC, and of corporate lobbyists who haunt the corridors of Alaska’s capital, and our Capitol.
She went to war against what had been termed the “Corrupt Bastards Club,” and set out to ruin them. Her ascendancy as Governor was a victory for Alaskans over those who had come to dominate the state, at one point, prior to her involvement in the McCain campaign, garnering her an almost incomprehensible 88% approval among Alaskans. Not Republicans. Not Democrats… Alaskans. Period.
After the rough-and-tumble of a national campaign in which she was endlessly restrained by Senator McCain’s campaign team, she went home to Alaska, to return to governing, but she was in for a surprise. The Washington version of the “CBC” had decided she couldn’t be left to continue her work, and to this very day, they continue to rail against her. She represents the greatest living threat to the big government paradigm that pervades all of Washington DC, and its slick media packaging. I believe she saw the hand-writing on the wall, when in July of 2009, she resigned her post, as a matter of tactical retreat, but not surrender, not to leave the field of battle, but to turn and attack in another direction.
One thing I’ve observed about Governor Palin is that she’s always been the sort to run toward danger, and confront it once she sees it. She’s a natural leader and a disciplined politician, and what guides her is a sense of ethics not normally associated with politicians. She does things because, well, simply, they’re right. Most politicians like to tell you that’s how they will behave, but they quickly reveal another side once you’ve rewarded them with high office. Suddenly, none of their promises to be ‘different’ or to ‘change’ things seem so important. Instead, they quickly become what you’ve so recently replaced. Sarah Palin isn’t that kind of politician, and while that’s something that’s been said a thousand times before, in this case, all the evidence demonstrates that it’s true.
Every politician promises that he or she will be different. It’s almost as certain to be claimed in any campaign as the usual promises to ‘shake up the status quo’ right before adopting it. Very few of them ever mean it. In stark contrast, none who have known Sarah Palin, in government or out, would tell you that she’s the sort to abandon her principles. Chief among these is the idea, seemingly lost in American politics, that a leader must serve. More, she’s an optimist who sees the woes now heaped high upon our nation by big government and its rapidly-building oppressive burdens on its people, and knows this must be stopped, and it can be stopped. She knows that the two Americas can be one nation, again. What she also knows is that if the people who see their America fading don’t step up and stay committed to restoration, neither politician nor super hero will be able to mend all that which has been devastated. She knows that it starts with us. All of us.
Why do you suppose she loves the Tea Party? While some call it her natural constituency, it’s more that she’s one of their number. She doesn’t seek to lead the Tea Party so much as she exhorts them to continue and grow and restore the nation. She tells them to lead, but also reminds them to serve. Tea Party patriots are accustomed to serving. Many of them are veterans, or their spouses, and many of them have simply done what has become almost unnatural in contemporary Obama-America: Lead clean and ordinary lives, providing for themselves, and their families, without government assistance or intrusion, while contributing time and effort to their communities. It wasn’t so long ago that this was the norm in America.
Governor Palin’s message is one of freedom. Liberty is under perpetual assault by big government and its flacks in the media, but it’s a salable message now, just as it has been since the first Tea Party. You may have read recently that the Obama administration wants to require a commercial driver’s license to operate a tractor on your own farm. How long before they demand a degree in agricultural sciences before you can mow your own lawn or obtain an ASE certification before you can change the wiper blades on your own car? Hell, how long before they tell you “No cars?” No. I’m thoroughly disgusted by big government, and I believe Sarah Palin is too. It’s clear that she looks at its encroachments on our lives as a source of misery, and for those of us in her America, it most certainly is, and it’s worsening daily.
The coming election will be a competition between two distinct visions of America. Obama’s version is a land of diminishing wealth and innovation, with constant unemployment in the double digits. Sarah Palin’s vision is something else entirely, and it’s an America most of us have known, If you want to see it again, you’re going to need to fight for it, and that starts with the task of selecting your champion, to lead the charge, not from the rear, as is now the norm in politics, but at the front, where the battle turns, not around weaponry, but ideas and principles. After all, both of the Americas I’ve addressed are really only ideas, brought into existence by the efforts of those people committed to them. Sarah Palin is committed to our America, because it is her America too, but if it’s to prevail, and to become again the “one nation” it had been before, it’s going to take your commitment, and your leadership. Don’t yield. Don’t surrender. She’s not finished, and neither are we.
It’s not over.
