Do You Recognize This America?

We have finally come to the debate that this election is all about. The so-called haves and the have-nots. This is the seminal question that needs to be addressed and Romney brought it to the surface when a left-wing publication, Mother’s News, released a tape of Romney talking to donors at a fund-raising event in May about the political realities of his election. It's the fact that Obama immediately has a major constituency of people in this country who don’t pay taxes and would not be sympathetic to Romney’s view of an individual’s freedom from dependency, the creation of wealth rather than the redistribution of it, and lower taxes to spur investment and hiring in the private sector. This doesn’t go over very well with people who live on the government dole.

The Republicans quickly countered with a tape of Obama from 1998, where he states his belief in redistribution and taking the nation on the path that has ruined much of Europe’s economy and that of communist countries like the old USSR, Cuba, and Venezuela. The Obama theory is to take the wealth of the productive people who pay most of the taxes and give it to the least productive. In essence, he buys their votes with our money, in order to perpetuate his power. The system has failed wherever it has been implemented and stagnates economic growth.

This type of system is the antithesis of the American dream and the nation we have been for 230 years. It divides us along class, income, race, and gender lines and creates an oversimplified segmentation of our population based strictly on wealth rather than contribution and the pursuit of happiness.

Also, it’s a system that develops a privileged statist class where public sector income surpasses that in the private sector and people are awarded unrealistic pensions, health plans, perks, and lifetime jobs, in the rather wasteful and inefficient systems that permeate the non-profit public sector. This elitist class chooses the winners and losers and builds a morass of ineffective bureaucratic commissions and committees that enhance their own interests. This is a class that is being resurrected again in Russia under Putin and causing demonstrations in the streets.

We see this also in the mid-East, particularly in Egypt and Iran, where religious fanaticism and a crumbling economy, with a 70% unemployment rate for the youth under 30, results in having nothing to do but demonstrate in the streets and burn our flag, rather than have a job to go to.

Is this what’s in our future? We are starting to see the symptoms here; teachers in Chicago, occupiers on Wall Street, racial and class warfare. Is this the hope and change you expected? Are we more divided today than 4 years ago? What kind of society have we become? Do we evaluate our Presidents on performance or their “likeability” factor?
Mr. Romney should not shy away from his remarks; he should face this head on and tell us the truth not what politicians like Mr. Obama think we want to hear.