Barack Obama, Euro-Socialism, and the 2012 Election By Steve McCann
Throughout modern history, those who sought to control and expand the reach of government often resorted to exploiting mankind's most dominant trait: an innate desire to survive and prosper. To that end, the people would be promised a utopia on earth -- a promise that could never be fulfilled. This is not only the most cynical of all political tactics, but also one whose proponents are interested only in self-aggrandizement and the accumulation of power.
This strategy has three component parts: 1) promise the populace "fairness" and lifelong personal security; 2) create out of whole cloth villains who must be dispatched, as they are determined to make certain that there is no "fairness"; and 3) never fail to reassure the people that everything is under control. Unfortunately, these tactics have often succeeded in their initial stages, as there is a willingness among the people to accept the guarantees of the political class, but in the long term, a catastrophe has resulted for those societies who wholeheartedly embraced these transparent and fallacious precepts.
Nonetheless, this game plan was the foundation of the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama. Now facing failure and defeat in 2012, Barack Obama and his minions are accelerating the demonization of their political opponents, often in the most vile and false ways possible, and pulling out all the stops in pitting various segments of society against one another regardless of the potential damage inflicted upon the American culture.
This desperation by the left and Barack Obama is indicative of the reality that both do not have a clue as to why their socialist/Marxist approach and theory are not and will never be successful, as the primary focus of this ideology has been to manipulate the base nature of mankind to the advantage of its proponents.
While some may willingly choose to pursue subsistence on their own terms, to the vast majority of the human race, the path of least resistance for survival and prosperity is the most desired. Thus, mankind is susceptible to financial scams, gambling, crime, and resentment, or to violence towards those who may have more. But above all, the preponderance of humanity is very open to the concept of a central authority providing people with the means of livelihood, and said people are thus willing to be swayed by the siren song of cradle-to-grave security.
A fatal characteristic of human race is the need, by some within the group, to conquer or maintain total control over their fellow man. Those who considered themselves superior to the masses -- and who, in the distant past, may have achieved ruling status through the power of intimidation over the illiterate -- now have to look to other means to achieve control of the levers of government.
The easiest course to assume this power is to promise that the state, in return for the support of the people, will provide the citizenry cradle-to-grave economic security. Thus, a Faustian bargain encompassing the desire by the majority for ease of survival and others for the need to rule is entered into. The populace, having committed itself to this compact, will expect never-ending freedom from adversity.
However, within this arrangement is the seed of its own destruction. For socialism to succeed, it must have an economic underpinning that can provide the foundation for massive social spending. The Soviet Union, as early as the 1920s and '30s, proved that complete state control of the means of production was a colossal failure, as the USSR could not produce sufficient wealth to support the population. Today, many nations in Europe are facing insolvency and social chaos as they had pursued a version of socialism wherein the state has de facto control over wealth-creation through regulations, taxes, and mandates necessitated by the unrestrained spending on guaranteed social programs coupled with unachievable promises.
Only an unfettered capitalist economic system, which is anathema to a powerful central government and its attendant oligarchy, can produce sufficient wealth necessary to underwrite a basic social safety net for the general public, finance the national security of a country, and provide an ever-increasing standard of living for the people.
Capitalism, reflective of that portion of mankind choosing to seek subsistence on their own terms, does by its nature celebrate the success of the individual, not the collective. Individuals, separately or together, driven by the motive of self-enrichment, produce goods or services desired by others. In the process, jobs and wealth are created, thus benefiting society as a whole.
A massive tension exists between those who adhere to central government control and fealty to socialist or Marxist philosophy and those who produce the wealth of a nation. As the state inherently has more power than the individual, and once the left-wing element of the ruling class assumes power, government begins an inexorable process of injecting itself into the affairs of the individual and producer class (which is always a minority in any society).
Those who believe they have a manifest destiny to rule and are faithful to socialist tenets have a predisposition to control the populace and economic activity through laws, regulations, taxes, and intimidation. Despite the lesson of the Soviet Union and its state control of the economy and the failure of modern day Euro-Socialist democracies, every new generation of adherents to socialist ideology believes that he can make this fallacious philosophy work and maintain socialists' arrangement with the citizenry.
But the reality is no one can do this, as the economic engine of capitalism will not continue to produce wealth if it is increasingly put under the thumb of bureaucrats and central planners inevitably attempting not only to institute state control of the economy, but also to regulate the day-to-day activities of all citizens. The motivation of the producer class will be stifled, and that class's members will then drop out, join the dependent class, or simply move on to other, more hospitable countries -- leaving behind a stagnant and ultimately declining economy and diminished national wealth.
As history has shown (most recently in Europe and now in the United States), left-leaning governments will inevitably turn to excessive and unsustainable borrowings as well as inflation to finance their societal obligations. The unwritten contract between the statists and the citizens who were promised cradle-to-grave security cannot be maintained; the economic underpinning of this arrangement will be quickly eroded.
Social and economic chaos resulting in a dramatically lower standard of living will inexorably ensue and, in some cases, lead to violence or revolution. No amount of promises; demonization of capitalism; or seizure of the means of production, confiscatory taxes, or the printing of money will reinstitute prosperity or security for the people.
This is the path on which President Obama and his fellow travelers have placed the United States. After just three years, the nation faces an unsustainable growth trajectory in national debt, a deteriorating economy, and a society in decline. The American people have been repeatedly told that Barack Obama is the most intelligent and empathetic person to ever occupy the Oval Office. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as he is incapable of understanding -- or else unwilling to understand -- why his unshakable belief in socialist ideology, as well as his actions as president, has placed the nation in such jeopardy.
The Obama re-election strategy of not defending or acknowledging these failures, but instead doubling down on the dishonest demonization of the opposition and further polarizing the populace by creating and exploiting race, class, and gender fissures in society, is beneath contempt. It is reflective of the tactics used by many of the despots during the past century, whose only interest was to accumulate and retain power. Barack Obama and the Democratic Party cannot be allowed to succeed with this line of attack; they must be rejected by the American people in November.
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