America "Transformed" to EUROPE
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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"So Europe got the American president it wanted – the one who would present no threat to its own delusions. The United States is now officially one of us: an Old World country complete with class hatred, ethnic Balkanization, bourgeois guilt and a paternalist ruling elite. And it is locked into the same death spiral of high public spending and self-defeating wealth redistribution as we are. Welcome to the future, and the beginning of what may turn out to be the terminal decline of the West." ... Janet Daley, The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/9668774/America-has-become-an-Old-World-country.html (We hardily recommend that you click on the link provided and read the entire article by Ms. Daley.)
Just as the Europeans have, for the most part, anyway, seen the error of their ways and are attempting to dig themselves out, America decides Europe was right all along -- and we rushed to join them in their mass grave.
Government as omnipotent benefactor is now the model in the US. Never mind that the very idea is totally un-American, Americans have embraced it whole-heartedly and the rot that goes with it.
He nailed it! Right out of the starting gate, Reagan unveiled the real problem with America.
Then Bill Clinton came along and declared: "the era of big government is over."
Of course, it was NOT. Some inroads were made, early on, in efforts to reduce the size of our bloated government, but, as it turned out, they were inconsequential, of a little account and, for the most part did absolutely nothing to shield the people from the power of a strong central government.
The mists of time have all but permanently shrouded the real reason America split from the mother country. It was too darn much government -- too much government control with little (mostly NO) say in how that government affected the colonists on the ground in this new land called America. And, of course there were the taxes for which we got NOTHING, which included NO representation in Parliament.
Come to think of it -- we are enduring much the same scenario today with our own independent government. I think of the "no representation" complaint of the American colonists every time our "Dear Leader" signs another of his "decrees" we now refer to as Presidential Executive Orders.
Obama declared his intention to "fundamentally transform" America right from the beginning of his reign, uh, term(s). It is now clear he meant to transform America into something as close to a European-style socialist state as was possible.
As Charles Krauthammer tells us: "And it wasn't just rhetoric. He enacted liberalism's holy grail: the nationalization of health care. His $830 billion stimulus, by far the largest spending bill in U.S. history, massively injected government into the free market -- lavishing immense amounts of tax dollars on favored companies and industries in a naked display of industrial policy.
And what Mr. Obama failed to pass through Congress he enacted unilaterally by executive action. He could not pass cap-and-trade, but his EPA is killing coal. (No new coal-fired power plant would ever be built.) In 2006, liberals failed legislatively to gut welfare's work requirement. Mr. Obama's new HHS rule does that by fiat. Continued in a second term, it would abolish welfare reform as we know it -- just as in a second term, natural gas will follow coal, as Mr. Obama's EPA regulates fracking into noncompetitiveness.
Government grows in size and power as the individual shrinks into dependency. Until the tipping point where dependency becomes the new norm -- as it is in Europe, where even minor retrenchment of the entitlement state has led to despair and, for the more energetic, rioting." SOURCE: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/charles-krauthammer-the-choice-european-style-socialism-or-historical-parenthesis-660407/#ixzz2IdFH5wmB
America has now entered, as Mr. Krauthammer refers to it: "the supervised life of the entitlement state."
And as Janet Daly of The Telegraph is quoted above: "And it is locked into the same death spiral of high public spending and self-defeating wealth redistribution as we are." SOURCE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/9668774
/America-has-become-an-Old-World-country.html
As I write these few words Obama's second inaugural is well under way. I'm not in Washington, and I am not watching the festivities on TV. It is far too depressing for this old conservative. It smacks entirely too much of a celebration of doomsday. That old admonition continues to tug at my consciousness. Its cautionary advice about something imminently dangerous approaching -- just over the horizon -- is more than a little compelling. You know -- the admonishment that warns: "Eat, drink, and make merry, for tomorrow we die!" (You may recall several different versions found in the Bible.)
It is more than a little disturbing that our European neighbors can see what is happening to America, issue warnings to us, and yet, we have chosen to ignore their sage advice (born of their awful experiences with socialism) and continue our headlong plunge into socialistic oblivion.
But -- that is what America has decided it wants. No amount of warning will make an
iota of difference. America is hell-bent on self destruction and, like an addict, nothing will change its course until it hits rock bottom ... and then some. So, no. I am not celebrating. If anything, I am depressed.
My country is dead and her citizens are dancing on her grave.
© J. D. Longstreet
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