We Are All Libertarians Now

March 13, 2012
By Jeff Greenlee

American Thinker:

Less than two months after Barack Obama's inauguration, Newsweek magazine ran a cover story written by its editor, Jon Meacham, with the title "We Are All Socialists Now." The giddy faux-journalists in the predominately leftist media were still intoxicated from their November 2008 victory parties, achieved after easily winning the White House and Democrat control of nearly 60% of the Senate and House Representatives.

In the three years and two months that have now defined the Obama presidency, the United States of America is not the same country with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness guaranteed by the Constitution. ObamaCare, the government takeover of major corporations (Chrysler and General Motors), executive power run amok with 42 unaccountable czars and over three-fourths not confirmed by the Senate, the horrific Dodd-Frank bill that takes over the financial sector, and the Federal Reserve-Gone-Wild and its secret unaccountable shenanigans now threatening to collapse the entire system are but a few examples of the extreme partisanship now ruling our country against its laws and against the will of the majority of people. Nearly all the legislation was passed on strict party lines. The dramatic abuse of lawless power which inspired Tea Parties and a Republican landslide to take back the House in the midterm 2010 elections has been neutered to a whimper as the Obama administration has usurped power and made Congress nearly meaningless. What we are witnessing is a rare bit of sincerity from the neo-Marxist, proto-dictator actually doing what he said five days before the 2008 election when he told us he was going to "fundamentally transform" the United States of America. This is one campaign promise we did not want to see happen, even if half of us didn't know it at the time.

The Wall Street Journal assessed Obama's worldview and disdain for free markets:

Economic freedom is morally superior to socialism not only because freedom is an intrinsic good, but also because the free market is the most effective means of harmonizing individual self-interest with collective good. A market economy rewards neither self-indulgence nor self-sacrifice but the production of goods and services that other people value.

Libertarians believe in freedom, self-reliance, and limited government. As long as you are following the laws of the land, not harming anyone else, and respecting others' property and rights, you should be free to make your own choices. They understand what happens when those fundamentals are breached -- rights get abused, freedoms get destroyed, and governments get too much power. Unfortunately, when that happens, governments collapse under their own weight. It will happen very soon in the United States, because we have crossed the point of no return. The massive debt of the United States is now unstoppable. We need to voluntarily cut the federal budget by 50% immediately, or the monetary system will explode. You cannot borrow your way out of debt any more than you can drink your way sober, and we now borrow 43 cents out of every dollar the federal government spends. Since no politicians in Washington, D.C. have the will to stop it, or even slow it down, the Federal Reserve will take the easy way out and devalue the currency. There is no other way. Sooner or later we will be bringing in wheelbarrows full of dollars to buy our groceries. When Greece collapses, the dominoes will start falling. And Greece is on the brink today.

The dark, dirty secret is that whoever wins the election this November is going to be at the controls, but unable to stop the collapse. The elections are meaningless unless the debt is brought under control immediately. Not next month, next year, or gradually. The can has been kicked to the end of the road. Unless the cuts are massive and immediate, the end is near. Everyone knows that is not going to happen. Democrats won't even propose a budget or even talk about balancing one. Republicans are too obtuse to understand the ramifications of not stopping the unconstitutional, non-enumerated profligate programs that are doing the destruction. Soon we will be forced into austerity whether we like it or not, and it will not come without extensive pain. There will be conflicts, and there will be deaths that follow. There will be lawlessness, and there will be great strife. The über-rich will survive, but the middle class will be disintegrated. The inevitable all happened while we were being lied to by the left. They didn't want prosperity for all; they wanted power for themselves.

The growth of the state comes at the detriment of the private sector. Even though the United States has been on this path to destruction for almost 80 years, today it is happening at warp speed, due to back-to-back-to-back trillion-dollar-plus budget deficits. Incredibly, we seem to take it for granted that it can go on forever. It cannot. When it all crumbles, we will awake to a completely different country. Gone will be the gifts from God of freedom and natural rights. Waiting in the wings to replace it we face a seductive oppressor and the sophistry that allows it to survive.

It may be instructive to revisit a timeless piece on the need for eternal vigilance to protect liberty that was written over 160 years ago. It appeared in the Times of London on August 11, 1846:

The greatest tyranny has the smallest beginnings. From precedents overlooked, from remonstrances despised, from grievances treated with ridicule, from powerless men oppressed with impunity, and overbearing men tolerated with complaisance, springs the tyrannical usage which generations of wise and good men may hereafter perceive and lament and resist in vain.

At present, common minds no more see a crushing tyranny in a trivial unfairness or a ludicrous indignity, than the eye uninformed by reason can discern the oak in the acorn, or the utter desolation of winter in the first autumnal fall. Hence the necessity of denouncing with unwearied and even troublesome perseverance a single act of oppression. Let it alone, and it stands on record. The country has allowed it, and when it is at last provoked to a late indignation it finds itself gagged with the record of its own ill compliance.

Soon, we will be on our own, and our government will be against us and not for us. The sad truth is they never were for us -- they only wanted our votes so they could continue usurping power, all the time working against the desires of our founders and the limitations and enumerated powers of the Constitution. We are all libertarians now.