With President Obama’s approval ratings continuing to slip (he has gone into the negative range with -11 Approval Index according to Rasmussen), 53% of voters opposing the Democratic health care reform, and the Blue Dog Democrats revolting in the in the House, we may be moving toward gridlock. This is the best outcome we can hope for between now and the 2010 mid-term elections. Gridlock could stop the Obama administration from raising taxes, co-opting private industries and increasing the national debt to record levels…or worse.
But how will President Obama deal with gridlock? He has already tried taking his case to the people with an unprecedented media blitz over the last months. This has not seemed to work. It seems like the more he has talked, the more his numbers have gone down. He recently tried shame the Republicans when he said the following on a weekly radio address, “Now I know there are those who are urging us to delay reform. And some of them have actually admitted that this is a tactic designed to stop any reform at all. Some have even suggested that, regardless of its merits, health care reform should be stopped as a way to inflict political damage on my Administration. I’ll leave it to them to explain that to the American people.”
What will come next? Will he simply accept the will of the people and Congress? Will he acquiesce to gridlock? Or, will he resort to more extreme measures to force his will on the country. After all, President Obama sees himself as a transformative force. In a speech just before the election he said, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” What will he be willing to do to bring about his vision of change?
Throughout history fascists, socialists, progressives, and communists (hereafter referred to as Leftists) have used crisis to bypass standard operating modes and enact their programs that they cannot get executed before the crisis. As Jonah Goldberg puts it in his book Liberal Fascism, “Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency.”
Hitler used the economic crisis of post-war Germany to gain power, scapegoating the Jews as the cause of suffering. And in this country, Woodrow Wilson used World War I as an excuse to move America into a wartime “Progressive” dictatorship that nationalized industry under the War Industries Board, shut down dissent by denying mailing rights to any publications that spoke out against him, launched a huge propaganda machine and using goon squads from the American Vigilante Patrol to crack down on “seditious street oratory.”
Modern Leftists have been floating a new crisis on a regular basis. It seems like everything is a crisis or epidemic these days…banking, global warming, health care, the environment, bird flu, swine flu, etc., etc., etc. The left has had a measure of success with these crises. Americans have, by and large, believed the rhetoric and given in to allow more and more regulation of their freedoms.
President Obama, however, does not seem to be willing to accept the incrementalism of the past. He has already made sweeping change and proposed even more. But as his poll numbers drop and he loses political capital, will he, like so many before him use or create a new crisis to bypass democracy? And, if the many crises that have been used in recent years have not been enough to convince people to give up their liberty, what will it take…and how far will the current government be willing to go?
When the next big crisis hits, think about what you are willing to lose to allow the government to “fix” the problem. Also remember what Benjamin Franklin said, “They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” And John Adams, “But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
But how will President Obama deal with gridlock? He has already tried taking his case to the people with an unprecedented media blitz over the last months. This has not seemed to work. It seems like the more he has talked, the more his numbers have gone down. He recently tried shame the Republicans when he said the following on a weekly radio address, “Now I know there are those who are urging us to delay reform. And some of them have actually admitted that this is a tactic designed to stop any reform at all. Some have even suggested that, regardless of its merits, health care reform should be stopped as a way to inflict political damage on my Administration. I’ll leave it to them to explain that to the American people.”
What will come next? Will he simply accept the will of the people and Congress? Will he acquiesce to gridlock? Or, will he resort to more extreme measures to force his will on the country. After all, President Obama sees himself as a transformative force. In a speech just before the election he said, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” What will he be willing to do to bring about his vision of change?
Throughout history fascists, socialists, progressives, and communists (hereafter referred to as Leftists) have used crisis to bypass standard operating modes and enact their programs that they cannot get executed before the crisis. As Jonah Goldberg puts it in his book Liberal Fascism, “Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency.”
Hitler used the economic crisis of post-war Germany to gain power, scapegoating the Jews as the cause of suffering. And in this country, Woodrow Wilson used World War I as an excuse to move America into a wartime “Progressive” dictatorship that nationalized industry under the War Industries Board, shut down dissent by denying mailing rights to any publications that spoke out against him, launched a huge propaganda machine and using goon squads from the American Vigilante Patrol to crack down on “seditious street oratory.”
Modern Leftists have been floating a new crisis on a regular basis. It seems like everything is a crisis or epidemic these days…banking, global warming, health care, the environment, bird flu, swine flu, etc., etc., etc. The left has had a measure of success with these crises. Americans have, by and large, believed the rhetoric and given in to allow more and more regulation of their freedoms.
President Obama, however, does not seem to be willing to accept the incrementalism of the past. He has already made sweeping change and proposed even more. But as his poll numbers drop and he loses political capital, will he, like so many before him use or create a new crisis to bypass democracy? And, if the many crises that have been used in recent years have not been enough to convince people to give up their liberty, what will it take…and how far will the current government be willing to go?
When the next big crisis hits, think about what you are willing to lose to allow the government to “fix” the problem. Also remember what Benjamin Franklin said, “They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” And John Adams, “But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
