BRING IT ON!

So Obama wants to use Bain Capital to attack Romney… bring it on! It’s the perfect way to highlight where socialism and capitalism part ways and who is pointing left.
Perhaps more than any election in history, this election will be a referendum on capitalism, free markets and exactly what that means. There is a very real and stark contrast between the ideology of Obama and Romney and the American people need to see that.
Obama believes that government can mandate fairness. Government only, he believes, has the moral and intellectual prowess to protect every citizen, from cradle to grave, from any inequality that may arise with their fellow citizens. The idea is arrogant, socialist, and condemns everyone to an equal state of poverty.
Romney sees government in a supporting role to individual opportunity. He understands what makes economies work and he realizes that in a booming economy everyone can do better. He sees government removing roadblocks – not guaranteeing success.
Consider the difference between the TEA Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. The TEA party wanted less government and more control of more of the money they earn. They understood that this meant less protection if they fail, but it also meant greater reward when they succeeded and was based on their own merits. They made their point and went back to work.
The Occupy movement wanted more free stuff from the government. They wanted to replace free enterprise with a government guarantee of fairness. They marched, destroyed, burned and lived off the good graces of our cities and towns until the stink became a health hazard and they had to be removed by police.
The remaining power of these groups is yet to be seen, but their separate philosophical positions remain core to the decision facing the electorate in November.
Obama knows this and accepts it. Just a few weeks ago at the NATO summit he admitted that the difference between his economic views and those of Romney were what the election was all about. “This is not a distraction, ” he said, referring to Romney’s Bain Capital experience, “This is what this campaign is going to be about.”
I suspect the recall election of Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin may be a prophetic prelude to the general election in November. This fiasco, you may recall, was generated when the newly elected Walker did exactly what he said he would do to fix the State’s budget woes. He made hard decisions and cut unionized state worker benefits. The national liberal movement, fearing other states might see this work, went after Walker tooth and nail – just like the Greeks did when their unsustainable package of goodies were taken away. Unfortunately (for the liberals) Walker’s budget initiatives are already showing positive results making a recall unlikely.
Besides, now even the Greeks are coming to terms with reality and the latest polls show a majority support for the terms of the offered European bailout of their country – a bailout requiring severe austerity measures.
So I’m hoping Obama will continue to ignore his party and double down on his attacks against private equity – the very people who provide the capital to keep private industry in business. And they do it based on the ability of the company to succeed, not because they are an asset to a particular political cause.
Maybe this debate will compare the 80 percent success rate and the thousands of jobs created and saved by private equity to the fiascos that make up Obama’s record of using public equity, our tax dollars, in failed ventures like Solyndra.
Maybe they can debate why, Peter Schweizer, a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of, Throw Them All Out, says that according to the Department of Energy, “In the 1705 government-backed-loan program [part of the stimulus package], $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers – individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.”
Mostly, I’m hoping this debate will change the decidedly modern thought template that the answer to every social and economic issue is more government. That idea has kept us in a recession that should have ended years ago and continues to pile up debt in historic amounts, for programs we cannot afford, that our grandchildren will have to pay off.
But the battle remains close. In a recent Washington Post and ABC News Poll, respondents were asked between Romney and Obama, “Who would do more to advance the economic interests of you and your family?” The results showed a dead heat between Obama and Romney even though in the same poll a large majority felt that Romney would create a better environment for business.
I have always believed that social and economic freedom is inconsistent with the nanny state. According to the poll listed above, it seems only about 50 percent of you agree. Maybe this debate, this election season, can change all that.

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Burning Books

“Where books are burned, people in the end are burned too,” Heinrich Heine, German poet and political commentator, from his play Almansor, 1821.

Seventy-nine years ago, almost to the day, the Office for Press and Propaganda of the German Student Association decided to take nationwide action against the un-German spirit. They would burn the books of those who opposed the rise of the Nazi Party. Later, confirming the prophetic nature of Heine’s quote, they would go on to burn people.
Today we look back smugly on those poor, misguided people confident that it could never happen here. Perhaps we would be wise to examine how these folks were drawn down such a dark and gruesome path.
The power of German propaganda during and just before WWII is legendary, as was its primary designer Dr Joseph Goebbels, who patterned much of his craft after American style public relations – taken to the extreme. The media, used ruthlessly, is powerful tool, especially, as used by Goebbels, to excite the people to violence and tell them only what they wanted to hear.
The Nazis are gone, but this pattern of media manipulation is alive and well.
The latest example is the up-roar over the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. The media has, from the beginning, promoted this event like an ancient Roman coliseum exhibition, feeding the public every new “fact” as soon as it surfaces from any source, regardless of its basis in truth, speculation or fear.
Even the pictures of Martin and Zimmerman were biased toward controversy with pictures of Martin from several years earlier looking very young and innocent placed side by side with the mug shot of an unshaven and overweight Zimmerman also from several years prior.
Cries for help recorded on the 911 tapes were at first were reported as Martin’s, then later Zimmerman’s, now, as of this writing, they may have been spectators or who knows who.
Thanks to this over the top media circus, and spurred on by the likes of Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson (two has-beens looking to shore up their crumbling positions as black leaders) radical groups like the New Black Panthers have issued threats and bounties on Zimmerman. Spike Lee even tweeted what he believed was the home address of the uncharged shooter to thousands of his followers knowing it was likely to lead to violence.
Even locally we had folks gathering in front of the courthouse demanding justice for the “murdered” Martin with almost no real evidence that anything close to a murder had occurred.
In the end they may turn out to be right. Who knows? But that is the power of media when it manipulates the natural tendency of folks to believe any speculation that supports their personal agenda or prejudices.
It seems we have forgotten some of the basic rules about judging too quickly:
Don’t believe everything you read or see on the news.
Don’t jump to conclusions before the facts are all in.
Don’t assume you can know what others are thinking.
And don’t get so invested in your position that you can’t consider competing views.
I have to wonder, if tomorrow the police found a certified recording of Martin saying he planned to burglarize the neighborhood and kill anyone who tried to stop him, how many of the “Trayvon protestors” would stay on the streets and call the evidence manufactured.
I’m betting it would be the same number of “Zimmerman supporters” who would remain supporters if the tape was instead Zimmerman admitting to hating blacks and planning to shoot anyone wearing a hoodie that night.
And it’s not much different in politics. While burning books today is not an ineffective way to limit competing information, our tendency to only watch programming that supports our point of view is nothing less than self censorship. So, when our favorite media takes statements out of context to make political leaders look evil, heartless, or stupid, we are more than willing to accept it as long as it supports what we want to believe is true.
With hundreds of media choices available to us today, we have taken away one form of censorship only to replace it with another, perhaps more powerful because it is self imposed.
Consider the recent Supreme Court hearings on Obamacare. Liberals were shocked by the questions the justices posed to the solicitor-general. Why? These were not new arguments. They were the same arguments those opposed to the new law had been making for years. Either liberals never listened to the counter arguments, or, they were caught off guard when people they considered the intellectual elite (Supreme Court Justices) made the same arguments as those that the uneducated, hayseed conservatives were making. In either case one has to wonder how deeply buried their head was in the sand.
In a free society we cannot, nor do we want to, compel anyone to pay attention. However, freedom requires constant diligence from those who would remain free. Self censorship may not be Nazi book burning, but it’s effects are just as corrosive to liberty. Leave media manipulation unchallenged, and freedom’s days are numbered.

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