THE WEAK LINK IN OBAMA'S ARMOR

By Attorney Jonathan Emord
Author of "The Rise of Tyranny" and, "Global Censorship of Health Information"
April 11, 2011
NewsWithViews.com

On April 4 in a low-key video and via email to millions of his supporters, President Obama announced the obvious, that he would seek re-election in 2012. As he made that announcement, opponents perceived their opportunities. There are several weak links in the President’s armor. Victory over Obama depends on a stark contrast arising in the minds of voters—one that pits Obama’s vision of an all-encompassing public sector that coerces and cajoles the private sector to achieve a planned economy with an opponent’s vision of a liberated private sector that retains wealth, enjoys freedom from regulatory constraint in the expenditure and investment of that wealth, and directs its own economic recovery through millions of free market choices. That defeat is not simply a good idea, it is an essential first step to restoring the republic.

President Obama is an unabashed advocate of the public sector who views with a jaundiced eye any unregulated private sector activity. He has unleashed and funded an army of federal bureaucrats who descend like ravenous wolves on private sector pray, tearing apart business after business with fines, fees, and regulatory restraints that cripple competitiveness. He stands all amazed at the inability of his government takeover and public works measures to resuscitate the economy, at the public disapproval of his budget (which proceeds as if there were no budget crisis), at his repeated demands for tax increases and new government fees to help feed the insatiable appetite of his government, and at those who question grandiose expenditures on high speed rail, Obamacare, and public works.

The President offers no argument in favor of his advocacy of the public sector from core principles. He instead simply states in a conclusory manner his desired programs and his unproven assumption that the programs will achieve ends that are impossible for government to achieve, even in the face of historical evidence showing the same approaches to have failed whenever tried. That lack of principle forms the weakest link in the President’s armor. His understanding is shallow.

A successful opponent must be steeped in knowledge of the Constitution, the principles underlying it, and the paramount aim of it to secure the people’s liberties. A successful opponent must inspire the public to recognize that America’s greatness arises not from government programs but from faith in a free people’s ability to invent and bring to those in need what they are in need of, thus lifting the standard of living to ever higher levels. The free market made America a great nation, its loss has crippled the country, and its revitalization is the only way to restore it.

Based on the principle of liberty, the centerpiece of the Declaration of Independence and the purpose of our Constitution (including its expressly enumerated powers, its system of checks and balances, its additional limitations on power in the Bill of Rights), those who would challenge Obama must show how each of his major initiatives have made us less free and have imperiled the nation. Throughout, the focus must be on the fact that Obama so distrusts a free people that he believes economic recovery possible only if government leads the way. But no recovery from economic calamity has ever been the product of government programs. The New Deal failed. The Great Society failed, and President Obama’s government initiatives to “secure America’s futureâ€