Sometimes after one looses a legal battle or some business or personal conflict or an election, one may say "we lost the battle, but not the war." With the loss of the election of Mitt Romney on Tuesday, I am not sure that is an accurate thing to say. I feel that we may have lost the war.
When Obama ran four years ago he said his election would fundamentally transform America. It has. He didn’t do it all by himself however. The transformation had been a work in progress for a long time. A news and entertainment culture that elevates political correctness above the truth, a growing government that constantly expands the welfare state and fifty years of liberal indoctrination in higher education had laid the groundwork. There had been some temporary halts in the transformation along the way, such as the Reagan revolution and welfare reform, but they did not reverse the direction of our decline. America had already been softened up so Obama could deliver the final blow.
It is not that I do not think we have another election in four years. I do. I think we will still be a democracy four years from now. I do not think that President Obama will turn American into a Maoist or Hitlerian police state. The changes that will occur in the next four years will be subtle. However, in four years the nature of the people of America will be further changed. I fear that this election was the tipping point. I fear that in four years there may be no reversing course. The transformation may be complete.
We now have a $16 trillion dollar debt. I predict that in four more years it will be $20 trillion. Forty cents of every dollar the government spends is borrowed money. America is in denial. They don't want to believe that a day of reckoning will come. Like spoiled children, they don't want to hear, "We can't afford that."
We are inflating the currency at the rate of $40 billion dollars a month and have plans to do it indefinitely. We have not had major inflation because our interest on the debt paid to other countries and trade imbalances have been absorbing the excess dollars. Americans do not believe that there will ever come a time when the rest of the world does not want to own our debt. They don't believe that hyperinflation is a real possibility. By the time they see it, it will be too late to do anything about it.
We have had unemployment of about 8% for four years now. Americans are accepting that as the new normal. And it is, in much of the world. About half of the people of this nation are on some kind of public assistance. Americans are seeming to embrace this. In much of the world, a large safety net is the norm and living on some sort of government assistance and having lots of "free" stuff is expected.
I feel that now, many Americans want the government to support them on unemployment for three year stretches at a time, to provide them with free higher education, to give them food stamps and cell phones and birth control pills and free health care and pay their house payment when they are unemployed.
Once we have nationalized health care, you can be sure Americans will not want to give it up. If it is not working well, they will agitate for more generous spending and even more government regulation. They will not lobby for a return to what we had. Once someone becomes accustomed to a government benefit, they never want to lose it.
I feel that Americans are embracing economic egalitarianism. When many American see a successful person, they no longer say, isn't it great that we live in a country were such success is possible and I myself want to become successful or I hope my children become successful. No, they think that it is unfair that some people are successful. They think the reason they have less is because someone else has more.
They are also tired of the responsibility of carrying the torch or liberty. I understand the fatigue of two wars that have lasted a long time and I agree with those who say we should not have invaded Iraq. I still believe however, that the world is a dangerous place and we, as the only remaining super power, have an obligation to stay engaged and to keep Iran from getting the bomb, to check the spread of radical Islam, and to keep North Korea from becoming a threat to their neighbors. We cannot abrogate the responsibility that history has given us.
I fear that Americans are embracing communitarianism over individualism. They are tired of self-reliance. They want a government to take care of them. They want a government that is like a caring parent. Being an adult is hard. American’s are tired of responsibility and freedom. And, they no longer believe we are an exceptional nation. They want to live in a "normal" country like the rest of the industrialized world.
It was not so long ago that this was not so. There was a time when Americans thrilled to the words of a President who said, "America is a shining city on a hill." I think those days are over.
I do not think we lost this election because we didn't contribute enough money, or our candidate made terrible mistakes or we didn't work hard enough. We just did not have the ideas that appeal to the American people. The American people were presented with a choice and they chose.
In four years, I predict that we will still have the same two major parties. The Democrats will still be the liberal party and the Republicans will still be the conservative party. However, the political spectrum will have shifted so that the party of the right is where the middle once was and the party of the left is further left.
I have little hope that we can regain the ground we have lost. I hope I am wrong, but I fear the character of the American people has been changed forever.
