Previous

Contents

Next

"Could Obama Be Their Downfall?"
by Rob Sandwell
thesemindz@hotmail.com

Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

I think our enemies may have over reached.

So many people were so excited at the prospect of Barack Obama. Here was an educated man. A man from humble beginnings. A community organizer. A man of color. Hope and change.

Of course they always say hope and change. That isn't anything new. They've been telling that lie since the very beginning. Every election is the most important election. Every election is going to change things. Fix things.

But something was different this time. Maybe it was because people were so horrified with the previous President. Maybe it was because of Obama's mixed racial background. Maybe it was because he was younger, and more attractive, and more charismatic than the old fool that ran against him.

Something got people to believe. Not just fall for it. Not just vote enthusiastically, all the while knowing in their hearts that nothing of substance would be done. This time, people really believed.

And now, two years in, there is no change, and people are losing hope. And I think, at least for some, this is finally it. They've hit bottom, and like any other addict, they may finally be ready for real change.

We know Obama isn't changing anything. He's continued the same tax policy as Bush. He's continued the same invasion of privacy. Same foreign adventurism. Same terrorism policies with regards to detainees and tribunals. Same corporate welfare programs. Hell, he even overturned the ban on federal funding of stem cell research only to sign it back into law two days later. Of course, I don't support state funding of science, I'm simply pointing out what an obvious fraud he is.

And in many areas, perhaps every area, he's expanding his horizons. Indefinite Preventative Detention won't just be for "terrorists" any more if he gets his way. More taxation. More spending. War in Iran too? Why not? More nationalization. More violence. More oppression. Obama wasn't new. He was just next.

And maybe some people, people we might have written off as beyond saving, communists, socialists, democrats, even republicans, might be waking up.

I was in a restaurant the other night when I overheard two men I know personally to be staunch socialists and advocates for state solutions to social problems discussing how badly Obama had let them down. The frustration and betrayal was clear in their voices. They voted for change. They got more of the same.

Of course, this shouldn't really be any surprise. Lysander Spooner wrote over a hundred and fifty years ago in "An Essay on a Trial by Jury",

"Tyrants care nothing for discussions that are to end only in discussion. Discussions, which do not interfere with the enforcement of their laws, are but idle wind to them. Suffrage is equally powerless and unreliable. It can be exercised only periodically; and the tyranny must at least be borne until the time for suffrage comes. Besides, when the suffrage is exercised, it gives no guaranty for the repeal of existing laws that are oppressive, and no security against the enactment of new ones that are equally so. The second body of legislators are liable and likely to be just as tyrannical as the first. If it be said that the second body may be chosen for their integrity, the answer is, that the first were chosen for that very reason, and yet proved tyrants. The second will be exposed to the same temptations as the first, and will be just as likely to prove tyrannical. Who ever heard that succeeding legislatures were, on the whole, more honest than those that preceded them? What is there in the nature of men or things to make them so? If it be said that the first body were chosen from motives of injustice, that fact proves that there is a portion of society who desire to establish injustice; and if they were powerful or artful enough to procure the election of their instruments to compose the first legislature, they will be likely to be powerful or artful enough to procure the election of the same or similar instruments to compose the second. The right of suffrage, therefore, and even a change of legislators, guarantees no change of legislation—certainly no change for the better."
—Courtesy LysanderSpooner.org

We will never be made free by way of the ballot box. It is a simple, inescapable truth. Suffrage need only fail once to be forever beyond redemption, and it has failed far more than once. One I think the communists and socialists among us may be finally learning. Putting your hope for freedom in any one man, no matter how righteous, is exactly what they want you to do. He will either fail, or be corrupted. And if he somehow manages to resist corruption and shows some promise, he will simply be killed. Those concerns who count their profits in billions of dollars furnished by the state would never allow a single man to jeopardize that. It simply will not happen.

All of which brings me back to my original point. I'm not saying the socialists and communists get it yet. I'm not saying they see the evil implicit in their beliefs. But perhaps, when our enemies got them to believe in the great promise of Barack Obama, they did something more. Perhaps they sowed the seeds of their own demise.

Because people are finding their hopes dashed. And not in the subtle ways of the past, where they could simply cross their fingers and hope the next bunch of politicians would be better than the last. This is something different. Their hopes are being dashed in a grim, horrible, and shocking way.

I saw a bumper sticker recently that said, "You're hope for change will be crushed by your trust in government." Many of the people who voted for Barack Obama did so hoping things would be different. They thought they were changing the world. The loss of one's hope is always a personal tragedy.

Perhaps it will be strong enough to awaken those from whom it has been robbed.

Help Support TLE by patronizing our advertisers and affiliates.
We cheerfully accept donations!