It’s Americanism vs. Socialism on November 4th

-By Frank Salvato

At a recent campaign rally, along what is called “the rope line,” Senator Barack Obama was asked a question by a young prospective business owner about taxes and how Obama’s economic plan would affect him, his family and his business. Obama’s response – his unscripted, from the heart, authentic, no-spin, off-the-teleprompter response – was something that would have made Karl Marx proud. Make no mistake, “my friends,” this election is about Americanism vs. Socialism, and little else.

As Barack Obama was making his way through the crowd in Toledo, Ohio, a young plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher, situated at the rope line (the pathway candidates take to-and-from the venue stage) asked Sen. Obama a pretty straight forward question:

“Senator Obama, I’m going to have a business that makes $280,000 a year. You want to tax me. Why do you want to do that?”

And Obama gave him a pretty straight-forward, albeit chilling response:

“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance at success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.”

“I think that when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” There is so much wrong with not only this statement but this ideology it’s hard to know where to begin, but I’ll start with this: Senator Obama…it’s not your money to give!

Wealth redistribution is one of the core tenets of Socialism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Expressing a desire to “spread the wealth around,” indicates that Sen. Obama favors the Socialist dogma of income or wealth redistribution. This means he favors social/economic engineering; where those who possess less are afforded more at the demise of those who dedicated themselves to earning more.

Milton Friedman, the American Nobel Laureate economist, famously and successfully argued that this code of belief, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” turns ability into a liability, and need into an asset. It rewards those who simply exist and punishes those that produce, with all due respect to Mr. Obama’s declaration that he doesn’t want to “penalize” that Ohio plumber.

Simply put, it is naïve to believe that giving someone something for nothing – or something simply because he doesn’t have it – instills a desire to strive for attaining anything. In fact, it demonstrates to him that he will be taken care of – by his fellow citizens through taxation and the subsequent redistribution of wealth – even if he contributes nothing to society; especially if he contributes nothing to society.

Additionally, taking something away from someone after they have worked to acquire it – especially when it is given to someone who did nothing to earn it – diminishes the desire to be productive. Eventually you are left with an apathetic populace constantly looking to feed from the public trough; you end up with a situation where government must provide for all because those who earn have ceased to exist. This is the sad, albeit prophetic irony of Ayn Rand’s work Atlas Shrugged.

This end game – socially engineering a society to create dependency under the guise of “giving those ‘without’ a chance at success” – feeds directly into Mr. Obama’s vision of what government should be; the provider. It creates a power-base more potent than any military force the world has ever known. It succeeds by killing the strength of independence and the Right of the individual, and eradicating the American entrepreneurial spirit while placing government at the center of society, as the mother, the father, the provider.

Make no mistake, “my friends,” the ideology of the Progressive-Left is rooted in Socialism and right now their candidate, Barack Obama, is slightly ahead in the polls.

Our nation stands just inside the beginning of a Second Civil War, one taking place on the ideological battlefield. Should we lose this election Progressive-Left Socialists will control the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch of our government. Our nation, our Constitution and especially our Capitalist system will be damaged, very possibly beyond repair.

We the People cannot afford to lose this battle. Government of the people, by the people and for the people hangs in the balance this election.

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Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal . He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative. His pieces are regularly featured in over 100 publications both nationally and internationally. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, and is a regular guest on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent Radio Network, as well as an occasional guest on numerous radio shows coast to coast. He recently partnered in producing the first-ever symposium on the threat of radical Islamist terrorism in Washington, DC. His pieces have been recognized by the House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict. He can be contacted at oped@newmediajournal.us


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