Barack Obama, for what it’s worth, is certainly conducting a consequential presidency. Already history-making in character, Obama’s health care “reforms” and his appeasement-happy foreign policy are game-changers in content as well. America of 10 years hence will not be the same, especially for those of us who love her entrepreneurial style and her indomitable independent spirit.
Obamacare: Yes, there are many laudable provisions. Yes, many of the medically uninsured will eventually be covered. But at what real cost? Income taxes will be raised to cover the burgeoning expenses. The vast number of government employees needed to administrate the system will add to an already bloated bureaucracy and subsidize the Democratic Party’s base. Rationing and dumbing down of a superlative medical system will make America’s health care more like Canada and Britain, where one can wait many years for a simple hip replacement.
Those who prefer not to be insured will be taxed. Those who prefer “Cadillac” insurance plans will be taxed. Those who make good salaries will be taxed. Those who prefer independent insurance, choice, self-control and direct doctor-patient responsibility: they will be taxed. As a result, America’s independent and entrepreneurial edge will be traded for a mess of pottage, for a vast left-leaning bureaucracy that’s already taken over one sixth of our economy and is coming to resemble the image of its most severe critics: a monster of centralized control and cradle-to-grave care. America has voted not for energy, creativity and proactive risk but rather for stasis, safety, protection, and equality. We are following Britain and old Europe rather than continuing to lead the world. As a result, we will finally be giving up our unique competitive advantage – what made America great – and passing the mantle to China, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and others in the new world. They will inherit the pioneering mantle about which America has grown complacent and lazy.
Foreign Policy: Though of course never stated outright, the Obama administration’s policy of ingratiating America with our former (and continuing) adversaries, often by alienating in the bargain our historical friends, is becoming painfully clear. Thus, France and the United Kingdom (and certainly Israel) find no favor within the White House, while China, Iran, Syria and Russia receive endless allowances, understanding, extensions and accommodations. All carrots, with no sticks anywhere in sight. The administration seems determined to breakdown the Old World barriers between countries: good versus evil, pluralist versus fundamentalist, democratic versus autocratic, and finally, capitalist versus socialist.
Obama has little empathy for Israel and the Jewish lobby, which he perceives as a noose around his neck. America is forging alliances mirroring Obama’s formative “social action” years in Chicago – Particularism and Individualism are the world’s evils – not Extremism.
So where does it end? Cataclystic changes usually end in cataclysms, from whence America may still rise once again, phoenix like, from great trials and tribulations. But in the meantime, whilst conservatives fritter away the innate advantages of capitalism by screaming about abortion, the left-leaning, psychologically-intuitive Democratic elite have taken over the universities and seconded a large portion of the media to the cause. The education systems of our future voters and many of the communication portals for their disinformation – these are what will keep the tenured Democrats in power.
The next remaking of America has begun.
