President Obama gave a speech in Kansas the other day wherein he pretended to be like Teddy Roosevelt and instead simply came out of the closet as a socialist. Let’s go through some of Obama’s comments.
Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst economic crisis, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for way too many years. And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.
I am here to say they are wrong. (Applause.) I’m here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we’re greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. (Applause.) These aren’t Democratic values or Republican values. These aren’t 1 percent values or 99 percent values. They’re American values. And we have to reclaim them. (Applause.)
Obama starts by setting up a strawman to beat down. No one is talking about returning to a decade ago where the government forced banks to sell mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them. Make no mistake the financial crisis of 2008 begins with government and was escalated by Fannie and Freddie, which are government creations. Obama begins with a strawman then leaps into a diatribe about how everyone deserves a fair shot and needs to do their fair share. There has never in the history of the world been a guaranteed fair shot to anyone. Some people are born to poor families, others to rich families. Some are born with great intellect, others not so much. God never guaranteed fair.
Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.
Obama set Teddy Roosevelt up as the great big government hero who saved us from monopolies. He then paid lip service to rugged individualism, which is clearly something he doesn’t believe. If you watch the speech on You Tube, he basically choked that line out. But he acknowledges it, which is a huge step up from the past where individualism was essentially ignored.
There’s only one problem. After acknowledging rugged individualism and government skepticism, he declares it to be a failure. In this speech, Obama declares that one of the hallmarks of Americanism is a failed concept that doesn’t work. Think about that for a moment. We have a nation whose identity has always been wrapped in individualism and freedom. Obama has declared our identity a failure. It’s almost unimaginable that an American President would do such a thing.
Obama then essentially lies about the 20′s and the postwar years. As though the Great Depression was created by freedom and limited government and the post-war years were a boom because of the lack of individualism and big government. In truth, the Depression was created by the Federal Reserve manipulating the currency and it was extended by the incompetence of the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations. The post-war years were a boom not because of government but in spite of it. Government didn’t create the suburbs after all.
Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did it get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class — things like education and infrastructure, science and technology, Medicare and Social Security.
Obama continues by attacking the Bush tax cuts. Yet these are the very tax cuts that he pushed an extension for in 2010. In fact, he forced them through a Democrat Congress last December. Not only does he attack the tax cuts, he mischaracterizes them. They weren’t tax cuts for the wealthy, they were tax cuts for everyone. There isn’t a single American who didn’t see a tax reduction because of Bush’s two tax cuts.
In fact, the Bush tax cuts aren’t responsible for the massive deficit we face and if they are responsible why did Obama push for their extension? He doesn’t answer this question, nor is he ever asked by the media. The reason we have a massive deficit is because of the increase in spending under both Bush and Obama. Bush created a prescription drug medicare benefit which cost a fortune and was involved in two fairly expensive wars that Obama continued. Obama wasted $800 billion on a failed Stimulus and billions more on various left-wing pet projects. The problem isn’t taxes, the problem is spending.
We simply cannot return to this brand of “you’re on your own” economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country. (Applause.) We know that it doesn’t result in a strong economy. It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and in its future. We know it doesn’t result in a prosperity that trickles down. It results in a prosperity that’s enjoyed by fewer and fewer of our citizens.
In other words, freedom is out of style and socialism is in. We can’t let people fend for themselves, government has to do everything for us. Make no mistake, this is what Obama is arguing for. Individualism is dead, collectivism is alive.
But there’s an even more fundamental issue at stake. This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try. We tell people — we tell our kids — that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, work hard and you can get into the middle class. We tell them that your children will have a chance to do even better than you do. That’s why immigrants from around the world historically have flocked to our shores.
Obama simply doesn’t understand how a free market economy works. He believes that you can’t make it in American unless the government controls the economy and taxes the rich to death. In fact the opposite is true. In the last 30 years we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the rise of millionaires. Apparently someone is making it if they try. The people who were in the bottom 20% a decade ago are largely in the middle class today. Many are in the upper class. Our classes are fluid, people still make it if they try. Yet Obama declares this as dead as individualism.
That is the height of unfairness. It is wrong. (Applause.) It’s wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker, maybe earns $50,000 a year, should pay a higher tax rate than somebody raking in $50 million. (Applause.) It’s wrong for Warren Buffett’s secretary to pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. (Applause.) And by the way, Warren Buffett agrees with me. (Laughter.) So do most Americans — Democrats, independents and Republicans. And I know that many of our wealthiest citizens would agree to contribute a little more if it meant reducing the deficit and strengthening the economy that made their success possible.
This isn’t about class warfare. This is about the nation’s welfare. It’s about making choices that benefit not just the people who’ve done fantastically well over the last few decades, but that benefits the middle class, and those fighting to get into the middle class, and the economy as a whole.
Obama is completely disingenuous here. The top 1% pay about 40% of all the tax revenue the government takes in. How is that not their fair share? In fact, the bottom 50% pay around 1% of all income taxes collected. Buffett is paying a capital gains tax rate on money he’s already earned and invested. He may be paying a lower rate on his capital gains but at the end of the day his tax bill is in the millions. It’s absolutely absurd to pretend like the rich don’t pay their fair share when they pay the lions share of taxes.
“We are all Americans,” Teddy Roosevelt told them that day. “Our common interests are as broad as the continent.” In the final years of his life, Roosevelt took that same message all across this country, from tiny Osawatomie to the heart of New York City, believing that no matter where he went, no matter who he was talking to, everybody would benefit from a country in which everyone gets a fair chance. (Applause.)
And well into our third century as a nation, we have grown and we’ve changed in many ways since Roosevelt’s time. The world is faster and the playing field is larger and the challenges are more complex. But what hasn’t changed — what can never change — are the values that got us this far. We still have a stake in each other’s success. We still believe that this should be a place where you can make it if you try. And we still believe, in the words of the man who called for a New Nationalism all those years ago, “The fundamental rule of our national life,” he said, “the rule which underlies all others — is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.” And I believe America is on the way up. (Applause.)
Obama ends his speech by claiming that what can never change in America are the values that have gotten us to our third century. Yet earlier in the speech the values that have guided this country from the founding until today, rugged individualism and skepticism of government, are failures according to Obama. What Obama is doing here is clear. He’s trying to shift America from a place of freedom and individualism to one of socialism and collectivism. Obama declared the old way a failure. In its place Obama will present a collective socialism and will pretend that it’s always been there.
In other words Obama is officially out of the closet as a socialist. If there was ever a speech that defines what Obama is, it’s this one. He doesn’t tell us where he plans to take the country other than his threat to raise taxes and his unexplained idea to make the playing field even. But what is clear is that individualism, the concept that has defined our nation since its founding, is dead according to Obama. With the death of individualism comes the death of freedom. How can we be free when the individual is irrelevant?
