Jobs, Make Believe and America’s Future

Jobs, Make Believe and America’s Future
There’s a wonderful song in the musical Show Boat called “Only Make Believe.”  It’s a romantic song about a man and a woman who meet for the first time and are instantly smitten with each other.  Show Boat, by the way, was considered to be the first musical on Broadway.  It contained wonderful songs by Jerome Kern and paved the way for Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe and many other magical musicals that followed.  Show Boat, financed in part by the legendary Florence Zigfield, ushered in the golden era of Broadway.
  
I thought of that song, “Only Make Believe”, this morning when I was driving to work.  It’s fun to make believe, but when it comes to jobs, playing make believe that government can create jobs is dangerous, especially for the young people in our society who are struggling to establish themselves in these trying economic times. 

How many times have you heard a talking head on TV ask “What is Obama doing to create jobs?”  Or how many times have you heard Obama say, “I am doing my best to create jobs.”  Such nonsense!

Obama and government can’t create jobs, at least jobs that create goods and services.  The only jobs Obama or government can create are jobs that create a drag on the economy.  When they expand government or bail out irresponsibly run state governments, they only kill jobs that create goods and services.  They only drive up the cost of items that you and I need to live our daily lives.

When government restricts exploration and drilling for oil or blocks construction of a pipeline from Canada (as the State Department is now doing) that will supply cheap, abundant oil, they lower your standard of living.  When they subsidize non-marketplace concepts like wind and solar power, they make electricity more expensive and again lower your standard of living.

When Obama expands government and hires tens of thousands of new workers to manage the bureaucracy, they hurt you.  The money these folks are paid comes from the pocket of America’s workers and employers who build refrigerators, iPhones, automobiles, and provide your daily services.  They are a burden to our economy and again lower your standard of living.

Every new dollar in taxation taken by the government, every dollar expended in deficit spending hurts you.  Every regulation that drives up the cost of oil, light bulbs, cars, food, etc. makes your life more challenging and difficult.

As Ronald Reagan famously said, “Government is not the solution, government is the problem.”  Indeed.

Yes, we need infrastructure like highways and courts to handle legal matters and a military to keep our dangerous enemies at bay.  These are all necessary evils, but every dollar we spend, even on these necessary items, represents labor and capital that cannot be spent on improving your personal standard of living.

That’s why there is only one thing government can do to create jobs and get our economy healthy and moving again and that is to GET OUT OF THE WAY.  Government is an obstacle to your personal economic well being.  They take dollars, trillions of them, right out of your pocket. 

The direct result of restraining the exploration, production, and transportation of oil are higher gasoline prices, higher grocery prices, higher cost of clothing, higher cost of building materials, and a higher cost of all services that depend on gasoline or diesel to get to your home or place of business.

Under Obama, the price of gasoline has more than doubled.  That’s just the beginning.  The goal of “Only Make Believe” liberals is to raise the price to more than $8.00 a gallon and force you into small, dangerous cars.

The goal of high housing costs is to force you and your family into a cluster of apartments and condos in big cities.  Their view is that you live too good and because Americans live well, others are poor.  Everything is a zero sum game for liberals.

There is a widespread economic ignorance in America.  Liberals live in “Only Make Believe” land.  Everything is luck or an accident or happenstance.  Individual freedom is overrated and is the cause of hardship for those at the bottom of the economic ladder.  Many liberals are smart, but in their convoluted mind they simply deny reality.  They live in a land of make believe.  They must be very frustrated individuals.

Sadly, they have sold their economic silliness to millions of Americans through the public education system.  Their embrace of government as the solution to all problems makes as much sense as believing in Harvey the rabbit.

And under the leadership of what they have previously characterized as “Perhaps the smartest man to ever be President” they have taken our economy over the cliff, not just driven it into the ditch.  The Revolutionary War was the greatest challenge of our Founders.  Would the war succeed and Americans be free to pursue happiness?  Would they be free of government restraint to succeed or fail as their efforts and the blessings of God allowed?  Would they all be hung on the gallows?  It was a close contest with the outcome in doubt until the end, but the God of our Fathers blessed them with victory, freedom and peace.

Thomas Jefferson reputedly said that slavery was the “fatal flaw” of the Constitution.  Little did he appreciate as the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass discovered, the United States Constitution held the key to freedom for all Americans, especially those who were enslaved.  Slavery was incompatible with values and principles of individual freedom established in the Constitution.  The continuation of this horrific practice created permanent instability that had to be resolved.  Either the United States would be free or it would be slave.  There was no middle ground.  The Civil War tore apart the nation, putting brother against brother and son against father.  But in the end, Americans came down on the side of freedom for all Americans.  The Civil War was the great challenge of the 1800s.

In the 20th century, dictatorships arose around the globe threatening peace and the advance of freedom.  Hitler in Germany, Stalin in Russia, and Mao in China (early favorites of many liberals, especially the great liberal writer, Walter Lippman) presented direct threats to freedom around the globe and in the United States.  Americans, wisely cautious about unnecessarily entering any military conflict, were finally forced into World War II and provided the tipping point necessary to defeat Hitler.  However, while liberals played make believe that Stalin and Mao were agrarian reformers, conservatives led the battle to defeat the world-wide threat of communism and thanks to Ronald Reagan, they succeeded.

So what are the great threats that you and I and our children will face in the 21st century?  Well, the threat from radical Islam is the most obvious and clearly liberals are not up to the task.  Once again they want to play make believe when it comes to terrorists.  Their muddled thinking keeps them from confronting this great threat.  The second threat to America is the attack from within to undermine traditional American values and the wisdom of the Founders.  This is an immediate threat that must be overcome if America is to survive as the bastion freedom, hope, and opportunity in the world.

The Democratic Party and the national news media have been captured by the radical left.  This is not the party of patriots like Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy, this is a party of men and women who do not like the United States of America.  They are not proud to be Americans.  They only see the failures of America, not its triumphs. 

In their land of make believe, they will destroy everything good about our nation.  They don’t understand freedom and free markets, they sneer at them.  They love more regulations and taxes.  They love power.  They believe they are wiser and smarter than you are.  They confuse intelligence and education with wisdom.
They pose a great threat to America as we have known it.  They would kick away the ladder of opportunity for the ambitions and hardworking poor of America and deny them access to the American dream (which they do not believe in).  They want to punish Americans for living so well and being so prosperous.

They seek a new economic reality of less for all Americans, less jobs, less prosperity, less freedom, less hope for the future.  They have a sad, cruel outlook based on the same sort of utopian make believe philosophy that drives the creation of dictatorships and authoritarian states.  They are more comfortable in the presence of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro than they are in the company of hard working, decent, law abiding Americans who love their country.

I feel sorry for them.  They are misguided and confused.  They are off track.  But in 2012, they must be sent down to total defeat through the democratic process of national elections.  Their alien philosophy must be rejected by the American people.  You and I must stand firm and tall, as did those who fought for freedom in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, and in the fight to defeat Communism.  Indeed, now is the time for you and I to resolve that we will not stand by idly and let those who do not believe in limited government and freedom destroy this nation for our children and grandchildren.  We must work and donate money as we have never done before to rid our nation of this threat so that our children and grandchildren and those that come after them may enjoy the blessings of freedom as you and I have.  May God bless our efforts.