2010 Election Impact

By Robert Adams

Conservatism

I am a conservative.  What does this mean?  It means I believe in a small, limited form of government.  It means the less government we have in our lives the better off we will be as citizens of this great nation.  It means I believe in the rugged individualism of the human being and that we are granted certain inalienable rights from our Creator and with these rights we have the freedom to do whatever we want as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others.

I believe we live in the greatest nation in the world and it was formed by inspired men of God who risked their lives so we can enjoy our freedoms.  Men like George Washington, Ben Franklin, and James Madison.  George Washington, after the Revolutionary War, had to be convinced to the first president of the United States.  After his first term as president he served a second term reluctantly.  He also refused to be paid as president because he felt it was his civil duty, but later he was convinced to get paid.  This is far different from our politicians of today.  Today's politicians believe they should serve for life and be well compensated for their years of service; it is almost nearly impossible to get them out of office once they are elected.

I believe in lower taxes so individuals, small, and big businesses can flourish without the constraint of an all power centralized government.

I believe in the strength of our military.  We should not cut back our military by limiting the number of bases, aircrafts, technology, and the like.  Instead we should be increasing our military because of the threats in this day and age.

I believe we should keep NASA and not defund it.  Space exploration is the future and vital to our existence as a nation.  We need to unlock the hidden mysteries of outer space and the only way of doing this is keeping the space program.

The U.S. Constitution

In order to understand the U.S. Constitution we need to understand the principle of the natural law because our constitution is based off of this law.  The Framers of the Constitution knew the natural law intimately.  They knew the importance "of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  They knew what it meant to live under tyranny and they didn't want the nation they were forming to live under that yoke.  They knew an all powerful centralized government would be no different than having a King or Dictator; hence, they made sure the federal government would have limited powers, and the rest of the powers would reside with states or the people.

The Tenth Amendment states:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

In this day and age, whether you are white, black, Chinese, Native American, or Mexican, how much power do you have as an individual compared to the federal government?  I don't care if you are a liberal or conservative, democrat or republican, Muslim or Christian, living in this country the power you have is little compared to the federal government.  The federal government is the biggest land owner and the biggest employer.  Their power is beyond measure.

If the Framers were right in trying to have a limited form of government, then why is America going down the path of a total central government control?  Where does most of the power currently reside?  Does it reside in Washington, or with States, or with the people?  Mark Levin wrote, "When the federal government acts beyond its constitutional limits, it assaults the purest form of representative government by supplanting the representative decision making at the state and local levels."

Concerning the natural law Lysander Spooner wrote, "It is the science which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot, have; what he can, and cannot, say, without infringing the rights of any other person."  It is the last part of his quote that I am interested in, "without infringing the right of any other person."  Since the health care debate is fresh on everybody's minds, we will use this as an example.  Does the health care bill infringe on anybody's rights?  Yes, it does.  It infringes on the rights of people who work to make them pay for health care for those who do not work or who cannot afford to buy health care; those who do not work infringe on the rights who do work.  The reason is because under the current health care system if you work most likely you have health care insurance from your employer.  If you don't have a job you don't have health insurance, hence, you may qualify for Medicaid or some other form of health benefit.  Abraham Lincoln said, "With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor."  The federal government was never meant to take care of their citizens from cradle to grave by infringing on their natural rights as human beings, but they have been slowly doing this for over 100 years.

Health care for all is not a right.  Your ability to drive a car is a right because you are not infringing on anybody else's rights.  Your ability to go to church on Sunday is a right because you are not infringing on anybody else's rights.  Your ability not to go to church on Sunday is a right for the same reason.  Imagine if the government stepped in and told everybody they had to go to church on Sunday whether you believed in God or not because they feel that U.S. citizens are not God fearing enough.  What would you think then of the federal government?  Health care is not a right because you are infringing on somebody else's right to give up certain works of their labor for somebody else to benefit.

The mandate in the bill that requires individuals to have health care coverage or be penalized is where the debate about this bill will ensue, in particular with the states.  Where in American history has our country forced their citizens to buy anything?  This is the heart of the bill, and if it doesn't hold water, then the whole bill crumbles.

Our Move Toward Socialism

The principles that our Founders laid out over two hundred years ago apply to us more today than probably in their day.  These universal principles need to be adhered by our president and members of congress.  Look at our country and its greatness.  Did it become great on the laws and principles of socialism or communism?  No.  It became great by the laws of our Founders that they set in Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.  Our country has slowly been eroding from within the last hundred years because of progressive, socialistic, and communistic ideas.

Mark Levin refers to progressives or radical liberals as Statists.  He said, "Statists have launched bloody revolutions followed by violent periods of terror in France, Russia, Germany, China, and elsewhere, always under the flags of democratic populism, Marxism, national socialism, and fascism.  For the Statist, revolution is an ongoing enterprise, for it regularly cleanses society of religious dogma, antiquated traditions, backward customs, and ambitious individuals who differ with or obstruct the Statist's plans.  The Statist calls this many things, including 'progressive.'  For the rest, it is tyranny."

Without going into too much specificity our nation started adopting socialistic or progressive ideas around the end of the 1800s.  It wasn't until President Teddy Roosevelt that America elected the first progressive into the White House, and he was a republican.  He started nationalizing parks around the turn of the 20th century. And then Woodrow Wilson came on the scene in 1913 as president.  He passed into law:       Federal Reserve Act       Federal Trade Commission       Clayton Antitrust Act       Federal Farm Loan Act       Progressive income tax       Espionage Act of 1917       Sedition Act of 1918 He also helped form the League of Nations after WWI and had political prisoners, mostly stemming from the Espionage Act or Sedition Act.  He was good at propaganda and pushing his agenda and some say Germany used his style of propaganda to push their fascist regime. Things seem to have calmed down for a few years until the stock market crashed in 1929.  President Herbert Hoover, a republican, was president at the time.  He made the same mistake as President Bush when we had our financial meltdown.  He passed into law some ineffective bailout bills that didn't help the depression.  These bills were relatively small compared to today, but for back then they were big, however, this opened up the playing field for his predecessor Franklin Roosevelt.  The similarities of President Bush and President Hoover, and President Roosevelt and President Obama are astounding when you read back what happened. Where to begin with President Roosevelt?  Needless to say he passed a lot of social programs and it was at this point that we as a nation started heading down the path of socialism.  More notable was his passage of Social Security in 1935, the 1st New Deal which comprised of recovery acts, and the 2nd New Deal which did the same thing as the first.  A lot of his bailouts were passed to improve the infrastructure of our highway system, and most were temporary jobs at best, sound familiar?  He relied on John Maynard Keynes type of economics which advised deficit spending to try to handle the economy and with this rose the national debt from 40% to 125% to GNP from 1942 to 1946, unemployment never went below 14%, at its peak it hovered around 25%.  Economists say with his policies he prolonged the Great Depression, and it wasn't his policies that got us out the depression but WWII. Start up the factories boys we are going to war!  The production of ships, tanks, ammunition, cannons, and the like, opened up factories filled with workers.  It was the production of such material that created jobs for the American people and got us out of the Great Depression. President Roosevelt also put into the Supreme Court a lot of liberal judges to rubber stamp his progressive agenda. You can pick and choose where it all began, but I say it has been about a hundred years since we as a nation started down this path of electing officials into public office that do not adhere to the U.S. Constitution. Global Warming I think what is happening now is a natural cycle that our earth is going through.  I grew up near a glacier, one of the largest tide water glaciers in the world.  At one point, about a thousand years ago, it was over 30 miles long and covered our whole bay.  It has now receded back 30 miles and has nestled itself into the mountains.  Who caused this, my ancestors by making their fires?  Or are we witnessing the end of one of earth's cycles? We as humans need CO2 to live.  Without it we wouldn't exist.  To manage this natural element would be like trying to control the tide, which in my opinion, if the powers at be had their way they would try to control the tide saying it is in our best interest. There is a lot to be gained by controlling CO2 content, if the government can convince people that they can control it.  Here in the U.S. they would use a bill called Cap and Trade.  The blue print of this bill was used in California, and we all know the current financial crisis that this state is in.  There are so much housing and building regulations imposed by the State of California that it got too expensive to build.  This is one reason the homes in this state are so expensive.  This in turn affected local businesses.  They have either gone out of business or moved out of the state; the state has a $26 billion dollar deficit.  The state is either laying off workers or paying minimum wage.  Now they want to try this failed policy on a national level. Cap and Trade will impose a tax on fossil fuels on businesses and households.  83% of our country relies on this type of energy to heat their businesses or homes, to fuel our cars and our manufacturing plants.  To impose this on our country would be devastating to our economy.  There will be a ripple effect across our nation and every citizen will feel the effects of it.  The price for commodities would increase because businesses would pass this added expense onto the consumer. We need to know for sure if CO2 is doing more harm than good before we pass this kind of bill into law.  Right now we don't know this especially since there is more information coming out about the scientists falsifying their reports and research.  The slightest scientific impropriety that scientists are now involved in make a lot people question their data.  They have everything to gain for falsifying their work.  If they can have data to support global warming, then politicians will take this information to pass bills to regulate the air.  This regulation will have everlasting economic effects on all the citizens here in the U.S.  The rewards that they could reap are big.  One of the biggest benefactors will be GE because they will be making greener products. The other benefactor will be the government because it will centralize more of their power and control.  The government will have control of your lives through banking reform, through student loans by mandating if you want your loans forgiven you will need to need to work in the public sector for so many years, they will have control of your life through government run health care, they control your life even right down to the type of light bulb you use in your bathroom through the Cap and Trade bill.