Enough IS Enough, Part I

Guns from an LAPD buyback (Photo credit: Zev Yaroslavsky)

But It Ain’t Guns, Mr. President!

As all pandering, grandstanding politicians are wont to do (never let a crisis go un-used for political purposes, you know?), President Obama wasted no time following the recent Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado to declare about guns in the U.S., “Enough is enough!”  And his first words after Islamic terrorists killed people in California were “stricter gun control is needed.”

As if guns, which are inanimate objects, have anything to do with the immorality, the lawlessness, and the bitter divisiveness along class and racial lines that he and other modern liberals have foisted on this nation under the guise of progress.

He is right about one thing, though: Enough most definitely IS enough, and it’s high time all this stopped.  But I’m not talking about guns, because guns aren’t the problem.  As inanimate objects put to use by human beings, they’re capable of great good (e.g., defeating the Nazis in WWII) or great evil, depending on the hearts and minds of those wielding them.  There’s a joke about banning spoons to fight obesity, but it loses its humor when you realize the leftists in government are capable of trying to do just that!  “For our own good,” of course.

What this nation has had way too much of, to the point of self-destruction, is all the manifestations of modern liberalism imposed by the likes of Obama and his fellow liberals.  While we were working and raising families, the high school class-presidents-turned-career-politicians – with their smug, arrogant presumption that they know better than anyone else – have imposed their liberal fantasies about a “perfect society” on what once was the most free, most prosperous and most powerful nation in history.  The results are not pretty.

It started with the assault on Christianity…not on religion, but specifically on Christianity.  We stood by idly while the politicians removed prayer and the Bible and even the mere mention of God, first from schools, then from the courthouses and finally from the public arena entirely.  Sadly, that they were able to do so without a massive revolution is testimony to the lack of commitment to their faith of most American Christians.

But Christianity, whether practiced actively and consciously or ignored but played out in the behavioral standards internalized from parents, grandparents, teachers, peers, etc. – treat others fairly, don’t steal or kill, honor your parents, respect your neighbor and his belongings, etc. – is what made “domestic tranquility” possible in this nation, so people could live securely in their homes and daily lives and concentrate on building homes and families, ultimately maintaining a nation of liberty and opportunity.  When Christianity was the dominant influence in this country, you didn’t have to worry about getting killed at a movie theater, or in school, or at a banquet where you worked.

As behavioral standards declined along with Christianity’s influence, what the liberals offered in its place was government intrusion into every aspect of our daily lives.  Anyone over the age of thirty should remember a more peaceful time, when the threat of being mugged, raped or murdered was limited to those “bad parts of town” that most of us simply shied away from.  Now, however, you can be a victim at your local grocery store or mall, even in a nicer part of town.

We never used to hear about parents, especially mothers, harming their children.  Now, however, hardly a week goes by without the news of parents shaking their baby to death, or selling their pre-teen daughter for sex in exchange for crack or meth, or recently, the couple who murdered their infant in an oven.  Without the firm foundation of right and wrong provided by the Judeo-Christian Bible, men and women will sink to their lowest, and we see that around us daily.  It’s not guns, Mr. President, but the lack of restraint on human evil, a restraint that Christianity’s influence once provided…but you and your fellow liberals have successfully demolished that influence.  Of course you want to blame it on guns, lest the American people finally wake up to your deceit.

But that wasn’t enough.  Capitalism is another victim of liberal fantasies, because there just has to be someone to blame for poverty, poor housing and education.  Someone “made” that happen, and modern liberals identified that boogeyman as “greedy capitalists,” businessmen and industrialists.  Now, you won’t get any argument from me that some businessmen and industrialists are, indeed, greedy, cold and uncaring about much except profit.  But so what?  If they pay employees a reasonable wage and provide decent working conditions, who but head-in-the-clouds liberals wants the boss to “care”?  Most sensible Americans don’t want a boss, or a company – and most especially, a government! – to “care” about them; they have family and friends for that.

But modern liberals can’t leave it at that.  No, they have to place the blame somewhere for the fact that this society isn’t perfect (as they envision perfection), that everyone doesn’t share the wealth.  Isn’t it funny how they’re so willing to give someone else’s money away, but none of theirs?  They simply ignore the fact that because of those “greedy” capitalists, who start businesses and provide jobs and training and work experience, very few people who start in the lower percentile of American society stay there.  They learn, they develop skills and acquire knowledge and move up in positions and pay, or move on to better jobs.  What do liberals offer to replace that?  Why, government jobs, as Obama is so quick to brag about.  You know…jobs that require more of our tax money, that don’t actually produce anything of value, and that further put a strain on an already debt-ridden economy.

But even that wasn’t enough.  Because they saw a “disproportionate” number of blacks and minorities represented in the criminal justice system, they took it upon themselves to declare that system unjust, and worked to pass laws to “protect” those poor, helpless underprivileged thugs and punks.  So cops have to apprise every perpetrator of his/her “rights,” and they can no longer use slapjacks or nightsticks to control unruly thugs.  As the increasing boldness and lack of fear of the justice system grew, so too did the number of criminal cases to be brought to trial, overwhelming the system.  The solution?  Plea bargaining…you know, when you commit five robberies, assaults or even killings but in order to clear the backlog of cases you can admit to one and the case is “resolved.”  Even when the perpetrator goes to jail, it’s usually a much shorter sentence than his/her behavior warrants.  And the cycle continues with more jaded criminals who have nothing but contempt for the so-called system of justice, putting all law-abiding citizens at ever greater risk from their increasing boldness.

So, Christianity, free market capitalism and the law…the three pillars of a free republic, have been demolished at the hands of those who believe they know best, and who will damn well force you to do what they see as “the right thing.”  They keep telling us that it’s for our own good, but how can anyone, Democrat or Republican, believe that anymore?

Modern liberalism is simply the politics of the special, what Thomas Sowell calls the “self-anointed,” held by those who believe they know best, who care more, and who are determined to make you and I conform to their tortured fantasies of peace and love and brotherhood.  Never mind our freedom of choice, which they give great lip service to when it suits them but totally ignore when it conflicts with their fantasy (e.g., “free choice” for pregnant girls to have abortions, but not for Christian bakers, photographers, et al, whose faith causes them to refuse business with homosexuals).

The dirty little secret, the underlying motivation of modern liberalism, is how it makes liberals feel about themselves.  If it were truly to create “a better place to live,” then the mostly over-educated children of prosperity who work so hard to impose it on the rest of us would by now have to acknowledge the abundant evidence that modern liberalism has not only NOT delivered on its half century of promises, but it has destroyed what once was a safe and prosperous nation that millions around the world risked their lives to come to, knowing the opportunities that awaited for them and their families.  Winston Churchill said it best: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of wealth; the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”  And if you think modern American liberalism is anything except warmed over socialism, you’re either an idiot who’s too lazy to do the bare minimum research or you’re a liberal Kool-Aid drinker.

Daniel Webster wrote this: “Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”

What we’ve seen these past four or five decades is the proliferation of those on the left who mean to be our masters.  By and large, they’ve succeeded, but only by destroying the foundations of this once-free republic.  I’ve had enough…more than enough…of their busybody, let-me-tell-you-how-to-live, this-is-for-your-own-good horsecrap….THAT is what we’ve had too much of, Mr. President.  And it’s way past time that Americans stand up and say to you, and to any politician, of whatever party: Enough!