Posted by
Jason Ivey on Friday, October 10, 2008 4:33:41 PM
We risk losing more here than just a couple of candidates. Our candidates are certainly not the best or strongest, and their ineptitude is maddening at times. A McCain administration would certainly be often frustrating, but here are the more vital things I think we would lose, and it's simple, should the polls stay as they are:
1. Loss of faith in free market capitalism. The most distressing thing about the financial/credit mess is that capitalism is getting the blame. People who don't understand the problem are quick to blame deregulation and various bogeymen like greedy corporate CEOs and other usual class-warfare targets. If it's one thing we're seeing immediately from the stock plunge, it's trickle-down economics in full view. So it's just a theory? Tell that to all the various service providers of Wall Street bankers. So the main instigator of the problem, the federal government, is mostly getting off scott-free while others take the fall. The reason this happened is not due to the free market, it's due to the fact that a major actor (the federal government) with no profit incentive nor fear of risk or consequences meddled in the free market, which should be driven entirely by profit motive and risk. Take those two things away, like what happened in the housing markets, and this is the result.
2. Socialist solutions gain momentum. If we learn the real lessons of the market collapse, we would see that this is what happens when the government intervenes in markets best left alone. Instead, the incrementalist approach to socialist policies will gain momentum. More and more people believe, because the mantra has been chanted for enough years now, that the government can best provide health care to all. And it doesn't stop at health care. Too many people believe that if there's a problem, government is best suited to fix it. And our side has become less and less adept at explaining the fallacy of this argument.
3. Steps back in Iraq/War on Terror. So the Iraq war has made us less safe? So far the results are the opposite. Since going on offense, we have not been attacked once. Go back to a law-enforcement approach to terrorism, and we're right back where we were in the late 90s, when our interests around the world were getting attacked about once a year. But even more importantly, all the progress made in Iraq could be lost. Regardless of whether you were for the war or against the war from the start, the reality, as it exists in late 2008, needs to be considered, not what you thought of it back in 2003. Obama's policy apparently hinges on his heroic speech he made to the Illinois legislature more than five years ago. Since then, he's been of one note, and fails to acknowledge progress. A president inherits certain things when he takes office and many other unforeseen events occur during his presidency. You can't pick and choose your issues. They confront you, sometimes with the energy of a freight train. The fact that he's ignoring the reality and defers to his position from five years ago is a bad sign, both for this particular war and for other issues that may arise.
Two other disturbing trends: the Democrats for years have been working to engineer the electorate in their favor. First it was gerrymandering, now it's pushing immigration full throttle to register new Democrat voters. This seems to be working in their favor, to the point where they may be able to keep winning elections for a long time to come. Which takes me to the other problem: an absence of leadership on our side. Our candidates may have their hearts in the right places, but they can't make the connection between the heart to the mind to the mouth. Until someone comes along who can actually articulate these concepts and explain how things work to people, we will continuously lose these arguments to the mainstream media and their governmental allies.