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One News Now:

PERSPECTIVES: No friend of freedom

by Peter Heck - Guest Columnist

OneNewsNow.com

June 30 & July 2, 2009

Part I

As the United States prepares to celebrate its 233rd year of independence, we are forced to take note of this dismaying reality: our new president is no friend of freedom.  This isn't intended to be unfair, unproductive Barack-bashing.  Instead, it is simply the culminating, irrefutable conclusion any observer comes to after evaluating his first six months in office.  Allow me to explain. 

American greatness was achieved through the unrelenting power of a free people pursuing their dreams.  Whether it was Pilgrims in a hostile new world, teachers and farmers armed with muskets, pioneers facing a treacherous wilderness, inventors enduring setbacks, volunteers storming beaches, or citizens rushing into smoldering towers to save their fellow countrymen, the glory of America has never been defined by its government, but rather its people.

The American people have cured diseases, constructed skyscrapers, explored the ocean depths, and walked on the moon.  And we did these things because we were free – free to create, free to innovate, and free to pursue goals once thought unimaginable by man.  That is what has set this civilization apart.
 
Ours is a history marked by individualism, responsibility, and self-reliance...not government-reliance.  Yet, all that seems lost on our 44th president who startlingly declared in his inaugural address, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified." 
 
To any fair-minded observers, those words should have resounded through the halls of our consciences and awakened us from the media-induced trance of Obama-obsession we might have been suffering.  For these are not the words of individualism and self-reliance.  They are the siren song of government dependence that both belittles and underestimates the ingenuity and creativity of the American people in a way that would have appalled the Founding Fathers.
 
That's not to say that our forefathers didn't care about families making a decent wage, getting good healthcare, or having a happy retirement.  To the contrary, they cared so much about those things that they offered up their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to bless us with the liberty necessary to earn them for ourselves.
 
But now the assumption of our political leadership is that we need the government to help us pay our mortgage, to find us jobs, to set our wages and salaries, to keep our businesses afloat, to give us healthcare, to pay our credit card debt, to finance our college tuition, and to fund our retirement.  And as we ignorantly shrug and submit to such a proposition, we are blind to the shadow of slavery that is creeping over us.  As we foolishly screech about such things being our "rights," we drown out the sound of our own chains that are being fitted for us.
 
For when we accept the increased role of government that Obama proposes – one intended to prevent our failure – we necessarily grant it the power to prevent our success and prosperity.  How? 
 
In order to prevent the failure of its people, the American government must begin making decisions for them.  They must begin controlling them.  Give people freedom and they might screw up, invest poorly, or purchase the wrong product.  So the government makes the decisions – they choose your healthcare plan, they choose your retirement investments, and they set your salary and wages.
 
Am I making this up?  Look at the bank bailouts, the home mortgage bailouts, or the bailout of the auto industry.  In each instance, the government steps in to prevent failure and then sets new rules, determines new interest rates, determines investments, determines product lines, takes over finances, and hires and fires officials at its will.  The government usurps control – all in the name of protecting you.
 
Call it loans, call it restructuring, call it security, call it stabilization, call it compassion...call it whatever you want.  But one thing it's not: it's not freedom.
 
The Founding Fathers, the very architects of our great success, would have rejected Obama's fundamental disregard for the power of liberty.  How do I know?  Compare their words.  While the 44th president says that the question of the size of the government is not the important question, the fourth president and Father of the Constitution, James Madison, saw it differently.  He wrote in the Federalist Papers, "Is the power of the government greater than ought to have been vested in it? This is the first question."
 
And why was it the first question?  Because Madison and his fellow patriots understood that increasing the size of government meant decreasing the freedom of the people.  Barack Obama is no friend of freedom.

Part II

With all due respect, when the president of France is quicker to defend the cause of freedom than the president of the United States, it's a sad day. Welcome to the pitiful reality of Obama's brave new world.

In my previous column, I focused on President Obama's domestic agenda in illustrating the fundamental disagreements our 44th president has with our Founding Fathers and their faith in the unrelenting power of human liberty.

But if there is any area where Obama's frightening disregard for the virtues of freedom becomes even more glaring, it is in his disastrous foreign policy. In his inaugural address, the new president tipped his hand when he declared to the mad regimes of the world: "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

At the time, Obama's words appealed to many as they demonstrated a marked departure from the past. The conventional wisdom was that the eight years of George W. Bush had seen a dangerous isolation of regimes like Iran and North Korea that had made them more violent and unpredictable. Extending a hand for peaceful coexistence, it was thought, would make these countries come to their senses. But as Alexander Benard notes, "a dozen missile launches, a nuclear detonation, a rigged election, and countless crackdowns on individual liberties later, it is safe to say this effort has had the opposite of its intended effect." Without question.

But Obama is not the first American president to misjudge foreign adversaries, or to indulge the fond illusions of hope against the better senses of many more savvy than him. He is not the first American president to learn the hard way or be forced to change course. But he is the first American president to demonstrate such a disinterest in standing up for freedom before a watching world.

It started with questionable speeches in Turkey and Cairo in which he extolled the virtues of a religion (Islam) that stands diametrically opposed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Elevating it to an intellectual and moral equivalence with the Judeo-Christian ethic of the United States was disturbing and bizarre. Failing to condemn the atrocities and horrors committed by those who follow its plain teachings was dishonest and disconcerting.

But the utter lack of response to the courageous stand taken by thousands of repressed Iranians following the Ayatollah-rigged sham of an election was simply inexcusable. It was an embarrassment to the American people, and one for which Barack Obama owes his office, his country, and the world an apology.

When the communists were oppressing the freedom loving dissidents of the Solidarity movement in Poland back in 1982, the freedom-fighters bolstered their convictions through the knowledge that they had the support of the Americans. Why? Because the American president Ronald Reagan let them know. Declaring "Solidarity Day," he blasted the communist thugs and immediately condemned their persecution.

Years later, the leader of that Solidarity movement became president of Poland and said this: "When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough."

Contrast that to the image of Iranians staring into cameras begging, "Please don't leave us alone," or weeping over bleeding martyrs asking reporters, "Are we on our own?" The answer they received from the American president was stone cold silence.

Finally, after being shamed by congressional Republicans who refused to stand for his cowardly inaction and pushed through a condemnation of Iranian repression by a 405-1 vote, President Obama toughened his rhetoric -- sort of. After condemning the violence, he shockingly stated his belief that, "It's not too late" for Iran's regime to negotiate with the international community.

This is an outrage of the highest order. Not only does it suggest that the United States is willing to partner with such enemies of humanity, it horrifyingly signals to Iranian freedom-fighters President Obama's belief that they will be unsuccessful. And, that once they have been crushed into submission, the U.S. is ready to shake hands with their killers.

President Obama is no friend of freedom.