The Next Election Could Be Fatal

Monty Pelerin / EconomicNoise.com

For the last thirty or so years, every election has been termed “the most important election in history” or described in similar hyperbole. Outcomes of elections are important, but few are “game-changers” as pundits regularly claim. For the first time in my life, we face an election that truly fits all of the exaggerated billings of the past. This election is truly the most important one in history.

An Inflection Point

The United States of America is truly at an inflection point where the outcome of this election will determine whether we continue to veer off-course or return to a conventional trajectory. The issue is whether we reinvent this country in ways that have failed everywhere else or return to the traditions and outcomes that have been the envy of the world. Those are the stakes expressed in raw terms.

The key figure in this election is one Barack Obama. What he represents and insists on imposing is a revolution in values, markets and what has been known as the American way of life. His opponent, Mitt Romney, hardly seems ideological enough to combat this direct assault on liberty. Romney seems to be a good and decent man, one that you might admire as a competent and fair boss. He does not convey the same intensity of mission as his opponent. Competency would certainly be welcome, but it is not sufficient. Soviet bureaucrats were competent as they administered to their unproductive tasks. Competency in pursuit of wrong goals is a liability rather than an asset.

The bases of the two parties do not appear equal in intensity. Many opponents of the president believe this election to be like those of the past. On the other hand there are Obama-detesters who have come to their strong positions via two routes — 1) the man is incompetent and made things worse; or, 2) he is out to destroy what was America. This anti-Obama feeling is strong and represents a larger minority of the opposing party than it did four years ago. Still it does not come close to matching the core of dependency voters who view each election in terms of life and death (or living well versus living). This intense core far outnumbers the Obama-detesters.

The Issue

It is difficult to adequately express the importance of this election without sounding overly political or alarmist. David Solway achieves such a balance in his description of what is at stake:

The United States of America is now something alarmingly close to what we might describe as the rogue regime of Obamerica. The “end,” in the acceptation of “purpose,” of this strange new nation appears to be the reversal or erasure of its Republican heritage and its replacement by what Barry Rubin calls a stealth-leftist anti-American substitute. The projected “end” of Obamerica would seem to be nothing less than the material end of America as we have known it throughout its storied history. Its free-market economy is currently in tatters, its competitive edge and productivity blunted by a meretricious “stimulus” and by redistributionist economics, its Triple A credit rating downgraded amid concerns about the government’s budget deficit and rising debt burden, and its unemployment numbers beyond acceptable. Racial and ethnic divisions have been exacerbated by the president’s incendiary rhetoric. Owing to Obama’s policies, America’s network of reliable alliances is in disarray as the program of appeasement and rapprochement with its adversaries grows ever more emphatic. At the same time the power and authority of the erstwhile “leader of the free world” has started demonstrably to wane. And if Obama has his way and is re-elected, he will enjoy, as he confided to former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, even more “flexibility” to pursue his ends.

The looming choice for the U.S. on November 6 of this year is stark and unforgiving. The re-election of Barack Obama will mean the “end,” in its terminal sense, of the America of yore, of the constitutional republic on which the West has grudgingly depended for its defense and prosperity and whose citizens were once the envy of an ungrateful world. An unprecedented experiment in free market economics and individual liberty will have fallen victim to an unscrupulous agenda that intends its demise. Only the end of Obamerica can prevent the nation’s decline. History is about to be made — or unmade. A victory for Obamerica can come only at the expense of America itself, and a heretofore undefeated nation will go down to the first and greatest — and quite possibly lasting — defeat in the chronicle of its tenure.

 

This is what is at stake and what American voters will soon determine. Will it be Obamerica or will it be America? May they choose wisely.

continue at EconomicNoise.com:

http://www.economicnoise.com/2012/09/17/the-next-election-could-be-fatal/