On cars and Scotland

A friend sent me this op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal by Penn Jilette- the talking half of Penn and Teller. Penn writes about hummers, and more importantly, freedom. Freedom to drive a stupid car that guzzles gas and sucks down cash faster than a stripper in Vegas. Freedom to be stupid, as Penn puts it.

Seamus Hasson from the gutsy Becket Fund wrote a book called The Right to Be Wrong and it too follows this line of libertarian independence though in a religious context. Freedom is the right to believe the wrong things about God, about redemption, about sin and also about money, about wealth and savings and overall values. Freedom from a government that claims to care but intervenes with its own values system and mandates that which it deems to be your best interest.

Remember the Voltaire quote "I may disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it". Obviously Voltaire hasn't stepped foot on a college campus recently. That notion of the right to be wrong, of the right to be stupid, is dying a slow death. More accurately is being put to death by a caring government.

President Obama and his socialist ideology care about people. About their health, about their education, about their general "well being". How often do we hear terms like "adequate" healthcare and "affordable" housing... his love for mankind may even be genuine but it is shortsighted. In creating a government that provides for the people he really is robbing the people of what makes them truly human: their freedom.

And in healthcare and education it all seems well and good. But it is spreading into more obtrusive areas that is shocking the American people into awakening. Certain cars are "better" that others in Obama's mind and so he will pass policies that punish those cars he does not like. Or, like in the case of Hummer, he will just not allow them to be made. That is how he will force us to adopt his values. He will declare it so.

Yesterday Goldman Sachs was brought up on fraud charges and I'm sure some executives will get summoned before the wing backed chairs of a Congressional Committee so the braintrust of elected leaders can wag fingers and read from staff-written scripts of feigned indignation. Of course no one from Fannie or Freddie has been brought up on charges. We'll save that juicy morsel for another time...

Obama-imposed values. Imposed on us and on our lifestyles. Didn't it start with seat belts 20 years ago and, indeed, seemed like a good idea at the time. Until the fines and tickets followed. Then we got bike helmets. Then smoking. Then water meters. Then 5 cent returns on cans. Now it includes plastic bags, cars, healthcare, non-hydrogenated oil, salt and while we sit in our non-lead based painted homes and don't water our lawns at certain hours... I wonder if we are free. We certainly aren't happy.

As Obama and his caring Congress outlaw more and more things, the nation gets fatter, angrier and mobilized. So more laws, more banned foods and sugar drinks and all encompassing values on lifestyles. Interesting that the new tax being floated by the administration, modeled after Europe is called just that: a VALUE added tax. For it is the government, you see, that will put their values on what you buy, on how you live. Their values. Not yours.

Obama mocked the tea partiers at a speech in Florida. His disdain for the American people oozes out of a carefully sewn patchwork costume of patriotism and superman. He mocked the people who cling to guns and religion. He mocked the people who don't eat arugula and shop at Wholefoods. And while he cranks up the heat so he can sit in an 85 degree Oval Office, he reminds us that we cannot live as he does. Do as Obama says and don't ask how we lives. It's as if all the vegetables in his garden were for show only.

Braveheart was on again- it's always on TBS or TNT or AMC. And Williams Wallace has a wonderful line to the "noble" leader Robert the Bruce:

“You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it”.

We do not need nor will there be a violent revolution (did you hear that Secret Service? I'm not advocating violence). But we do need a ballot box revolution- and one is coming. Obama knows it. Reid sure as hell knows it. Americans want their hummers. They want their cigarettes and guns and religion. They want, more than anything else in the world, their freedom.

A great man I worked for knew that. The press never grew tired of mocking Bush. And Obama brings up Bush's name in spite and anger with petty banter and trite jabs. Obama in his smallness wants to be great and his way of claiming greatness will be through imposition and mandate robbing Americans of freedom and liberty guaranteed through us by God and Constitution.

Freedom is worth the fight. Obama will lose in the end. Freedom will endure.