I WAS WRONG.
I thought Americans knew that when you
restrict energy exploration, you would get less of it and what you got would be
more expensive.
I thought Americans knew that $4.00 a
gallon gas was simply outrageous and evidence that the administration did not
know what it was doing.
I thought Americans knew that gas prices
are more a function of government regulations than gas company greed.
I thought Americans knew that gas companies make about 7 cents a gallon profit and the government makes 65 cents a gallon.
I thought Americans knew that gas companies make about 7 cents a gallon profit and the government makes 65 cents a gallon.
I thought Americans knew that when you
steal car companies from the shareholders and give them to the unions, you
would get more expensive, less competitive cars.
I thought Americans knew that demand drives
innovation and that force-feeding us “clean” energy like solar and electric
cars before we want, can afford, or need them would result in products no one
wanted and energy no one could afford, and the bankruptcy of “clean” energy
companies.
I thought Americans knew that we have 500
years of natural gas just waiting to be extracted.
I thought Americans knew that new
technologies for recovering oil and natural gas are the key to America’s future
and we should encourage the exploration and extraction.
I thought Americans knew that “fracking” is
safe for ground water because the available natural gas is separated from ground
water reservoirs by three miles of solid rock.
I thought Americans knew that nuclear energy
is safe and clean and cheap.
I thought Americans knew that NASA is not a Muslim outreach program and we
should have colonies on the moon by now.
I thought Americans knew that the space
program is not only why we went to the moon but why we have Teflon, microwave
ovens, Kevlar, and a host of other technologies, including the phone they stupidly
text on while driving.
I thought Americans knew that no Republican
economist ever called Reagonomics “Trickle-Down” economics; that it was a
disparaging moniker that is not what
lower taxes are designed to do, which is free up capital and enable its most
effective use, which includes employing people and creating lower-cost
products.
I thought Americans knew that a rising tide
lifts all boats and that lower taxes
across the board will result in a booming economy, as J.F.K. and Reagan knew
and as we experienced.
I thought Americans knew that 45 million
people on food stamps is proof certain that the economy is not improving.
I thought Americans knew that 8% unemployment
is actually half again that much, when you count those who’ve quit looking for
work.
I thought Americans knew that every
recession prior to this one healed itself without massive government TARP and
stimulus programs, usually in four to five years.
I thought Americans knew that Calvin
Coolidge purposely did nothing during
the recession of his time and it was over in less than two years.
I thought Americans knew that government
does not create wealth; it only redistributes it, and does so according to
political calculations, not need.
I thought Americans knew that the 33%
depreciation of their homes’ value was the result of the government forcing
banks to make loans to people who would likely default on their loans.
I thought Americans knew that when the
entire system robs Peter to pay Paul, everyone
is soon impoverished.
I thought Americans knew that eventually
Peter quits making money that is going to be stolen from him via the tax code
anyway.
I thought Americans knew that Atlas Shrugged is the most important
book they could read right now.
I thought Americans knew that the Democrat
party is nothing more than a collection of special interest groups agitating
for special treatment and money from the government.
I thought Americans knew that Santa Claus
is fictional and that only children believe in him.
I thought Americans were not children.
I thought Americans knew that when you
allow a union to automatically take money from its members for political purposes,
whether they want it or not, you have a recipe for overly-powerful unions who
no longer represent their members.
I thought Americans knew that hating the
rich is un-American.
I thought Americans knew that no poor
person ever hired anyone.
I thought Americans knew that rich people
spend money and help the economy too.
I thought Americans knew that laborers
build the yachts rich people purchase.
I thought Americans knew that teachers’
unions are far more interested in teachers than students, which is why teachers
are better-paid than ever and students are dumber than ever.
I thought Americans knew that a foreign
policy of “leading from behind” would lead to the misunderstanding of the true
aims of the “Arab spring,” the debacle in Benghazi, and the coming debacles in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
I thought Americans knew George W. Bush won
the Iraq war with his roundly-condemned surge policy.
I thought Americans knew that Obama
continued every facet of the Patriot Act he so roundly condemned and increased
drone strikes, cell-phone tapping of American citizens, and basically eroded
their privacy rights.
I thought Americans knew that telling your
enemy the day you’ll quit fighting him will simply result in his quiescence
until that day and the next day, when you’re gone, he’ll go back to doing what
he’s always done.
I thought Americans knew that a man who won’t
release his college grades either fudged them or failed his classes.
I thought Americans knew that a man who
oversaw the least impressive issue of The
Harvard Law Review—and indeed never even wrote an article for the Review— was certainly not the “smartest person in every room
he’s entered.”
I thought Americans knew that a man who
only had two jobs, that of “community organizer” and a half-term senator, would
know literally nothing about running anything.
I thought Americans knew that a man who
left his own brother in abject poverty knew nothing
about “loving your neighbor.”
I thought Americans knew that a man who was
schooled by radicals, anti-Americans, anti-colonialists, terrorists, and
communists would have a different vision for America.
I thought Americans knew that lying about
your political opponent says more about you than him.
I thought Americans saw the real Obama in
the first debate.
I thought Americans would know that good
fences make good neighbors and that allowing everyone who can swim across the
Rio Grande into our country is bad for our country—as well as theirs.
I thought Americans knew that allowing
mass-illegal immigration from Mexico is bigoted against all those who wish to
come here from countries from which cannot swim to America.
I thought Americans knew that abortion is
murder and a man who voted for partial-birth
abortion four times while an Illinois state senator sanctioned murder on his
watch.
I thought Americans knew that even if Roe v. Wade is overturned in the Supreme
Court, the states could then vote to keep abortion legal, if they wanted to. And
then we’d see what happens.
I thought Americans knew that 50 million
abortions since 1970 is a holocaust.
I thought Americans knew that the embryo is
a human being guaranteed Constitutional rights. What else could it be?
I thought Americans valued innocent life
over “choice,” which 98% of the time is the choice to terminate an inconvenient
pregnancy, not rectify a rape or act of incest.
I thought Americans loved life more than
death.
I thought Americans knew that the Executive
branch of the federal government is supposed to enforce laws passed by Congress, not create laws on its own
directly contrary to the will of the people and Congress.
I thought Americans knew that if you took
100% of the money all millionaires in America have, you could run the country
for less than a week, and then who would we hate?
I thought Americans knew that work is noble
and that paying your way in life is one of the greatest feelings there is.
I thought Americans knew that they should
buy their own contraceptives.
I thought Americans knew that “global
warming” is a fiction invented by rent-seeking scientists who need dire
predictions to get money for studies.
I thought Americans knew that the polar
bear population has quintupled over the last 25 years.
I thought Americans knew that climate
change is ongoing and there is nothing
mankind can do to affect it.
I thought Americans knew that the site of
the Exxon Valdez oil spill is now a
thriving ecosystem.
I thought Americans knew that Yellowstone’s
million new lodgepole pines (spontaneously generated when the 1989 fire released
seeds) is proof that man does not know how to “manage” nature.
I thought Americans knew that mankind is
also a part of nature, and that everything we do is as “natural” as a shark,
and look how long they’ve been
around.
I thought Americans knew that no one wants dirty air and water.
I thought Americans knew that all countries
go through the manufacturing phase and that we are now in the intellectual
property phase of civilization and thus we simply cannot make a car as cheaply as China can, nor should we even try.
I thought Americans knew that we should save
money by buying inexpensive goods from overseas and focus our imaginations and
energy on new products and new ideas and let manufacturing-phase countries grow
their economies and increase their
standard of living by building those products for us.
I thought Americans knew that manufacturing
buggy whips “Made in America!” is wrong not only because we no longer need
buggy whips, but even if we did, they could be made cheaper elsewhere.
I thought Americans knew that we are no
longer a manufacturing economy but a service and innovation economy.
I thought Americans knew that going on
disability and having others pay your way eats away at the soul.
I thought Americans knew that no one can “have
it all.”
I thought Americans knew that being “rich”
in America is no guarantee you’ll always be rich, and you want that to be a
door, not a wall, so you have hope of perhaps becoming “rich” yourself someday.
I thought Americans knew that the 1960s college
radicals never left college after all and now they have tenure and are
infecting your children with ideas that have never worked, which is why they stayed in school.
I thought Americans knew that you cannot
send children to college for four years to be infected with anti-capitalist,
anti-American propaganda and not have them vote for anti-capitalist,
anti-American candidates.
I thought Americans knew that nationalizing
student loans merely ensures that more children will go to college, fewer will
pay the loans back, and they all will graduate with anti-capitalist,
anti-American sensibilities.
I thought Americans knew that nationalizing
healthcare will result in the same kind of service you get at the Post Office.
Ever wait in line for a surly employee at UPS?
I thought Americans knew that most health
care costs would come down if insurance providers were allowed to do business
across state lines, like auto insurance companies. There is no auto insurance
crisis, is there?
I thought Americans knew that the smaller
medical care safety net there is, the more they will monitor their own health
choices, like eating right.
I thought Americans knew that there is an
inverse correlation between increased drug abuse (legal and illegal) and the
destruction of our civilization.
I thought Americans knew that legalizing
another drug that saps personal initiative and destroys lives was a bad thing.
I thought Americans knew that real
compassion is teaching people to be responsible for their own decisions and not
to expect someone else to foot the bill.
I thought Americans knew that making
someone else pay for your massive end-of-life health care is immoral and people
themselves should not saddle their descendants with a huge bill in the last six
months that didn’t even save a life.
I thought Americans knew that religion
should not be a disqualifier for public office.
I thought Americans knew that voting for a man because of his skin color is
no different than voting against him:
you’re still a racist.
I thought Americans knew that government
will never care for you as well as
you care for yourself.
I thought Americans knew that history
repeats itself and that when Rome voted itself “bread and circuses,” it was
over for Rome.
I thought Americans knew that, while
America is not Greece, the same harsh and inviolable economic truths also apply to us, and our economic crash will destroy
civilization.
I thought Americans were ready to return to time-honored values
and behavior.
I was wrong.
1 comment:
Well Said! You defined my undefined anger so well. Thanks, Ken!
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