Rx for Republicans and Obama

The importance of speaking truth to power has never been more evident than it is in America today. The ideals of the American founding, captured in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, represent a monumental step of freedom and progress for the entire human race. They are now being attacked and destroyed from within, on a scale never before witnessed in America. If the destruction proceeds on its current course, every man and woman on the face of the earth will be worse off as a result.

Many Americans are completely asleep to what is happening; many others are wide awake to it, but feel impotent to stop it. They look everywhere for a leader who will speak the truth that will break through public thought as a whole, stop the destruction and begin to reverse it.

Republicans, or at least conservative Republicans, know full well what the dangers of the current course are. But they are intimidated by the Pravda media and cowed by the scorn and ridicule of the Beltway elite into mealy-mouthed denunciations of the Obama agenda, and acceptance of accusations that they just don’t ‘get’ how things have changed, and how people now want socialism instead of freedom. The intimidation is so complete that alleged Republican leaders such as Texas Senator John Cornyn and Texas Congressman Pete Sessions find themselves at odds over the right words to describe their concerns.

The problem, of course, is that America has its ‘historic’ first black President, and he seems to have a hip style that plays well in the popular culture, and is manifest one way or the other in the ubiquitous ‘approval’ polls. So one does not dare venture into criticizing such a popular near-icon; the fury and wrath of an indignant media will stir up hate and vitriol toward the speaker that will send him running for cover.

Well, we don’t have any more time for this cowardice. American ideals are more important than personalities. So here’s a prescription for Republican leaders to get into the fight and win it.

1. Obama is a tragic figure. The circumstances of his birth and upbringing—i.e., the worldview shaped by his dysfunctional home life; the path of his education through the liberal lock-think of Columbia and Harvard; the development of political experience in the wasteland that is Chicago politics; associations with people in deep turmoil over life’s purpose and meaning, and unable to square their turmoil with the idea of a loving God (or any God at all)—all of these have led to a man who has never grasped American ideals in their true significance to human progress. He is jaded, cynical, and enthralled by utterly false and destructive theories and philosophies—and to a large extent, through no fault of his own.

2. The demonization of President Bush leads many Republicans and conservatives to want to demonize Obama—which of course backfires in the face of his seeming personal popularity. But there’s no need to demonize him. While it may seem strange to pity someone who much of the world believes is the most powerful man on earth, he really is, at least at this stage, mostly to be pitied. He is following a philosophy that is 100% catastrophic to every man and woman in America and, indirectly, to every man and woman on earth. He may believe he is righting the wrongs done to people of color by people of white skin; he may believe he is shifting the balance from the rich to the downtrodden, but he is totally wrong, deadly wrong. The human desire for and right to freedom is not a skin color thing, and it’s not a net worth thing. It’s a spiritual thing. The smallest minority on earth is not the African-American, it’s the individual. The socialization of industry; the nationalization of healthcare; the expansion of government control over individual freedom—this does violence to the soul of every living thing, including Obama himself, his wife, and his two daughters. He is participating in his own destruction and he doesn’t know it.

3. So the prescription for Republicans is found in two simple steps—both of which are absolutely essential: (1) criticism is not about the man but about the ideas, philosophy and policies; and (2) criticism about Obama’s ideas, philosophy and policies needs to be bold, bare-knuckled, hard-edged, unequivocal and relentless. Step 1 is pretty vanilla stuff; almost Sunday school-like . Which is why it must be accompanied by Step 2.

4. The ideas, philosophy and policies of the Obama administration ARE socialist. There can be no waffling on the use of this word. If magazine covers want to claim we’re all socialists now, by all means let’s force the debate about just what that means.

5. The ideas, philosophy and policies of the Obama administration do VIOLENCE to the American ideal of individual freedom and responsibility under God. This hurts every man and woman in this country—it destroys initiative; it undermines morality; it leads to a meaningless, uninspired existence. It hurts blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians—it hurts everyone.

6. The ideas, philosophy and policies of the Obama administration are not new. They have been tried many times in history, and THEY HAVE NEVER WORKED. Not only have they never worked, they have affirmatively harmed the spirit of the people wherever they have been imposed; they have weakened their capacity resist that which is evil; they have sucked the goodness and joy out of life. No one in America wants this.

So what’s different about this prescription? Given the hostility of the Pravda media, what difference will it make?

What’s different is the demand for unflinching and unequivocal straight talk about what these policies are, that they’ve been tried before, and what they will lead to. No sugar-coating of what’s at stake; no more attempt to fit what’s at stake into a framework where some notion of bipartisanship can find a solution. These policies need to be stopped and reversed. They are antithetical to America itself. Republicans need to impel a history lesson through just this kind of blunt talk.

The difference it will make depends entirely on the relentlessness with which it is pursued. There can’t be one day of strong condemnation of the socialist agenda, followed by the next day of back-filling and hedging and apology for being too strident or extreme or apocalyptic. The policies are what they are—socialist—and they lead to what they lead to: the destruction of the blessed and blessing ideal of American freedom. Americans need to be told this in no uncertain terms, day after day, until enough of them finally wake up.

To repeat, it’s not about Obama personally; it’s about his ideas. But make no mistake, his ideas are not new—they’re as ancient as the human quest for power over other humans—but they are and will bring socialist hell to every man and woman; they are poisonous and hurtful to every black, white, Hispanic, Asian and everyone else. They are weakening the cause of human freedom in the world, which inevitably leads tyrants of all kinds to leap to fill the void, and in turn leads to bloodshed and violence and oppression on a massive scale.

We hope Obama himself wakes up, but whether he does or doesn’t is his personal problem. If America doesn’t wake up, the future of America and humanity itself is increasingly bleak.

Paul Gable

Posted May 20, 2009