Requiem for a Republic (Guest Voice)
Is President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan which now seems destined to pass with little GOP support a solution or likely to be part of a future problem? Is it a symbol of democracy in action, or symptomatic of the demise of the concept of the Republic as it has long been understood? In this Guest Voice conservative talk show host Michael Reagan argues that it’s cause for mourning rather than celebration. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
Requiem for a Republic
by Michael Reagan
It is not true that grown men don’t cry. I’m grown and I’m on the verge of tears.
A Republic I have loved all my life is being is being murdered and the crime is an inside job.
If you hear a whirring sound in the background it is my dad Ronald Reagan, who loved and served this nation, spinning in his grave as his latest successor plunges a carving knife into America’s vital organs.
In his wildest dreams Ronald Reagan never thought that a president of a United States, now in the throes of a serious economic crisis, would adopt a solution to the problems of our economy that would not only worsen the situation, but set in motion the beginning of a transition of the government of the United States from a Constitutional Republic into a coercive quasi-Marxist regime where Washington is the master of our people instead of their servant.
Let it be said loud and clear: Barack Obama’s so-called stimulus bill, feverishly embraced by his sticky-fingered Democratic minions in the House and Senate (and three craven Republican senators), will not do a single thing to revive our ailing economy. Nothing.
Instead it will put Washington’s grasping hands into every nook and cranny of America’s economic and social life, and bankrupt an already penurious nation for generations to come.
Think about it — nearly a trillion dollars to be squandered on a host of pork-laden projects, payoffs to pet leftist groups and causes grasping for their share of the booty, and a few bucks to create jobs, mostly in the public sector.
A trillion dollars we don’t have and will need to borrow from our grandchildren and their offspring. A trillion dollars created out of thin air that will drastically reduce the value of the dollars in our pockets in an orgy of runaway inflation.
It wasn’t all that long ago that spending a billion dollars on government projects and programs was viewed with alarm.
As the late Sen. Everett Dirksen once said, “A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”
A trillion dollars is $1000 billion, a sum that the imagination cannot comprehend.
If you could have spent a million dollars every day since Christ was born you would not even come close to having spent a trillion dollars, yet Mr. Obama and his wastrel Democratic stooges on Capitol Hill have no qualms about spending that amount — and more — on programs that will do nothing to alleviate the current economic crisis, and in many ways worsen it.
Have we forgotten what Thomas Jefferson warned us when in 1791? He said, “To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we (will then) be taxed in our meat and our drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they (will) be happy.”
Jefferson would have refused to believe that a free people would allow their government to saddle them and their children and grandchildren with a debt so enormous they could not even begin to comprehend.
Nor would he have even dreamt of the government wasting money on projects noted by former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr, such as a billion dollars to subsidize money-losing Amtrak, $20 billion to expand the already-bloated food stamp program, about $2 billion diverted from the wallets of hard-working Americans to subsidize childcare, and $2.8 billion to fund advocacy programs studying the global-warming hoax.
There’s another $600 million for newer cars for government bureaucrats $44 million to refurbish the Department of Agriculture, $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, and $150 million to spruce up the Smithsonian buildings and more than $400 million to promote anti-smoking programs and programs to fight sexually transmitted diseases.
That’s what future generations of Americans will be paying for. I’m sure they’ll thank us.
Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on radio stations nationally as part of American Family Radio (www.afr.net). ©2009 Mike Reagan. .Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc.
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11 Responses to “Requiem for a Republic (Guest Voice)”
Mike, If we hand out $20B in food stamps, not only will That $20B be spent the same week it is handed out, but most of it will be spent on the kind of products that business (not to mention ultimately the healthcare industry) makes huge profits on, thereby stimulating your constituency just as much as that of the Democrats. Likewise $2B in subsidized child care isn't just disappearing – it's going into the pockets of low-income care providers who will spend it, thereby allowing business to prosper, and enabling parents to earn their own living rather than rely on the government for support. Concomitantly the resulting increase in the labor pool will increase pressure on wages, once again improving the climate for business. Just think of it as a corporate tax cut which passes through a few poor people on the way. It'll do wonders for your blood pressure.
Obama didn't create this crisis- his predecessor did– and Bush dealt with it by allowing Sec Paulson to hand out enormous sums with no oversight. The problem is that during the Bush Administration the middle-class consumer disappeared.
I didn't need to read this whole piece of garbage. I only had to get to the second sentence to know that it was all going to be garbage.
It would help more if Mr. Reagan, instead of griping about problems and throwing out jingoisms, actually got up off his rear and – I don't know, did something that would help alleviate those problems he seems to have. He quotes Jefferson – but has he forgotten the reckless spending the Republicans have done under the cover of the war on terror; the intrusions into our social lives with the PATRIOT Act and warrantless wiretapping; all the while being told to shut up and sing? Of course, Bush “sacrificed free market principles to save the free market” by allowing Paulson to do what he did. C'mon. Really, now.
Throwing stones from a glass house doesn't add anything to the conversation.
I suppose all of our Allies are quasi marxists, too?. Why not just lump that word in with terrorism, call it a day, and live in a shrinking bubble? Further, what were we before Reagan Sr.? We certainly, by this logic, weren't Capitalists.
@Jim: Nice. I bet your BP is still stable.
I really wonder if Mr Reagan realizes he makes his father look bad. Now I didn't agree with Ronald Reagan on much but I would guess that we would agree that this ideological nonsense from his son is wrong. Ronald Reagan did indeed love this country – it's obvious his son Michael does not which makes him a good Republican these days.
Michael Reagan – the family equivalent of the stupid Baldwin.
Hysteria is what passes for conservatism now.
I guess Reagan is the voice of the Loony Right to balance out the Loony Left that is often posted here.
MR would be handing out Big Macs for minimum wage if it wasn't for his famous father. At least RR knew when to stick to ideology and when to be flexible and pragmatic. His son is an embarrassment to the Reagan name.
The bill is bad. In addition to establishing the following precedents,
* Huge new spending benchmarks, effectively
* Much more growth of government size and interventionism
the bill itself is _bad_, not simply and directly aimed at short-term stimulus measures (or with the beginning of longer-term projects like infrastructure, which I'd like to see), but full of so much other needless things, wrongful things (pork!), that it is so bad that it is _likely_ to fail and thus to likely guarantee that they'll be back with more ideas and more spending later.
Maybe they even knew this and this was another of their goals with this bill, too.
Oh, well. I hadn't counted on entitlement reform any time soon, anyway. Social Security will continue to someone else's problem, later.
I had to chuckle when CNN showed the German ICE high-speed train on the screen and said Harry Reid wants money in this bill for a high-speed train project from LA to Las Vegas. Actually, a good idea, but not appropriate for this stimulus if this is meant to be a rapid-start measure. But Harry should realize, I chuckled to myself, that I can make his idea work. (It actually stands to do well on that route, especially if there's gambling allowed beyond the easternmost California stop on the route.) What to do for a dining or cafeteria car on that train? In-N-Out Burger I long have advocated for Southern California trains, but we can do better than that on this route with this clientele. It can be a Hooters. Ah, yes. But I have an even better idea. It is a restaurant car called “Topsiders,” which is all the “girls” would wear.
“Bush dealt with it by allowing Sec Paulson to hand out enormous sums with no oversight”
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Look at what the defenders of this big “stimulus” [sic] bill have been saying! “Don't nit-pick it to death, don't waste time reading it; we need to pass it now, Now, NOW!”