2016: Year of Decisions
Freedom does not mean America writes you a blank check.
January 6, 2016
Bruce Thornton
Next November’s election will decide more than who becomes president. It will establish whether the United States has shifted from its foundational ideals of limited government, personal freedom, citizen autonomy, and a robust foreign policy that serves America’s interests and security, to the European model of quasi-pacifist internationalism abroad, and a centralized, collectivist technocratic rule at home –– exactly what 2400 years of political philosophy has feared is the infrastructure of tyranny.
Barack Obama vowed to “fundamentally transform the United States,” but for all his malign changes and erosion of the Constitutional order, “fundamentally” remains a question-begging adverb. The unique circumstances of his election and re-election ––especially the desperate and misguided yearning for racial reconciliation to be achieved merely by voting –– question whether a critical mass of Americans agrees with that goal. High disapproval numbers in polls of Obamacare, the president’s foreign policy, and the man himself suggest not. But the election of Hillary Clinton would show that despite those opinions, a majority of Americans endorse the progressive Democrats’ agenda.
That agenda has been obvious for at least a century. It is predicated on political scientism, the false idea that human nature, motivation, and behavior, along with social and political order, can be understood “scientifically,” and thus manipulated and guided toward a more egalitarian world –– the “social justice” of so much progressive rhetoric. But such a program requires a technocratic, administrative elite housed in powerful government bureaucracies and agencies, walled off from direct accountability to and scrutiny by the people. The ensuing reduction of political freedom and autonomy necessary for top-down rule is compensated for by redefining political freedom as private hedonism –– the freedom to indulge the appetites, consume products and services, abort unwanted pregnancies, and choose whatever sexual identity one fancies.
The second dimension of this agenda is the adoption of “internationalism,” the notion that nationalist particularity and interests are dangerous and immoral, and so must be marginalized. Transnational organizations and bureaucracies, manned by technocratic elites, must order the world’s peoples in order to create global “social justice.” The belief that diplomatic “engagement” and consultative processes can reduce, contain, or forestall conflict and eliminate violence as the arbiter of interstate rivalries. Our nation is no more “exceptional” than any other, as Obama once said, and so must defer to the consensus of the “global community” and pursue its interests. The West in particular is obliged to adopt this ideology. Its alleged imperialist and colonialist crimes, and its advanced capitalist economies and technologies, have fomented the disorder that has exploited and oppressed the rest of the world, and inhibited its development and improvement. Thus the West, especially the United States, apparently owes various forms of “reparations” to the Rest, and be a world “partner mindful of its own imperfections,” as Obama wrote in 2007.
The two administrations of Barack Obama, and the campaign platform of Hillary Clinton, are expressions of this agenda. Federal agencies like the EPA, the NLRB, the DOJ, and the IRS, to name a few, have aggressively intruded into the freedom of citizens and businesses in order to impose politicized investigations and regulations never sanctioned by Congress. The president has abused executive power to change laws from Obamacare to immigration, realizing Woodrow Wilson’s dream of a chief executive empowered not just to veto bad laws, but to create “good” ones. Hillary has already promised to do the same, vowing, for example, to take executive action on gun control. She also has peddled the same “social justice” rhetoric that has dominated the Obama presidency –– “fair share,” “you didn’t build that,” “income inequality,” “war on women,” all the slogans of the redistributionist federal government increasing its power in order to create “equality.”
And like Obama, Hillary supports the social changes that redefine ordered liberty as the power to do what one likes in private life –– the public square is another matter –– without hindrance from tradition or religion or even common sense. Hence the flip-flop both politicians made on same-sex marriage and the Defense of Marriage Act signed by Hillary’s husband. They both support compelling religious organizations and private businesses to violate their tenets and provide birth control and abortions in their health plans, or consumer services to same-sex couples.
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2016: Year of Decisions
How could Republicans allow this mess yet again? Are you really this stupid? This phony chart should be flipped, the ones on the bottom should be on the top. At least they understand foreign and domestic policy. 
