Lost in Obamaland

This was written by a writer named Barbara Anderson who writes for The Salem News. I thought it deserved to be read by all of you.

Read it. Pass it on to others who need to understand what is happening to our country.



The Salem News
Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Lost in Obamaland
© by Barbara Anderson

I'm lost. Nothing makes sense anymore.

Do you (still) watch "Lost"? I had an epistemological insight in the final moments of this past season when the hydrogen bomb exploded, hopefully to blast the island back to an earlier dimension. I realized that the many people who enjoyed the ABC series when it began eventually fell into two categories — those who need a drama to make sense, so the viewer can follow the plot; and those who just go along for the ride. The first group has dropped out; the second can't wait for the start of the 2010 season.

I always thought I was a first-group TV drama viewer, but I find I'm happy to just watch "Lost"; maybe I really do expect the writers to share the meaning of life by the final episode. Or maybe I just need to fantasize about being blasted back to an earlier dimension, because I am so truly lost in this year's political realities.

For most of my life, the United States of America was the greatest (capitalist) nation in the world, battling in a Cold War with the Soviet Union and, should it ever awaken from the poverty of its communist economy, ready to fight Red China as well. Suddenly it's 2009, where the Chinese own a trillion dollars of our national debt and are lecturing us on fiscal responsibility; while a Russian columnist writes the following warning in the April 27 edition of the Russian newspaper Pravda:

"It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple ...

"First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in DC that directly affects their lives....

"Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different 'branches and denominations' were for the most part ... happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the 'winning' side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another ...

"The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world ... Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster ...

"Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper ...

"The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

"The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker."

At first I didn't believe a Russian wrote this; I thought perhaps a Republican was trying to make a partisan point about the Obama Administration. But it's easy to find Pravda on the Web, and the column by Stanislav Mishin. So, yes, a Russian is telling us that a version of the old Soviet Union is coming to an economy very near us.

Conservative American commentators are ridiculed when they use the word "socialism" to describe what is happening, and much of the public laughs because it has no idea what either capitalism or socialism is, or why freedom can exist with only the former.

Though readers of this newspaper may not be among them — or need me to use "favorite TV dramas" to make my point — I'll pause to define.

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution; socialism is based on public ownership. This week, as the government takes over General Motors and plans to take over the health care industry, funded by a European-style Value Added Tax, why aren't Americans outraged?

This country was founded by people who just wanted to get the heck out of where they already were. The writers of our Constitution were aware of what was wrong with those other places and created a document that would keep the new nation from eventually falling into the old, familiar patterns which its citizens, for good reason, had left behind.

This is why the Constitution is not a "living document." The form of government it outlines is based on immutable values. All nominees to the Supreme Court should understand this. If they must empathize, let them feel for those who will have no place to emigrate if America fails.

All is not lost. We can fight to regain control, to restore what has been uniquely American — our free economic system. Or we can hang back and just enjoy the drama, until we learn that nothing is enjoyable when freedom is gone.

We do not, however, have the option of dropping out and simply watching another channel.