November 8, 2008
I am one of the 57 million Americans who voted for someone other than our President Elect. While strongly disagreeing with John McCain on a wide variety of issues, I voted for him because I believe that the United States is beyond a doubt the greatest country that has ever existed. American exceptionalism has resulted in the most advanced society humanity has ever produced... And it's not even close. The unique combination of individual freedom, rule of law and Capitalism has resulted in more advances in a shorter period of time than has ever occurred. From the Declaration of Independence to Manifest Destiny to the winning of two World Wars, the United States has always been something special.
Perhaps no better example can be found than Cyrus McCormick, the man who helped feed the world. McCormick's 1931 invention of the mechanical reaper was the first major advance in farming in 5,000 years. In the 1820s, using tools and techniques that had not significantly changed for five millennia a man could harvest approximately 2 acres per day. Cyrus McCormick created the first effective mechanical reaper. Despite its great limitations, it more than doubled a man’s capacity to harvest grain and began a technological march that continues today. To put McCormick's achievement in perspective, in 1831 ninety percent of the American population was somehow involved in farming to feed the country. Today that number stands at less than 3%. Not only does that 3% feed an America with a much larger population - 300 million vs. 15 million in McCormick's time, it feeds tens of millions of people around the world by exporting millions of tons of foodstuffs annually. Although the impact on farming itself was substantial, the real impact of McCormick’s efforts was felt far beyond the fields. Millions of people across the country (and around the world) who had formerly been tied to the farm were now free to pursue their dreams elsewhere. From energy, medicine and manufacturing to retail, transportation and virtually every other area of our economy, the economic miracle that is the United States owes much to the man who freed the population to dream of the possibilities that lay beyond the amber fields.
And McCormick is just one of many. Think of flight. In 1903 the Wright Brothers first lifted off the ground in Kitty Hawk, NC. Sixty six years later their aerial progeny were able to not only fly a man to the moon, but more importantly, bring Mr. Armstrong and friends home safely. Think of computers. In 1946 Thomas Watson's IBM introduced ENIAC, the world's first electronic general computer. ENIAC could do 5,000 transactions per second, cost $500,000 and weighed in a 30 tons. Today you can spend under $500 and get a Dell PC that can do millions of transactions per second, weighs under 3 lbs and can connect to computers around the world via the Pentagon created Internet. It's no coincidence that almost every advance along that path found its genesis in Silicon Valley. Think of telephones. Alexander Graham Bell was issued the first telephone patent in 1874. Ninety nine years later Martin Cooper set us on a march that has almost obviated the need for a landline phone in a universe where almost everyone has a mobile phone. Add to that something like Apple's iPhone and you have at your fingertips a camera, GPS tracker, Internet device and computer all wrapped into one.
The list of those who embody American exceptionalism is almost endless: George Eastman, Elisha Otis, Willis Carrier, Amadeo Giannini, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Henry Kaiser, George S. Patton, Bill Gates, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc, Malcom X, Sam Walton, Craig Venter, Oprah Winfry, Mark Andreessen, Shawn Fanning to name just a few. (A brilliant book on the subject is Harold Evans' They Made America.)
It is not the DNA of Americans that makes us what we are. Rather it is our culture, freedoms and belief that anyone who puts their mind to something can achieve success and prosper. For the latter the election of Barack Obama as president should put the final stake in the coffin of the argument that any group of Americans needs a handout in order to succeed. It is on those former measures however, where I feel we might be sitting in a spot not unlike Germany in 1933. I'm not suggesting Mr. Obama and his party are Fascists in the Aryan sense. Rather, with a small "f" in the sense of using the tools of government to quiet opposition and demand allegiance to the party line. One needs look no further than the desire on the part of Democrats to revive "The Fairness Doctrine" That is nothing more than a tool to silence the most effective conservative vehicle in the country, talk radio. It would of course not apply to television and newspapers, obsequious bastions of liberal and progressive ideology. Liberals cannot compete successfully in the free marketplace of ideas so they instead choose to use the power of government to quiet those who disagree with them. On a much smaller scale, look what befell "Joe the Plumber" after having the audacity to question Mr. Obama's ideas...
Or it might be the shadows of Russia in 1917 that are being cast. Look at the Democrat's desire to use intimidation (Card Check) to unionize every workplace in the United States and in the long run destroy Capitalism. Why else would they want to remove an employee's ability to vote for or against unions in secret? Add to that Mr. Obama's desire to "Spread the wealth around" and Jim Moran's disdain for "The simplistic notion that people who have wealth are entitled to keep it." and you quickly understand that the days of Capitalism and individual achievement are numbered under a Obama, Pelosi, Reid triumvirate. Talk about killing the goose that laid the golden eggs...
Finally, the Constitution as a shield for the protections of our rights and the limits on the power of government will be tatters after four years of an Obama presidency. What else but chaos can we expect when the courts are filled with justices and judges who are specifically chosen based on this criteria: We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom; the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges. (link) I was under the obviously false impression that the role of the judiciary was to ensure that the laws written by the legislature were indeed based on powers granted by the people via the Constitution and to ensure that such laws were enforced by the executive branch without regard to a citizen's race, religion, gender or national origin.
So the Change We Need turns out to be silencing the opposition, putting the control of industry in the hands of the proletariat, appropriating the wealth of successful citizens and destroying the rule of law... Essentially destroying the very things that are the foundation of American exceptionalism. One wonders what that is prescription for... Oh, and we must remember the decimation of the military (or with Barney Frank's 25% reduction, it might be called quarteration if that were a word) and the building of "a civilian national security force"? Hmmmm..... I'm not sure, but I get this strange feeling that all of this seems somehow vaguely familiar...
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