Ronald Reagan once said; Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.

Likewise, tyranny is never more than a generation away. Those who wish to impose tyranny prey upon the ignorance of those they wish to subjugate. Knowing that it is easier to deprive people of their rights if they are unaware of their rights, politicians, in their desperate quest for power, often forsake ones conscience in order to further their career. In other words, they seek to preserve constituent ignorance, rather than advance societal knowledge.

In a world where others have lost their liberty by trading it away for the false promises of the state, we choose to hold to our founding principles. We will stop these power-seekers where they stand. We will keep America… America, by retaining its character as the land of individual liberty and unequalled opportunity.

American patriots have defeated tyrants, liberated the oppressed, and rescued the afflicted. America’s model of innovation, capitalism and free enterprise has lifted literally billions of the world’s people out of poverty. America has been a force for good like no other in this world, and for that we make no apology… and desire no change.  - Mitt Romney

The Economy

Our Founding Fathers knew that, outside of its “legitimate functions”, government does nothing as well, or as economically, as the private sector economy.

Obama came into office following the 2008 financial crisis which, as we know, he blamed entirely on George W. Bush. Triggered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises, the crisis reflected the many “subprime” mortgages they had pressured banks to make. Bush’s efforts to rein them in had fallen on deaf ears.

Like Roosevelt, Obama initiated a number of policies and legislation, not the least of which was his “stimulus” package to turn around the economy, which has left us with a equal level of real unemployment(G6) today than when he took office. His other initiative… stimulating Green energy, has cost taxpayers billions and has also resulted in humiliating failure.

In “New Deal or Raw Deal?” historian Burton Folsom, Jr., wrote of Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA) documenting that it and other measures did nothing more than balloon the federal government while interfering with the normal action of capitalism to recover—as it had many times before—from financial crises.

Oklahoma Senator Thomas Gore, first elected in 1907, summed up Roosevelt’s efforts saying at the time, “No depression can be ended by gifts, gratuities, doles, and alms handed out by the Federal Treasury, and extorted from taxpayers that are bleeding from every pore.”

Writing in the April 3rd Wall Street Journal, Edward P. Lazear, 2006-2009 chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, wrote about “The Worst Economic Recovery in History.” Assessing Obama’s policies, Lazear said that “our current recovery pales in comparison with most other recoveries, including the one following the Great Depression.”

“The Great Depression started with major economic contractions in 1930, ’31, ’32 and ’33. In the three following years, the economy rebounded with growth rates of 11%, 9%, and 13% respectively…”

“According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the current recovery began in the second half of 2009. Since that time, the economy has grown at an average of 2.4%.”

“It would be difficult to argue,” wrote Lazear, “that government policies over the past three years have enhanced confidence in the U.S. business environment. Threats of higher taxes, the constantly increasing regulatory burden, the failure to pursue an aggressive trade policy that will open U.S. exports, and the enormous increase in government spending, are all impediments to private sector growth .”

Like Roosevelt, Obama has impeded a rebound in the growth of the economy and he has done it by applying all the same socialist “solutions” that extended the Great Depression from 1929 to 1941.

For Obama, this has truly been a crisis that would not be allowed to go to waste. What he has done has been to impose Obamacare in the face of massive rejection, overseen the loss of two million jobs, and increased our national debt to a level that puts the U.S. on a collision course with a debt crisis very similar to that of semi-socialist Europe.

Barack Obama is asking Americans to gamble that the U.S. economy can be taxed into prosperity. That’s the message of his campaign for the Buffett Rule, which raises income-tax rates on millionaires to a minimum of 30%, and for the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. He wants to raise the highest income tax rate by 20%, double the rate on capital gains, add a new 3.8% tax on all capital earnings, and nearly triple the dividend tax rate.

All this will enhance “economic efficiency,” insists a White House economic report. As for those who disagree, says President Obama, they’re just pushing “the same version of trickle-down economics tried for much of the last century. . . . But prosperity sure didn’t trickle down.”

Mr. Obama needs a refresher course on the 1920s, 1960s, 1980s and even the 1990s, when government spending growth and taxes fell and employment and incomes grew… rapidly.

“It’s not that liberals are ignorant, it’s that what they know… is often wrong.” - Ronald Reagan

The Federal Government Budget

Liberalism is an ideology intended to meet the material needs of the masses by increasing the power of government over the economy. This “centralized government” cannot control the economy without also controlling the people, the very thing our Founding Fathers sought to minimize with the constitution. But social populist propaganda sells easily to the politically ignorant who hope to benefit from expanded nanny state policies. They do not understand that, in return for government benefits awarded to them, freedoms are surrendered elsewhere. They do not understand that when government confiscates the rewards of success, the drive to succeed is reduced or eliminated. It is this result that has doomed socialist economies of the past, and currently restricts the semi-socialist economies of the present.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not of the belief that the less social services provided by the government the better. Although economically that may prove true, for the health and safety of our society it does not. Providing assistance to those in real poverty is cost-effective social management. To leave the most desperate to fend for themselves would lead to increased hunger, homelessness, disease, and crime.

The goal is finding and maintaining a balance. This balance limits the federal government to the post-war average revenue equal to 18-20% of our economy and never confiscates more that 1/4 of anyones "total" income earned. (were well above that… on both counts) The balance provides social assistance to the most needy with the revenue remaining after the government has fulfilled its original mandate of protection. My alternative view is that most socialistic programs should be provided by the individual state and local governments, but I don’t want to get too far off-topic.

High earners typically pay a much higher share of their income in federal income taxes than do other Americans, despite President Obama’s claims. IRS data show that households earning more than $1 million annually pay about 25 percent of their "total" income in federal income taxes, on average, which is more than double the average rate paid by middle-income households.

Currently, the size and scope of government has outgrown the balance required for real and sustained economic growth. Leaning further towards socialism, with increased spending, without further socialist confiscation of personal income, has caused the deficit and debt that threatens our future. Now, if we confiscate more income, we set ourselves on a path toward the economic decline that socialism inevitably brings, and therefore we must reduce spending.

We have been simply providing too much.. to too many.. for too long, and while the correction may cause some societal pain in the short-term, it will stand as a reminder for future leaders, what the consequences of excessive government social policies are. It goes without saying, assistance to those above the poverty line need to be completely eliminated before any reductions are made to those below the poverty line. Simply put, if you are not “needy”, your concerns should not be societies concern.

Social democrats advocate redistributive taxation in the form of social welfare and government regulation of capital within the framework of a market economy. Redistribution of wealth is the transfer of property(money) from one group of individuals(wealthy) to others(poor) caused by a social mechanism such as, but not limited to, tax policy. Our current tax-code mess is the direct result of the political urge to socially engineer our society.

Many politicians are “class warriors,” who favor penalizing high-income earners with complicated provisions such as the alternative minimum tax and Obama’s proposed Buffett rule. Class warriors also favor subsidizing low-income tax filers, such as with the earned income tax credit, which is so complicated that it has an error rate of more than 20 percent.

Other politicians are “subsidy warriors,” who push for special tax breaks to favored industries and favored types of families. They see the tax code as a tool to micromanage the economy — whether it is liberals pushing for solar power tax breaks or conservatives pushing for child tax breaks. We all end up being losers from this political activism because the resulting complex tax code wastes our time and reduces economic growth.

Emblazoned on the Supreme Court building’s façade is the promise of “equal justice under law.” Yet the horrendously complicated tax code illustrates how far the government has strayed from that promise. Sadly, the purpose of those 73,608 pages of federal tax rules is not equal treatment but the top-down manipulation of our society by Washington.

President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party in general believe that more income redistribution is required to help fund the steadily increased need for social policy. Since Obama has been in office, entitlement spending has risen 41 percent to about $1 trillion a year. There are an astounding 126 separate anti-poverty programs in place.

Mitt Romney and the Republicans do not argue against a social safety net, but do reject the concept of “income inequality” being justification for its expansion. They instead look toward pro-growth economic policies, believing a rising economy would benefit all, including the federal treasury. If the economy were to improve, not only would the need for social programs be reduced, the revenue into the cash-straped government would increase. The GOP wants the free marketplace to provide income opportunity, not a giant federal nanny state. With the nation more than $16 trillion in debt, the Republicans have economics on their side, but emotion is another matter.

To be re-elected, Obama has resorted to class warfare as his main campaign theme, because that’s all he has left. He is encouraging class-against-class animosity, something that has never been done in this country. In the past, Americans might have envied someone who has more wealth, but as a nation we have never hated individual success, or wanted to punish wealth accumulation.

Even though furthering income redistribution, through an increased progressivity of the tax structure, would create adverse effects within the private sector economy, it has been a major plank in President Barack Obama’s re-election platform. In his desperate quest to retain power, he will forsake conscience in order to further his agenda. He will seek to preserve constituent ignorance, rather than advance societal knowledge. The redistribution of wealth could garner up to 48 percent of the vote, since that percentage of the American public pay no federal tax. And, in spite of Obama contributing nothing to the African-American community, for no other reason than race, he will get 95 percent of their vote. Those two voting blocs, acting out of ignorance and/or self interest, will make him difficult to defeat.

The promotion of class warfare is the single biggest danger to our country. That’s right… not the external treats of terrorism, not Russia, China, or countries in the Middle East. I believe we are more likely to encounter socialist economic decay from the inside, than to be violently attacked from the outside. If Obama is re-elected, and democratic socialism is expanded further, the future greatness of the United States could be in great peril.

Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment. Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. - Ronald Reagan