Many people see the upcoming election as a contest between parties and personalities; with unemployment and a sagging economy weighing heavily upon our national psyche, we struggle to determine which candidates can best address these issues and lead us to a brighter future.
Perhaps equally worthy of contemplation is the question of whether America’s great economic and social freedoms should continue to be eroded by progressive (a.k.a. liberal) policies.
Modern day progressivism is a social and political philosophy that places absolute faith in centralized planning and has a seemingly insatiable appetite for expanding government and redistributing income. It seeks to replace individual responsibility and choice with unprecedented government control over the lives of all Americans.
In the past two years, we’ve seen the Obama administration essentially take over major private sector entities; e.g., health care, banking, housing, student loans and the auto industry. Remember early on when bureaucrats decided which car dealerships would be closed regardless of their profitability?
This administration’s economic stimulus package of almost $1 trillion promised shovel-ready jobs and no more than 8% unemployment. Instead, we’ve seen unemployment figures climb from 4.6% (when the Democrats took over Congress in 2007) to 9.6% today—with no improvement in sight.
Recently Los Angeles County audited its spending of $111 million of taxpayer stimulus money and found that only 55 jobs were created. That’s over $2 million dollars per job! This is not atypical; hundreds of similar situations have been documented across the nation. In June, the government issued an all-time record 41.3 million food stamps. As one politician aptly pointed out, “Democrats have become the party of food stamps, not paychecks.”
Today’s progressives want an army of bureaucrats making decisions for us. That’s not the way of a free people. Let’s choose freedom in November.
Jim Littlejohn
