I just watched one of the most frightening videos I have seen yet on You-Tube. I watched children singing hymns to Obama, the Leader. Parents sat dumb in admiration of the miracle of this music. To me, it was terrifying.

It made me think of the children in China who worshipped Chairman Mao and learned scripture from his little red book of sayings. It reminded me that Obama has already said that we have a lot to learn from China. If we are not careful, if we don’t stand up and vote in droves for constitutional government, then this is our future. Hymns to Obama. State banks holding all the money which is doled out to us and then ripped away in taxes to feed the socialist programs that are shared among us.

And don’t forget lines. A long line in front of the only store in town to receive toilet paper from the government distribution center. Five year plans which will lead to ever more equal distribution of the poverty in which all of us will live. Cooperative farms that won’t grow anything, because who cares. Cooperative factories that will produce nothing or junk, and it won’t much matter which.

I can’t tell you how horrifying it was to see that little choir of children in blue t-shirts with the word “Hope” on the front. I love children, and I hope in God. I don’t like to see children exploited for political purposes, and I know that Obama is not God. I’m not so sure the people in that room know it. I saw a lot of indication that Obama is truly regarded by those people as a Messiah, just as Chairman Mao was regarded by the Red Chinese. Ask the people on Taiwan, however, how they felt about him.

Do we want China here? Do we want the Soviet Union? Do we even want Scandinavia, a socialist paradise which is just discovering that people who don’t work produce nothing to support the economy that is supposed to give them everything? If we believe in a government that operates the way our Constitution is written, we had better speak up. We had better get busy and vote for McCain. He may not be a perfect president, but he is not a socialist. We have two choices, and one of them is a complete socialist. Obama is committed to socialist principles. Read his own issue statements, and you can verify it for yourself. So, if you don’t want a socialist country, you need to vote for McCain.

I believe that McCain will be a great president. I believe that Sarah Palin will be an exceptionally good vice president. I believe we will be really glad if we elect them. I guarantee we will rue the day if we elect Obama president, and if we do that, it might be the last election in which we ever have a choice. The Democrats have predicted Armageddon, and they may be right. If you want to win the battle of Armageddon, you need to vote for McCain.

A singular message has arisen from the families wringing their hands and weeping around kitchen tables across America. The message is this: The government owes its citizens a problem-free life, and Bush prevented it from doing that. I watched the parade of complaints, and I watched Barack Obama intently. Barack Obama’s acceptance speech is truly terrifying.

At the turn of the century, a lot of people in the Russian Empire believed Marx and Lenin when they said that if the working people of the world revolted against capitalism, the dictatorship of the proletariat (the working people) would be heaven on earth. They rose up en masse, toppled the empire, assassinated the royal family, and became dictators. Not long ago, the attempt by Russian Communists to promise every family a trouble-free life collapsed. It was not possible for everyone to receive healthcare, education, and good jobs when there was no engine of prosperity. Government produces nothing, and must tax those who are productive and profitable in order to have any money at all. Remove productivity and profit, and the whole system falls apart.

Barack Obama promised that under his administration, healthcare would be guaranteed for all. In the former Soviet Union, there were hospitals, built and financed by the government, and healthcare professionals who were dependent on the government for their wages. When the government had no money to pay for either infrastructure or wages, healthcare became a hit and miss proposition. The government could not afford to provide dialysis for all, so the most politically powerful got healthcare and everyone else took what was left.

Barack Obama promised that the government would assure a good education for every child. In the former Soviet Union, everyone was guaranteed an education, but the government used standardized tests at various points to determine the right education track for each citizen. The government did not operate by enabling citizens to achieve the careers they dreamed of. Rather, the government determined what it needed and who would provide that. A little girl might dream of being a ballerina, but if the government thought she would be more useful as a hotel maid, that was her destiny.

Barack Obama promised to create jobs and hang on to them. In the former Soviet Union, everyone was guaranteed a job. What a deal. No unemployment. Why, even old women could have jobs sweeping streets and picking up trash. What everyone was not guaranteed was a wage. Furthermore, nobody guaranteed that the money received as wages was worth anything. When the government had money, the wage was paid. When it had no money, the wage was not paid. Everyone was employed, but many had no income.

Is this what we want in the USA? Do we really want the government to guarantee healthcare, education and jobs? If the government takes over all those roles, how will the government get enough money to provide the promised education, pay the people in those guaranteed jobs, to build the guaranteed hospitals? Do we really want to start standing in line for toilet paper from the government-authorized shipment?

I listened to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, and as I heard each promise, this is the image that came to mind. Barack Obama scares me, because I don’t think that even he realizes what he is leading us to. He really believes that he is called to save our country by making these impressive promises. He actually thinks he can craft programs that will deliver on the promises. I guarantee you that he cannot do it. Just look at the Soviet Union. That country was a complete laboratory for socialism. If you want to understand how a country works when government guarantees the citizens healthcare, education, and jobs then just look at the former Soviet Union.

The real lesson there is that the Soviet Union collapsed in seventy years. I would hate for the USA to spend seventy years experimenting with a concept that has already been proved to be doomed to fail. Be warned. Barack Obama cannot and will not deliver on his promises. All he can possibly do is bankrupt the country in a vain attempt to deliver. We dare not let Barack Obama win this election if we want a free and prosperous nation.

Do not ignore what the Democrat presidential candidate says. Pay close attention to Barack Obama --  the way you would pay close attention to a rattlesnake in the middle of your kitchen table.

 Winston Churchill knew a few things about elections. In 1945, during an election campaign, he faced opponents who espoused a socialist agenda, just as John McCain’s opponent does. Churchill said of his opponent’s plans for Britain, “Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the object worship of the state.” John McCain needs to speak to the American people about this same problem.

Voters in the US have been lured gradually into an acceptance of socialism. The camel of socialism first sneaked his nose into the tent of US free enterprise during the New Deal. People suffered during the Great Depression, and Franklin Roosevelt announce he had come to help. He rolled out bank holidays and WPA and Social Security. Perhaps, if Hitler had not sent his tanks rolling into Poland, the American people would have seen clearly that the New Deal was picking their pockets with the hand not occupied with flashing the smoke and mirrors of socialism before their eyes.

In Election 2008, B. Hussein Obama is busy with his own road show, trying to convince us all that we need socialism in many forms. His proposals clearly demonstrate the truth of Churchill’s words. Churchill associated socialism with “worship” of government and totalitarian oppression. If Obama is elected, we will see exactly what Churchill was talking about.

Obama’s web site lists his positions and objectives for many issues. Take healthcare, for example. Obama proposes a national health care plan coupled with a watchdog agency to hover over the private insurance companies. Obama plans to assure that nobody can be rejected by an insurance company for any medical reason. He will demand record-keeping and guarantees from insurance plans and healthcare providers. The government’s tentacles will creep into every healthcare visit and transaction.

If anyone wants to know how well that will work, the first place to look is Medicare. This medical program operated, funded and guaranteed by the government has been a boondoggle from day one. Before Medicare, patients and doctors decided what medical treatment was appropriate for a diagnosis. After Medicare, the government runs that show. When a small rural hospital in Missouri wanted to provide dialysis in a location convenient for rural patients, the doctors eventually gave up trying to meet the regulations. Among the problems – Medicare will not pay for a lab test to determine if a patient has the right levels of medication in his system. According to Medicare, the test is only justified if the patient’s medication is outside the boundaries of acceptable levels. Unfortunately, the doctors were not able determine without a test the actual level of the medication in the patients’ systems. Medicare regulations like these make it very difficult for a doctor to provide good care for a patient.

In case you think that Medicare’s limitation to geriatric patients makes any difference, you could look at universal healthcare that the British have enjoyed now for many years. The British government pays for that system, and the British government makes the rules for that system, just as our government makes the silly rules for Medicare. Hence, even though Aricept has been demonstrated to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s in many patients, no British patients in the national healthcare system can use it. The cost was determined by the government administrators of the NHS to be prohibitive.

Obama calls his plan national health insurance, not national healthcare. Do not be deceived. The restrictions and regulations he is proposing would only be the first step. In fact, Medicare is still called insurance, too, but the regulations and reporting associated with it result in severe government involvement in the actual care of patients. True socialized medicine would not be far behind. I can hear now the call to end all the different programs – Medicare, Medicaid, national health insurance, private health insurance – to cut costs and eliminate waste. I can hear now the call to end the pretense that it is health insurance, and simply call it national health care. After all, the government is paying all the bills.

Concern about the cost of healthcare in general will only escalate if the government pays all the bills. After all, the most powerful impetus in the war against smoking has been the cost of medical treatment for smokers who develop lung cancer, heart disease and stroke. A loudly vocal movement has developed to make smokers into social outcasts, and the biggest reason is that treating lung cancer, heart disease and stroke is expensive. We hear constantly that huge sums of money are paid annually for the treatment of diseases of smokers. Employers and insurance companies put a lot of pressure on smokers to quit, because they do not want the cost of medical treatment for smokers.

If Obama were successful in bringing about socialized medicine in the USA, we would see a great many other campaigns just like the campaign against smokers. In fact, the government can bypass a campaign altogether and simply say, if you smoke, we refuse to pay for your medical care. Period. Is this what Americans want?

I can imagine another campaign that would become a regulation, too. New York passed a law against trans fats in restaurants. California has outlawed trans fats in the whole state. It is all about obesity, and the concern for the obese is all about the costs of health care. If the federal government runs health care, what is to keep the federal government from telling people what they can eat?

It all boils down to exactly what Churchill observed. Socialism in any form is tyranny. Socialism sounds so kind at the first. In Russia in 1917 poor people were deceived into believing that socialism would take care of them. By 1991 their eyes had opened. They had learned that the government only takes. They could not count on the government to do anything but push them around. They were still poor. They stood in line for toilet paper and soap, and the government could not even be counted on to pay them for their work. US citizens need to look with great skepticism at Obama’s suggestion that government health care will be better than free enterprise healthcare. Then they need to look with the same skepticism at all his other proposals to take care of them.

In a socialist country the government takes care of itself. People receive what the government is willing to give them, but the government gets all the good stuff. Citizens unite! Do not let Obama deceive you into giving away your freedom. Do not let him lure you into worship of government. Stand up for the Constitution, personal freedom and free enterprise. These are the forces that have made our country great and strong for more than 200 years. Do not give away your freedom for the false promises of a government caretaker.

Obama is using hundreds of fine words to say nothing again. The latest nothing purports to affirm a commitment to government funding for faith-based initiatives. Before conservatives and evangelicals swallow Obama’s latest poison disguised as pablum, they need to read the fine print. They must pay attention to all those words, skillfully crafted to hide the truth that any money handed out by an Obama administration comes with some strings that look more like manacles. There is nothing faith-based about government money, and if Obama’s government hands it out, it will come with the provision that the “faith” part be expunged in practice. The faith-based initiative that takes money from a socialist will soon find that expressing the faith on which the initiative is based will be the first big prohibition.

Obama uses a pretty word as bait to lure his prey within reach. Obama calls his plan a partnership. Listeners would be well advised to remember what a partnership is like. The one with the most money usually calls all the shots, because of the risk of losing all that money. Remember the saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” If an Obama socialist administration hands out money to anyone, the administration will decide what faith that money underwrites. Socialism pays lip service to humanitarian goals that sound like Christian service, but Christians who want to perform humanitarian service the Christian way need to think twice before they take money from a socialist who wants to perform humanitarian service the socialist way.

Hear Obama’s own words:

“First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or the people you hire – on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples and mosques can only be used on secular programs.”[1]

There are several red flags here for people who serve the community as an outgrowth of their Christian obedience to God. (Because I am a Christian, I can’t pretend to speak for the impact on other faiths, but I suspect there is a lot of similarity.)

·        When Christians help other people, they always let the people know that the act of love is an outgrowth of the love of Christ within themselves. When I read what Obama says, I ask myself if he would expect to forbid that simple testimony.

·        When Christians set up programs to help others, they routinely expect the people who work for the program to live by the same principles as themselves. When I read what Obama says, I ask myself if he would even allow those principles to be considered as bona fide occupational qualifications.

·        When Christians do anything as an expression of their faith, they speak about their faith, they give thanks to God, and they point program participants to the same faith that blesses the program leaders. The word proselytize, embedded innocently in Obama’s statement, warns the reader that any attempt to say something such as, “I know that Jesus loves you, just as He loves me,” would likely be classified as an infraction of the contract between the payer, Obama’s socialist administration, and the payee, a faith-based initiative, initiated as an act of loving obedience to the Lord Jesus.

·        Finally, Obama says that his administration would fund only “secular” programs. That is a nail in the coffin for faith-based initiatives. When a church sets up a shelter for women who are abused, it does not do it as a secular program. It takes this action as an act of love and care for people that is consistent with a living faith in Christ. It isn’t about simply putting a roof over their head and food in their mouths with no regard for the whole person. Faith-based initiatives operate on the principle that we are servants of each other, modeling our behavior on Christ who came to be servant of all.

Obama may profess to be a Christian, but his Christianity is in a box. Most Christians do not consider their faith to be in their “religion” box, separated completely from the rest of their life, which is in a “secular” box. For the Christians I  know, our faith is not part of us; it is us. Christianity is not just some abstract belief in God. Christianity is a way of life, and everything in our lives happens in the context of our faith. We cannot help people without sharing our faith. If we try to do that, then we are lying about ourselves.

Obama clearly believes that Christian faith, or Jewish faith, or Islamic faith, or any other, can be set aside for humanitarian reasons. Most believers in any faith say that their faith informs their lives. They can’t take it off like a jacket and hang it up at the door of a humanitarian program.

It has always been risky for anybody to take money from anybody else. That aphorism about paying the piper really does apply in most instances. It would be a lot easier for faith-based initiatives to keep their distance from money handed out by a socialist than for them to keep their distance from the “faith” part of their initiative, if their faith actually means anything. Conservatives and evangelicals need to remember one truth about Obama: Obama is a socialist, and socialists put their faith in government. A socialist will only give money to a faith-based initiative in order to prevent that initiative from acting with any faith. Beware.

When James Dobson criticized Barack Obama’s hermeneutics and theological analysis, Obama was quick to respond with a political barrage. Obama has the notion that Christians will like him if he talks about the Bible. Yet he knows that he cannot really adopt any particular interpretation, because that would immediately alienate those who follow some other. Therefore, he has attempted say nothing in a lot of words. Dobson has called his hand, by pointing out that his words don’t have any real meaning. Like the glib politician he is, Obama accuses Dobson of perverting the truth.

If anyone is perverting truth, it is Obama. I am not a follower of James Dobson, but I agree with his statements that Obama distorts the Bible and offers up an equally distorted interpretation of the Constitution. Obama has a reputation for promoting change and hope in his exalted speeches, but when you dig deep into his words, you find nothing. Empty words. His biblical interpretation and his Constitutional interpretation are empty words. They may come across as distortions, but if you read closely, they simply a cover-up for Obama’s unwillingness to tell us what he really thinks.

One of my dearest friends is a Democrat. She grew up Democrat, and in her adult life, she has always voted Democrat. She is a true believer in the liberal interpretation of the Constitution. However, even she observes that Obama is an empty suit. His speeches are full of words put together in a meaningless combination. Since her Ph.D. is in literature, I think I can rely on her ability to interpret words. Before she talked with me about Obama, I already thought his speeches were full of fluff, but I would have been willing to hear from her that I had missed something. Without any help from me, she volunteered that she will not vote for Obama, even though he is the Democrat candidate, because she has no idea what he stands for. She plans to vote for McCain. She said to me that she could not vote for Obama because, “I don’t know what kind of change he wants me to hope for.”

One of the problems with listening to Obama talk about religion, the Bible, or any other topic is that, if he is challenged, he changes his words. No matter what words he says today, if anybody really fights his words, he simply changes them. He told us that Jeremiah Wright was his spiritual mentor, but when people learned the kind of mentor Reverend Wright was, then Obama told us he never meant to imply that he actually learned anything from Reverend Wright. In other words, we were dumb to think that the word “mentor” meant “mentor.”

Likewise, when Obama talks about abortion, he cleverly calls it a “divisive” issue. Obama is nothing if not inclusive, so anything divisive is anathema. In his “landmark” speech about religion in 2006, he admonished religious leaders not to be “divisive.” The body of the speech implies that standing firm on any principle is the same thing as being “divisive.” Therefore, when I read his comments about abortion on his website, I interpret him to mean that any principle rejecting abortion as immoral is “divisive.” Apparently, condoning and maybe even encouraging the murder of babies still in the womb wisely avoids “divisive” speech. Furthermore, he classifies real human embryos wanted for stem cell research as “excess,” thereby excluding them from the human race rather than divisively advocating for their right to live. This language certainly avoids the stain of being “divisive.” It also avoids standing for any real principle.

James Dobson accused Obama of distorting the Bible to fit his own worldview. Obama is not alone in doing that. Lots of people quote or misquote the Bible for their own purposes. However, most of them are not running for president of the United States; their interpretations do not have the potential to affect our lives in any major way. If Obama were elected president, his interpretation, or misinterpretation, of the Bible would be important. He wants us to believe that his faith informs his acts. What little we can see of his faith makes me fear his acts. Among other things, I expect we would hear that his socialist agenda is an outgrowth of his interpretation of the Bible. Socialism is a dangerous political disease that hides behind the mask of kindness to others. A slick talker like Obama will surely try to make us believe that the gospel according to Karl Marx is simply a deep interpretation of the Golden Rule.

When election day comes, I will join my Democrat friend in voting for McCain. The continued strength and security of the United States is too important to take a chance on Obama. I don’t want any of the changes he hints at, even though it is extremely hard to guess what they might really be. I hope that many voters will see through his facade. I will vote for McCain. I hope you will join me.

Election rhetoric is full of proposals for programs of all kinds. Candidates promise us that they will enact laws that solve problems and change people’s lives. History teaches us that it doesn’t work that way.

Programs do not transform people. The best they can do is to expose people to a different way of living. The people may or may not internalize what they see. The history of programs to address social need is that we spend more and more money without reducing the incidence of crime, hunger, disease or ignorance. A program works by enrolling participants, giving them services or training or money, and then graduating them when they are ineligible or the program is defunded. At the end, there are a lot of people who have been through the program. None of them is transformed by it.

For over 70 years this country has been creating and testing programs to address poverty, hunger, crime, education, healthcare, etc. If throwing money at problems would solve them, our problems would have been solved ten times over. Instead, it appears that each program has a few moments of glory and not much else to show for its existence. In the river of human grief the programs should address, there is hardly a ripple to show for all the government money that has been spent.

Socialism is a political idea that sounds a lot like the social and moral dimensions of Christian teaching: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Unfortunately, when this idea that sounds so kind is cloaked in bureaucracy and when the definitions of need and ability become political footballs, the society that results is more oppressive than the worst thing we have ever seen in a world of free people engaging in free enterprise to make profits. Social themes become the tools of terrible oppression when they do not grow out of transformed lives.

Barack Obama is the messiah of socialism. He preaches that government will take care of the citizens. All they need to do is give to government everything they have, and the government will give them back what it thinks they need. Government gets to decide what they need, too, and those who decide need more than anyone else. That is the gospel of socialism.

We must defeat Barack Obama. This country can’t afford Barack Obama. I will vote for John McCain, because I do not want to live in the Union of Socialized Americans.

I take umbrage, extreme umbrage, at a statement by Barack Obama which included the phrase, “typical white person.” He was referring specifically to his white grandmother, but I took it as a slur against all white people, including me. He can apologize all he wants, and he can reword his statement as many times as he likes. The fact is that Barack Obama discriminates against white people. Barack Obama is a complete racist.

I don’t plan to sue him for hate speech. I won’t mount a petition drive for reparations due his vile racist speech. But I am warned. I will not stand still and let a bigoted racist candidate win without a fight.

Some people are explaining and accommodating the Obama statement so we will all understand it as a simple account of something that happened to his grandmother. Politicians who are running to the Obama campaign in droves want us to see this phrase as mere triviality.

If “typical white person” is a triviality, why is “gollywog runway model” a racial slur?

If you are still reading, thank you. My point is that it is easy to make anything into a racial slur if that is your agenda. We need to remove the whole notion of racism from our political process. How?

There is one way and one way only to end the power of racism in this election and in our life as a nation. Forgiveness. A person who has been harmed by something that is ended can end its harmful power by means of forgiveness. Racism as a political and social agenda no longer exists in the USA. It only lives in the reactions of people to words and deeds that have no hurtful power.

The people who were oppressed by slavery in this country and the people who inflicted slavery on them are all dead. The people who were oppressed by post-emancipation segregation and the people who oppressed them are mostly dead. The laws which created and enforced segregation have been removed. The people who stir up the most outrage over racism today are people whose very lives are a positive testimony to the end of racism in the USA. Whoopie Goldberg. Michelle Obama. Barack Obama. Charlie Rangel. Jesse Jackson. Every person in public life who makes a career out of stirring up sensitivity over racism is a person who would not be in public life if racism were still what they claim it is.

If I follow the example of these people, I will truly make a campaign out of Obama’s racial slur against white people. It doesn’t matter that he can’t hurt me by saying that. It doesn’t matter if he never says any such thing again. If I act like the Michelle Obamas of the world, I will stop being proud of this country and I will demand apologies and reparations and revenge for my personal outrage at the disrespect for white people expressed in Barack Obama’s slur.

Let’s get racism out of the election. Let’s quit making up tales about an issue that is not an issue. Racism is over. Forgive. Ignore. Move on.

I hope a lot of people scratch their heads over the title of this blog. I hope that some will even challenge my grammar. If so, it will help to make my point. We have an expensive education system in this country, we claim to make it available to every possible student, but it is obvious that our citizens are not universally well-educated. Why is that a problem?

If we have any doubts that whatever we are doing in the realm of education is not producing educated people, we have only to read newspapers or view television news. Today’s news includes an interview with a woman who believes that a lot of people lied to her, and that is why her house is currently inundated by the Mississippi River. NOAA or the USGS lied when they mapped out a “100-year” floodplain. FEMA lied to her when they told her that the levees built to hold back the Mississippi in flood would not fail. Her bank lied to her when it said that she did not need flood insurance. Every conclusion she drew from the information available to her points to one fact: this woman is not well-educated.

A good education is critical to a society of free people. Free people do not expect government to take care of them the way a nursemaid cares for a two-year-old. They expect to evaluate their own risks, using their minds educated in the skills of analysis and critical thinking. They expect to make their own decisions to accept risk or protect against it. They are able to read statistics and understand that statistics are not prophecies. They read history and understand that engineers plan as well as they can with the information they have, but bridges still fall down and levees still break. They make decisions in their own best interests, not based on wishful thinking.

This woman made numerous mistakes that she would not have made if she had a good education.

First, when she heard or read the words “100-year floodplain” she interpreted it as a rule, not an analysis. She clearly believed that a 100-year flood would occur only once in 100 years. She did not know that the statistical analysis that produced a map with a “100-year” floodplain marked on it had actually produced only an average of the inundations of many floods. The analysis suggested that, based on whatever information was provided, this floodplain would be inundated about 10 times in any 1000 years. If all the information was 100% correct, and if the algorithm used to produce the statistics was 100% correct, and if all weather and water and terrain remained unchanged for 1000 years, then it could be assumed that the 100-year floodplain would be inundated about 10 times during that 1000 years. Maybe only 9 times. Maybe 11 or 12 times. Possibly, all the 100-year inundations would occur over 10 years in a row. And of course, this calculation does not account for all the floods in the “500-year” range or the "90-year" range or other possible ranges. This woman jumped to the conclusion that if a 100-year flood has occurred, we know it will be 100 years before there is another like it. Whether she failed to pay attention in school, or whether the school failed to teach her about statistics, the consequence is that she has a deficient education.

Second, this woman believed whoever told her that the levees beside the Mississippi would hold back the floods. Anyone who has read any history of flooding along any river knows that nobody can actually promise that a levee will not fail. The history of attempts to manage the Mississippi by building levees is full of evidence that levees fail. A principle of a good education is not to jump to conclusions or believe things people say without evidence. A person who lives in the floodplain of any river must know the history of flooding and be prepared to deal with very real risk. Whoever built the levee had good intentions and no doubt used the best engineering available. However, any person who would believe the statement that the levee would not fail could only have such faith if that person were ignorant. Whether the woman failed to listen when her teachers taught her about researching the truth of public utterances or whether the teachers never taught this material, the consequence is that she has a deficient education.

Third, this woman chose not to buy flood insurance simply because her bank did not require it. I can’t guess why the bank did not require it, but the bank’s decision not to require it did not exempt this woman from assessing her own risks and making the decision herself. In a free country, free people make these decisions and take the consequences. In a free country where flood insurance is available, her decision not to buy it cannot be blamed on the bank. She is free to choose to be insured or not, but it isn’t the fault of anyone but herself after she makes her choice. Whether this woman failed to listen when her school taught the responsibilities of free citizens in a free country, or whether her teacher never tried to teach this truth, the consequence is that she has a deficient education.

The Founders who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States knew that the electorate in a free country required good education. People cannot and do not make good choices for themselves as private individuals or for the country as voters unless they are well-educated. The news of the woman who accuses everyone but herself of failing to protect her in this flood is iconic for its depiction of the consequences of a deficient education. In the current presidential election campaigns, we are hearing some vague references to the need for good education and a few suggestions that more money will help. I believe that we need to think more deeply about the meaning of our freedom and the personal and civic responsibilities associated with freedom. If we citizens of this country do not have the courage and the education to assess our own risks and make decisions about risks we will either accept or mitigate, then we will inevitably turn to government to take care of us and we will lose all our freedoms.

Socialism is a caretaker government. At least, that is the disguise under which it operates. In fact, socialism takes very good care of government minions and very little care of the citizens. Under the mask of equality for all, socialism robs citizens of the earnings from their productivity and dribbles back to them only enough for survival to produce more. All the wealth of a socialist country lies in the hands of government. The citizens are robbed and oppressed. The USSR, where people stood in line for toilet paper and soap, showed us exactly what socialism does for the citizens. This is the kind of government Obama proposes to give us.

If we don’t do anything else during this election, we must use the best skills acquired in our own education to protect the prosperity of this nation which is due to the freedom of citizens to engage in commerce and keep their earnings. We must not elect a socialist to the office of president. John McCain is suspect with regard to his commitment to personal freedom and free enterprise, but Barack Obama is completely and unabashedly socialist. I will vote for John McCain and count on our citizens to educate him on the necessity of protecting our freedoms.

I read an article today about an employer who not only refuses to hire any employees who smoke, but he also goes after their spouses. He is encouraged in this endeavor by a public attitude and a few huge court settlements that have made tobacco a four-letter word. Smokers are discriminated against in ways we would not tolerate if the discrimination were about age, gender or religion. To date, our increasingly socialist government has never made it illegal to grow, sell or buy tobacco or any of its products. The only thing illegal about tobacco is using it.

One wonders how such a thing could happen in a free country. Supposedly in the USA, if a product is legal, we are free to use it. When the product is tobacco, that freedom is daily being compressed. How did this happen?

The root of the problem is healthcare. Back in the days when people managed and paid for their own healthcare, the use of tobacco was every individual’s own choice. The government paid subsidies to tobacco farmers under certain circumstances, just the same as it did for corn and cotton. Some people smoked; some didn’t. Some smokers got sick and died; some didn’t. A few very elderly people attributed their longevity to a daily cigar. If a smoker, or anybody else, became ill, treatment was provided by means of interaction between a doctor and a patient. That was it.

Today, things are quite different. Today, hardly anyone pays for his own healthcare, and most people think that nobody should pay for his own healthcare. Healthcare has become a political issue. Furthermore, computers, computers everywhere pump out more statistics than anyone can absorb, and the data is interpreted in scientific papers as well as op-eds and personal blogs. Long ago when I was first exposed to the mathematical maze of statistics, I concluded that if someone wants to make people think they have discovered truth, all he needs to do is feed them numbers. People are so impressed by numbers, and most people cannot do the math or the logic to confirm the accuracy of either the data or the interpretation.

Today, we are bombarded with numbers. One set of numbers tells us how many people smoke cigarettes. Another set tells us how many people die of lung cancer. Yet another set purports to tell us that there is a high correlation between smoking and dying of lung cancer. That is how it started. We are all exposed to statistics like this every day, and we are so accustomed to the mathematical stew that we don’t even question it. We don’t ask how the data was collected. We don’t ask how data was selected for analysis. We don’t ask why a particular analytical algorithm was chosen. Moreover, we don’t ask if the graph displayed as a result means anything at all. We assume that the graph is a true picture of something, and we believe what the reporters tell us it means.

For many years, as computers grew larger and more powerful, and as databases of statistics became more readily available and as we moved into the world of receiving what passes for news on a twenty-four-hour schedule, we have been fed statistics and analysis on two subjects: healthcare and tobacco. The statistics have told us that healthcare costs are spiraling out of control, and they have told us that large numbers of smokers become expensive patients during treatment for lung cancer and other conditions. The statistics that correlate smoking with lung cancer, and the statistics that correlate lung cancer with healthcare costs have met on the field of political discourse.

It all happened after the signing of the first Medicare bill in 1965. Prior to that time, wise heads in Congress rejected numerous attempts to involve the government in the provision of healthcare. The Constitution provides no hint that providing healthcare is a defined role for the federal government. Until 1965, the Constitutional standard prevailed, and healthcare was a matter to be managed by patients and their doctors. The passage of the Medicare Act of 1965 changed all that.

Without weighing the reader down with a history of Medicare, I will sum up its impact briefly. After Medicare came into existence, it immediately became clear that the government had no idea how to administer health insurance. When people realized that it was an inefficient mess, members of Congress put their heads together and made the situation worse, by crafting legislation which inserted the federal government into the administration of hospitals and clinics. The insurance industry watched what was happening and began to model its delivery and administration on what wasn’t working at all well for Medicare, because the insurance industry actually knew how to milk the healthcare cow. Today, Medicare is a complete scandal, and so is private insurance. Between Medicare and the insurance industry, healthcare costs have climbed to unbelievable numbers.

Enter the smoker. And the statistics that purport to correlate smoking and lung cancer. And the statistics for healthcare costs associated with lung cancer. And political discourse which says that a) healthcare is a fundamental human right, just like “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and b) if healthcare is a human right, then the government should provide it, and c) if the government provides it, then the government should be able to require people to be healthy. I have greatly oversimplified the progression of thought, but it is actually the case today that US citizens believe that the government has a right to prevent citizens from making unhealthy life choices, the government has a right to legislate the healthy choices people must make, and all this happens because people actually believe that they have a right to scorn people whose health costs society a lot of money.

The USA is becoming more and more socialist every day. It is truly bizarre that citizens who believe costs of anything are too high for them to pay believe that the government should provide that thing for them at no charge. Where do they think the government will get the money to provide the free service? Government is not like a business. Government does not produce a product or service which it can sell at a profit. The only way government can acquire money to give me something is to take money away from me in the form of taxes.

The socialist agenda is leading us toward a socialist state, and it is accomplishing this objective without changing the Constitution. A thinking person will ask how that can happen, and the answer is that people simply don’t question the idea of a caretaker government any more. When FDR introduced the New Deal during the Great Depression, most families had been hurt so badly that they welcomed anything that seemed like help. It sounded good – a chicken in every pot. FDR increased the size of the Supreme Court and then packed the court with socialist judges, and ever thereafter we contend with an interpretation of the Constitution which fundamentally changes it. Today, a very loose construction of the Constitution allows the government to intrude in our lives to a degree that John Adams and George Washington would have completely rejected. Today, a loose construction of the Constitution mandates social programs which a reasonable level of taxation cannot possibly pay for. Today, a loose construction of the Constitution has been translated into a social notion that it is okay for an employer to demonize an employee’s spouse for smoking.

This situation will only get worse if Obama is elected president. How ironic that he is a smoker! Maybe John McCain should run an ad that calculates the cost to taxpayers if a smoker is elected president and then gets lung cancer. I plan to vote for John McCain in the hope that his affiliation with the Republican party will eventually translate into an aversion to socialism. For now, he looks less like a socialist than Obama, and we can hope that if conservatives unite to elect McCain, they will be able to influence him to more conservative political choices.

In Ontario, the government decrees that cigarettes for sale in stores must be kept out of sight of customers. The product is legal, no one will be arrested if the product is sold, but whoever wants it must request it without needing to see it first. Ostensibly, the real target of the rule is children, because the government does not want children to be lured into smoking by seeing the product. Some people point out that the same government which enforces this oppressive rule runs liquor stores where a wide variety of attractive alcohol products are in plain sight, inviting children to observe adult shoppers and be enticed to want the same. Critics also point out that the government has no objection to magazine displays that include pornographic material easily seen by children. One Reuters reporter said that “advocates say the seemingly draconian measure will eventually work, and is too important to get bogged down by morality.”[1]

Morality is a word seldom spoken with respect in contemporary discourse. It is mentioned with scorn and distaste as something inconvenient and oppressive. The subject of abortion used to be a question of morality, but after abortion was reclassified as a fundamental human right, then we could talk about it endlessly without getting bogged down by morality. That change must surely be documented as a huge forward step for civilization.

Socialist governments seldom permit themselves to be bogged down by mere morality. The socialist government of the Soviet Union regularly arrested people who suffered the mental disease of dissent from the government position and sent them to facilities where they could be re-educated and made well from this disease. The fact that this government did not get bogged down in morality permitted it to avoid any feeling of shame for the fact that many of the “patients” died as a result of the therapy intended to return them to happy, obedient citizenship.

The socialist government of China doesn’t get bogged down by morality, either. Every Chinese family is limited to one legal child, and any other children are illegal. I think it is one of the supremely unfunny comedies of the day. Here is a socialist government telling healthy, productive, loving families that they may have only one legal child, while in our country, the socialists (often hiding behind the name of the Democrat Party) advocate that we permit people who have mental and physical disabilities to have as many children as they would like for the rest of us to support. In fact, our resident socialists are the ones who say that busy professionals should have the right to choose abortion rather than be bogged down with a baby, while people who are unable to support themselves because of mental or physical disability, or even because they don’t want to work, are free to bog down the rest of us with as many babies as they please. Socialists appear to prefer that people who want babies due to the notion that passing puberty is like passing the test to be an adult should have lots of children, while people are equally immature, but already pregnant, should abort healthy ones. Talk about bogged down. I don’t know how the socialists sort out all these policies. To me, they seem like an incredible rat’s nest. I yearn for the light of morality to be shined on this sort of thinking.

This is why I am very disturbed with my choices in this year’s presidential election. Someone told me last week that he could comfortably vote for either candidate, because they are so much alike. I fear that I cannot comfortably voter for either candidate, precisely because they are so much alike.

The cigarette situation in Ontario is a microcosm of socialist government we would all do well to study. The Constitution of the USA includes a Bill of Rights in which it is clearly stated that all powers not specifically ceded to the federal government in the Constitution remain with the states and the people. That concept is implicit in the original document, but many people felt that unless it was spelled out, power-hungry politicians would use the federal government as an excuse to oppress and rob the citizens. They thought that this amendment would mean that the federal government could not act outside the powers granted in the Constitution without another amendment that defined and limited that power.

Those who wisely foresaw the necessity of this amendment would be appalled to see how much power the citizens and the states have now ceded to the federal government without benefit of any Constitutional amendment. I’ll share just one example of this problem.

Every car is now manufactured with seat belts. Every state today has a law requiring that at least the driver must wear a seat belt. This is not a federal law; it is a state law. The federal government has no right to pass laws regulating traffic. Only states can do that. How is it that every state now has such a law?

It all started with the idea that it wasn’t fair for some states to receive less money from the government than others. It just wasn’t fair. Revenue had to be shared. A ground-breaking law was passed that pulled money from every state according to a formula that reflected its ability to pay, and all states received “equal” benefits back. It meant that states which could not afford their share of the costs for a federal highway could have that highway anyhow. All the states would contribute to a big pot of money. States with more money than they “needed” would receive less of it back, and states with less would get more of it so they could have their “fair share” of federal highways and other things. I am starting to hate the word “fair,” because every time I hear it, I know that somebody is figuring out a way to take what I have and give it to someone else.

After revenue-sharing was invented and deployed nationwide, it seemed good to some socialists in Congress to worry about the safety of drivers on the highways. They knew that they didn’t have the right to worry about state highways, city streets and back roads with no identity, but that didn’t stop them. They concluded that if everyone wore seat belts, then highway accident fatalities would be vastly reduced. Many states felt that personal safety was a personal matter, and many states felt that citizens had a right to decide for themselves if they wanted to use seat belts. The socialists in Congress resented this individual freedom to take a risk. They wanted every state to require every car to have seat belts and to require every person to use them. They did not believe that anyone had a right to accept this kind of personal risk. They remembered that every federal highway was paid for by funds in the revenue-sharing program. The federal government was paying for those highways, and they saw a way to enforce the behavior they desired by manipulating those funds which were supposed to be shared in a “fair” manner.

Only a confirmed conservative would believe that the strategy they came up with was unfair. After all, weren’t these seat belt advocates completely devoted to protecting all citizens, even if the citizens didn’t ask them to? The strategy was that Congress passed a bill that prohibited the distribution of highway funds to states without seat belt laws. In other words, they were going to go ahead and take money from all the states, but they were not going to give money back to states without a seat belt law. It is no surprise to anyone that the states lined up, saluted and passed seat belt laws.

This same strategy has been used over and over again. Money which never should have left the states is vacuumed up and dumped in the wastebin of Congress. There, the representatives and senators mull over all the ways they can exert power over states and citizens without any amendment to the Constitution, and without getting bogged down in morality, too, I might add. They exert the power by withholding money until they get what they want.

This strategy would not work if people had rejected the concept of revenue-sharing in the first place. That idea was sold as an act of “fairness.” It’s not fair that some states are rich and some are poor. We hear the same thing in the education arena. It’s not fair that some school districts are rich and some are poor. In the name of “fairness” the states and the citizens have been robbed time and time again. In the name of “fairness” our country is burdened with taxes on taxes, and our citizens are defrauded of their rights to liberty and personal freedom.

The two candidates for president in the election of 2008 are much too alike for me to be able to choose between them on the basis of their positions on the Constitution. They both speak the socialist Robin Hood mantra – steal from the rich to care for the poor. Both of them pose a danger to our country in my opinion. I must choose on some other basis.

Therefore, I will choose to vote for McCain. I want him to change, and I hope that wise leaders in the Republican Party will help him do that. I respect his personal history as a POW. Surviving that experience with a will to continue serving his country tells me a lot about the man. Not his politics, just the man. Since I can’t vote for the candidate who is consistent with my politics, I will vote for the candidate I respect. I'm actually looking for someone who has personal experience in the bog of morality. In that regard, I don’t know what to think of Obama. He hasn’t done anything yet. I can’t even guess if he has any character or personal strength. I do know that he disdains the Constitution.

I will vote for McCain. I hope that enough of us do that to elect him. Then I hope that McCain will see that his constituents want him to preserve and protect the Constitution. I don’t know anything else to hope for.