By Mike Safrit
Special to the Salisbury Post
In a speech honoring Vaclav Klaus, current president of the Czech Republic, Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, said this about the Czech Republic:
It had been a government where the government owned the people. How then could it become a government where the people own the government?
President Arnn credited Klaus with making that happen in the Czech Republic. We in the United States need to give some serious thought to that statement because we are sitting back and allowing the opposite process take place. It should be clear to any thinking American that the so-called progressives, led by Barack Obama, are trying their best to create a government that owns the people.
It is clear from reading it that our Founders gave us a Constitution that made ěWe the Peopleî sovereign in this nation. Very strict and specific limits were placed on the powers of the national government. Unfortunately, those limits have been ignored for decades, dating back at least to FDRís New Deal, the countryís first serious experiment with socialism. The truth is that it was a failure that probably prolonged the Depression for a decade. It was not Roosevelt who got us out of the Depression, it was Adolf Hitler. The New Dealís lesson for Obama should have been that socialism does not work.
The politicians in Washington from both parties have been busy expanding the powers of the national government for years at the expense of the states and the people. When Nancy Pelosi was asked to cite the provisions of the Constitution that authorized the Democratsí legislative program, she answered, ěAre you kidding?î Translation, ěWhat does the Constitution have to do with it?î
The Democrats do not recognize any limits on their power, and they despise the Constitution because it is a serious hindrance to their efforts to build a government that owns the people. Obama and his comrades in the Congress have brought this country to the brink of financial destruction. The Tea Partyís opposition to President Obamaís agenda has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with respect for the Constitution, opposition to a government that runs up a $14 trillion-plus national debt and a return to a government that is owned by the people and not the other way around. If it is not clear to every American by now that Barack Obama is either an incompetent leader or is deliberately trying to force a socialist tyranny on this nation, then there is a real problem with the judgment of a lot of Americans.
Barack Obama, who said he campaigned in ěall 57 statesî in 2008, must not be reelected in 2012. Our only hope of coming out of the current decline of the United States ó and donít doubt for a minute that we are in a state of decline ó is to elect true conservatives to the White House and Congress next year. We need people in the White House and Congress who believe in a free enterprise economic system, a strong national defense, respect for the Constitution, faith in God, sane spending habits (as in a balanced budget), an education system controlled by the states as the Constitution intended, lower taxes and an end to stifling regulations on business.
I do not think that those beliefs make the Tea Party supporters terrorists. It is the people who reject those beliefs who pose the greatest danger to this country. It is those conservative policies that will restore prosperity and create millions of jobs.
Lower taxes will increase government revenues by drastically increasing the number of tax payers and reducing the number of people who depend on the government for their upkeep. High taxes kill jobs and reduce the governmentís revenues. This has been proven many times throughout our history. It is a fact that liberals choose not to comprehend because it gets in the way of their plan to build a government that owns the people instead of the other way around.
ěWe the peopleî had better wake up before it is too late.

Mike Safrit lives in China Grove.