American Fighters for Freedom, Essay Example

Summary: We may well be facing the last days of the United States of America. The election of Barack Hussein Obama has, for the first time in this nation’s history, resulted in the White House being occupied by a president who ardently espouses the very Marxist ideals this nation has so long striven against. The election of Obama is a profound threat to the continued existence of the United States of America as a free nation: from his appalling promotion of the welfare state and entitlements to his signing of the sinister NDAA, which gives him the power to indefinitely detain any U.S. citizen suspected of being a “terrorist” (according to him), Obama is waging war on the most foundational principles of this great nation, the greatest nation in the entire history of the world.

But in truth, the fact that someone like Obama could get elected at all only shows how far this country has fallen. Every great nation falls from within, and so it is with America now. We have betrayed the fundamental principles of liberty on which this great nation was founded. Freedom of speech, freedom to advance by one’s own labors in order to achieve prosperity, freedom to live one’s life without the hand of government in one’s pocket or interfering with one’s business: all these are the founding principles of the United States of America.

America must reclaim these founding principles if we are to have any chance of rescuing this great nation from the ruin that Obama and his legions of liberal-progressive fans are leading it towards. Fortunately, this country has a long and proud tradition of freedom fighters: bold, noble men who articulated principles that were often quite radical in their time, men who were willing to envision a different way of being and living, often at odds with the conventional wisdom of the time. The wisdom of these men can guide us still, if only we have ears to listen. Moreover, as we shall see, the spirit of freedom fighting in this country is anything but dead: the legacy we have inherited is still very much alive. There is still hope for America: not even Obama’s ersatz promises and actual tyrannies have been sufficient to preclude the possibility of undoing all the damage that he has caused, and the damage that enabled his rise.

So who are these people? The first is Benjamin Franklin. A printer, inventor, statesman, and brilliant political thinker, Franklin published a bold defense of freedom of the press, articulated a vision of limited government, and laid down many of the founding ideas of the United States Constitution. Franklin pointed out that the printers of his time had an important role to play in disseminating opinions, and ensuring that different voices had the opportunity to compete for influence. He also advocated thrift, holding up making money as a good thing, not a bad thing.

Davy Crockett was the second. A frontiersman and congressman of exceptional integrity, Crockett articulated a vision of limited government. He argued against government handouts, compulsory ‘charity’, in favor of real, voluntary charity. In an age of ever-expanding Big Government welfare safety nets, Crockett’s advice has never looked more sound or more relevant. Crockett understood that government has no right (morally speaking) to spend other people’s money in such a fashion. In an age when Big Government-run welfare has resulted in ever-increasing levels of dependency and learned helplessness, Crockett’s message is one America must reclaim.

Finally, the third figure is contemporary: conservative blogger and cartoonist Big Fur Hat. A voice for freedom, as far back as 2009 Big Fur Hat was accurately discerning Barack Hussein Obama’s Marxist convictions. Big Fur Hat has spent much of his recent years exposing Obama’s radical Marxist agenda for redistributing the wealth. But Obama’s election speaks to the spread of liberalism as a mental disorder: a psychological condition driven by the entitlement mentality. Defeating this mentality is key to defeating Obama’s anti-American agenda.

Dr. Benjamin Franklin: In a day when our most basic freedoms are under attack, we would do well to look back to one of the greatest architects of our freedoms. Dr. Benjamin Franklin was a highly successful entrepreneur, an inventor and businessman, a printer who defended freedom of the press, and a diplomat and statesman who believed in America. Ben Franklin’s belief in America was a vision for freedom: a vision of an America free of the tyranny of a big government that was unresponsive and fundamentally unaccountable to the people.[1] Franklin used his Poor Richard’s Almanac as a platform for his ideas about freedom and liberty, which matured as he did: by the 1740s, Franklin’s vision was of a truly free society, a society without an aristocracy, a society where a man could be a truly self-made man.[2]

Franklin also believed in making money. In an age when this is constantly belittled, scorned, and treated as something evil by so-called ‘liberal progressives’, like the entitlement-minded ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protesters, it may seem jarring indeed to consider that one of our nation’s greatest Founding Fathers was an ardent capitalist. Franklin demonstrates that it was capitalism, not the socialist redistribution of wealth promoted by the whiny Occupy Wall Street protesters and other liberals, all the way up to President Barack Hussein Obama, that built America. Not that Franklin was a shallow materialist: far from it! In keeping with the best traditions of freedom going back to classical antiquity, Franklin recognized that it was necessary to cultivate virtue in order to be happy.[3] However, he parted company with them on the issue of making money. Where great thinkers of republicanism in antiquity had argued that making money was at odds with the interests of a healthy, strong, democratic society, Franklin saw clearly that making money was a necessary component of freedom, and the pursuit of it as something beneficial to both the individual and to society as a whole.[4]

Franklin once stated: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”[5] Virtue, freedom, and thrift went together, as far as Franklin was concerned. He was a living embodiment of the ideas and spirit that built America: thrift, hard work, and prosperity, achieved by means of a capitalistic order protected under a constitution of liberty. These very ideas were brilliantly expressed by Ludwig von Mises in his classic book Liberalism (here referring to classical liberalism, which is capitalist, rather than modern left-liberalism, which is socialist), which observes that capitalism has brought more prosperity to a wider cross-section of society, including and especially the working classes, than any other economic system in history.[6]

Of course, these very same ideas and spirit have been consistently disparaged and savaged by generations of liberal professors, who have indoctrinated whole cadres of college students into serving as the foot soldiers of socialism, often in the name of ‘political correctness’ and ‘social justice.’ Just as Franklin’s ideas proved indispensable to building America, and represented the very best of the spirit of his times, so too the abandonment of these ideas of hard work, thrift, and earning one’s own way in life have led America to founder in every way. Many upstanding Americans have been rightly horrified at President Barack Hussein Obama’s war on American values and freedoms, but the crucial thing to understand is that without a rising tide of support for socialism and other ‘liberal-progressive’ ideas, BHO would never have been elected in the first place. Franklin’s homespun wisdom helped to found a Republic on the institutions of freedom, but he was clear that it would take the right kind of people, the right kind of nation, to keep the new United States free.

Big Government and its taxpayer-funded generosity offers one of the clearest object lessons in the folly that America has embraced in rejecting Franklin’s principles of thrift, and the ruinous consequences of doing so. Franklin was adamant that time is money: he even went so far as to point out that when one fritters away time that one could spend productively working, one is essentially throwing away money. Franklin also pointed out that credit is money: if one lends money to someone else, one can get it back with interest. And finally, money can be used to produce more money, either by lending or by investing in capital for one’s own business.[7]

Franklin was a firm defender of freedom of speech. In his “Apology for Printers,” Franklin responded to an incident that had resulted in him becoming the center of a firestorm of controversy. A printer by trade, he had printed a ship captain’s advertisement which specifically disallowed clergy to travel as passengers. The result was a threatened boycott by local clergy. Franklin responded with a somewhat flustered, wholly earnest, and entirely brilliant reply. Franklin’s first point, so often lost in today’s age of whiny political correctness, was that everyone has an opinion. Everyone has an opinion, a point of view, and therefore a set of things to which they will take offense. This is a basic truth, a plain fact, as Franklin points out. Secondly, Franklin pointed out that his business, namely printing, was concerned with people’s opinions: that is, in those times, long before the internet, desktop printers, and Xerox machines, a printer provided a service that enabled people to express their opinions. The consequence of this, Franklin asks his audience to recognize, is that the printer is in the unfortunate position of having to print things that will certainly offend someone, if he wishes to eat.[8]

Franklin then pointed out something very important, something that was just as lost on the kneejerk reactionaries of his time as it is on our own: it is not reasonable to expect, given how very many things are published, that any one person or group of persons will never be offended and always be pleased. Inevitably, no matter what one’s opinions, one will encounter something one finds disagreeable. The part of the printer, Franklin explained, was simply to provide the service of facilitating these opinions, giving them fair play to compete for attention and influence. Because of this, it is ridiculous to expect a printer to be anything but unconcerned with what he prints: what the printer cares about is the service of printing he provides, not the content a paying customer is asking him to print. It is equally stupid (though Franklin was far more diplomatic) to believe that a printer must share the convictions of any- and everything that he prints, or that he must print only that of which he approves. Here Franklin points out that if printers did that, it would end freedom of the pen, since no one would be able to get anything published without finding a sympathetic printer, if such could even be found. Franklin goes on to say that this notwithstanding, both he himself and other printers of his time did on many occasions forebear from printing things that they thought were injurious or otherwise immoral, even at the cost of losing business and making enemies, because they believed it to be the right thing to do.[9]

Franklin believed firmly in limited government. Franklin’s own view was that liberty is essential for happiness, as are prosperity, which can only come through the liberty to advance on one’s own merit, and an overall thriving civil society. What is the role of government? For Franklin, the answer was simple: to protect the law-abiding citizens from criminals and from foreign enemies, and to construct large public works that would be difficult for individuals to construct. Simplicity, Franklin believed, was everything: a government needed to be simple in form and in function, so that it wouldn’t be wasteful or counter-productive. But Franklin was also a staunch Federalist: he believed in America, in a vision of a nation strong and united enough to ward off its foes and better manage those functions of a limited government on the national level.[10]

As one commentator points out, many of Obama’s policies are fatally undermining America: his massive increases of the national debt; his involvement of the government in first the American car industry and then the healthcare system; his overreaching taxation of fossil fuels, and, perhaps most shamefully, his anti-American demagoguery in foreign capitals. Whether he shares the Muslim beliefs of his father and step-father or not is certainly open to conjecture, but what is not is his attendance, for twenty years of his life, at the church of hatemonger Jeremiah Wright. And his involvement in ACORN attests to his love of big government and the subsidies it provides. All those fat government subsidies are a great way to get constituents: people who are in a state of dependence on Big Government for handouts are not going to vote against a politician who will keep the handouts coming. This state of learned helplessness is a kind of self-imposed but government-enabled, taxpayer-funded slavery, in that it traps those with few skills, little education and few options into a never-ending cycle of depending on other people to meet their most basic needs.[11]

In an age of welfare queens and liberal advocates of Big Government, Occupy Wall Street protesters, immorality of every kind, and victim politics in service to political correctness, is it any wonder that a president as destructive as Obama was elected? There could be no more clear or tragic demonstration of the importance of virtue in maintaining liberty. “Sell not… liberty to purchase power,” Franklin said.[12] How far America has fallen! Indeed, one author makes an impeccable case that the figure best suited to the role of archetype of the modern liberal is not any of the iconic figures of the 20^th century that have been identified with liberalism. Rather, the figure who best embodies modern liberalism is Peter Pan: a character from a fairytale “who avoids responsibility, refuses to grow up, and is terribly self-absorbed.”[13]Schweizer compares the heroic efforts of Ronald Reagan, a great president and patriot who served his country well and never boasted of his many achievements, with Bill Clinton, but a much better contrast is between Reagan or Benjamin Franklin and Obama.[14]

Benjamin Franklin said “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety…”[15] The Marxist, socialist, Big Government policies that have culminated in the election of America’s first truly socialist president bear witness to the ruinous legacy of disregarding this wisdom. As the great thinker Michael Savage reminds us, Obama ushered in an era of dictatorial presidential powers when he signed NDAA into law, authorizing him to indefinitely detain any U.S. citizen on suspicion of being a “terrorist.”[16] This stands as the nadir—so far—of a presidency that has been an unmitigated disaster, from Obama’s ruinous socialism to his repugnant and treasonous apologies for American greatness. America is still the greatest nation on earth, thanks to the vision of Franklin and the other Founding Fathers, but if patriotic Americans are to restore her to her former glory, it will only be by reclaiming Franklin’s vision of limited government and prosperity.

Davy Crockett: Davy Crockett has become an icon of the frontier, and for good reason: he was an accomplished frontiersman, and he even died for the cause of Texan freedom at the Alamo. What is sometimes not remembered about him, however, was that as congressman, Davy Crockett was a champion for the common man against governmental appropriation—against the Big Government of his own age. In his outstanding “Not Yours to Give” speech, Crockett demolished the cause of Big Government, and, in effect, launched a preemptive broadside against the welfare state. The occasion was a bill that had been put forward for the benefit of the widow of a distinguished naval officer. Crockett, however, deftly distinguished between the legitimacy of the charitable cause, and the question of how it should be addressed. What he objected to, in other words, was not the intended recipient of the bill’s largesse, but rather the source: public money. He pointed out that the sum in question was not a debt. “We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity.”[17]

Government welfare began in a time of tremendous urgency. It was during the early 1930s, as the Great Depression stalked the nation, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt stepped in with his New Deal, in effect using government programs to nationalize much of the charitable sector. Though all this was intended as a short-term, emergency measure, it proved to be a very fateful Rubicon indeed. Short-term, temporary government assistance turned into permanent, long-term government-run welfare. Capitalizing on this bad idea, President Johnson instituted a War on Poverty in the 1960s, which intensified government-run welfare. This was the true beginning of the Big Government-run welfare state, the entitlement regime: for the first time in the history of this great nation, free handouts from the government were seen as entitlements, things that people were owed simply by virtue of existing.[18]

This sorry state of affairs has, of course, continued and gotten much worse. A once thriving, voluntary charity sector was completely demolished and distorted by Big Government, with its model of ‘forced charity’ extorted from taxpayers with the threat of force. For all that Big Government liberals like to wax eloquent about compassion for the disenfranchised and unfortunate, the model that they promote is decidedly uncompassionate: it relies on force to extort money from producers, and then gives it to non-producers. Utterly faceless, the social welfare bureaucracy needed to run this system of government extortion and patronage is, predictably enough, far more concerned about its own miserable perpetuation than it is about actually helping people out of a sense of compassion and good old-fashioned Christian charity. The Big Government-run system is so soul-crushing that it goes through a very high rate of case manager turnover, the two most common complaints being high caseloads and paperwork, endless red tape that must be dealt with. This faceless bureaucracy has obliterated mutual aid societies, and resulted in a dramatic drop of 30% in church spending on the poor.[19]

Davy Crockett could have set the advocates of Big Government-run welfare straight. In his “Not Yours to Give” speech, Crockett told of a time when he had voted for a bill appropriating $20,000 for the victims of a fire in Georgetown. He later had cause to regret this, however, when a man of his district showed him that the measure had been unconstitutional: “’If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything…’”[20] This could, as the man rightly perceived, lead to two abuses: misuse of funds for any number of corrupt or fraudulent purposes, and robbing the people to acquire such funds. Individual contributions are fine: individuals may give as much of their money to any charitable cause they wish. Government appropriating funds and giving handouts is something different entirely. In fact, this was the very line that Crockett took on the floor of Congress: he suggested that all members of Congress give up one week’s pay for the purpose of benefiting the widow of the distinguished naval officer. He pointed out that by so doing, they would actually raise more money, and they would do so in a manner that did not violate the Constitution and would not impose on public expense. The motion failed.[21]

This was the approach taken by Davy Crockett: voluntary charity is a good thing, compulsory, government-run welfare is not. It is a message that is completely lost on the entitled, irresponsible, Big Government welfare-mongering liberals. The proof is in the pudding: Big Government-favoring liberals are responsible for our current welfare state, which provides generous benefits for people who are not required to work. In other words, liberals are actually penalizing successful people, because Big Government needs tax dollars to keep that welfare state solvent, and taxes have to be paid by people who are actually earning money. Of course, liberals love to carry on about how they’re helping the poor, the unfortunate (begging the question that they need Big Government to force everyone to do it), but this is a lie that is remarkably easy to expose. Nowhere in the entire welfare state complex, with its considerable army of social workers and community organizers, is there any plan for getting those on welfare off, and turning them into productive, dues-paying members of society. Examine the rhetoric that so many of these Big Government apologists use to defend the welfare state: you will not find a place for a robust sense of individual responsibility. From those that are legitimately down on their luck to the most degenerate and depraved addicts and street criminals, all are viewed as victims of ‘The System’, usually some combination of government, society, and the economy. ‘But of course, we should make sure we’re not enabling willful freeloaders’ is something you will never hear come out of the mouth of a committed, dyed-in-the-wool Big Government-promoting liberal welfare state advocate![22]

If anything, the ‘why’ of this whole regime makes the whole thing far worse, even to the point of being outright sinister. The reason that no liberal defender of the Big Government welfare state will ever truly advocate individual responsibility and not enabling willful freeloaders who are choosing to be social parasites is very, very simple: it’s too politically profitable for them to pass up. That’s right: welfare dependents are a guaranteed locked-in bloc of voters. So long as a liberal Democrat like President Barack Hussein Obama is in favor of redistributing the wealth through Big Government-run welfare programs, those on welfare are a guaranteed group of voters. But in fact, the problem is even deeper and even more far-reaching than that, because Big Government-run welfare is only one sinister tentacle on the kraken that is Big Government. And like the kraken out of legend, Big Government is a monster fully capable of sinking the ship—in this case, the ship of liberty. With its tax-and-spend regime, the Federal government has become a bloated cesspool of patronage and power.[23]

Davy Crockett consistently fought for small farmers and frontiersmen. For example, during his first term as a state legislator, in 1821, “he voted to release landowners in the Western District [of Tennessee] from paying double tax assessments for delinquent taxes during 1820.”[24] Throughout his political career, Crockett consistently stood for hard-working farmers against speculators, who enriched themselves by means of what were often very shady land deals. It was this that led him into opposition with Andrew Jackson, after the latter was elected president in 1829. Despite the fact that the two were personal friends, their politics led them into bitter rivalry, often over the various interests and politics of the frontier. Davy’s opposition to the speculators put him on a collision course with the powerful Jackson, while his opposition to Jackson’s scheme of Indian removal was deemed outright outrageous. Crockett stood for the rights of a vulnerable group at a time when doing so was an outright political liability, demonstrating his integrity, courage, and commitment to principle.[25]

As a man of the frontier, Crockett consistently fought for the rights of self-made frontier farmers. The matter of the western lands in Tennessee, the central issue of his political career, is case in point. Tennessee had originally been an extension of North Carolina, turned over to the federal government to create Tennessee, in exchange for the government’s promise to honor warrants for land grants that North Carolina had issued to Revolutionary War veterans. The eastern parts of Tennessee were appropriately divided up, with the western to remain as public, but the eastern part proved insufficient to satisfy the warrants. Crockett’s own stance on the issue was resolutely in favor of small farmers, demonstrating his remarkable integrity.[26]

“Coercion is the flip side of dependency,” Forbes and Ames observed in their great book Freedom Manifesto: Why Free Markets Are Moral and Big Government Isn’t.[27] Crockett understood this, and could even get other members of Congress to understand it on occasion. Government cannot do anything for free. Thus, there is no such thing as “free” healthcare compliments of Big Government—in actuality, it is decidedly un-free healthcare coerced from the taxpayers. And since it is provided by Big Government, it is Big Government—ultimately bureaucrats—who get to make the decision about what healthcare any given person gets, or indeed if they get any at all. Same thing with “free” food from the food stamp program: again, bureaucrats determine what types of food one is eligible for.[28]

“Not Yours to Give,” Crockett proclaimed. Big Government welfare erodes freedom. So does Big Government corporate welfare, like the bailout which was designed under the administration of George W. Bush and carried out, to ruinous effect, by Barack Hussein Obama. The result has been an escalation of government involvement in the financial sector, with ramifications that have rippled disastrously across the rest of the economy. As government involvement has produced a stricken financial sector, so too has the stricken financial sector produced an increasingly ailing economy.[29]The solution was hit on by Davy Crockett in his “Not Yours to Give” speech in the 19^th century, and by the great Ayn Rand in the 20^th. It is simple, profound, and elegant: total separation of government and the economy. Capitalism is the answer, and anything less than 100% decoupling of government from the economy is, plainly and simply, not capitalism! In the imperishable words of Rand, this principle is: “’the liberation of men’s economic activities, of production and trade, from any form of intervention, coercion, compulsion, regulation, or control by the government.’”[30]

Davy Crockett understood the importance of governmental non-involvement in the economy. Politicians are very good at spending other people’s money; what Crockett learned was that this is no true charity, but rather compulsion. And the more that Big Government gets involved in dispensing largesse from other people’s money, the more that the abuses mount. For freedom to prevail, government must disassociate itself from the economy.

Big Fur Hat: Big Fur Hat is a modern conservative genius. He has the homespun wit and humor of a Benjamin Franklin, and a penchant for sardonic and snarky jesting all his own. The genius behind iOwnTheWorld.com, Big Fur Hat is a blogger and a cartoonist. His comics contain much humorous lampooning of Barack Hussein Obama, and his articles on The American Thinker brilliantly skewer the left and socialism.

In one comic, Barack Obama comes back to the White House looking disheveled. He is wearing a fake nose and glasses. Michelle asks him what happened, and he tells her he was out visiting the Occupy Wall Street protesters (inspired by their socialism, of course!). “I felt like I should go down there and pick their brains, get my boots on the ground and get my finger on the pulse and get some ideas,” Obama says.[31] Since he didn’t want to go down there in recognizable form (“then it would just become a lovefest and I wouldn’t learn anything”), he borrowed a set of fake glasses and nose from Biden (“You know, the glasses he always wears when he goes to the midget wrestling”). But, as luck would have it, Obama forgets to change out of his extremely expensive suit. So, when he tries mingling and asking questions, predictably enough, the whiny Occupy Wall Street Marxists turn on him and raise the hue and cry: “Jew! Jew banker! Kill the Jew! Get the Zionist pig!” This last is depicted brilliantly, with the baying horde of Occupiers depicted as zombie-like, a grasping mob of braindead cretins.[32]

Another brilliant post highlights Obama’s patronizing, paternalistic ways. In an address to schoolchildren, Obama preaches that they should take responsibility for themselves and study hard. This is mixed in with the usual babble and platitudes. And then, during a “National Address to Adults”, Obama says “You cannot take responsibility for yourselves… You are children…” and preaches against independence.[33] It’s a brilliant skewering of Obama’s Big Government socialism: Obama’s war on America and our institutions threatens our economic liberty, precisely because of the way in which Obama, the one-time community organizer and welfare enabler, has been handing out welfare benefits through Big Government. Obama’s destructive commitment to Marxism is evident in the way that he has interfered in the workings of the banks. As Forbes and Ames explain, his attempts to mandate “fairness” have caused a great deal of damage to the financial sector and the economy overall. The environment that this president has created, albeit by following a policy that was at least designed under George W. Bush, is one that is extremely hostile to investment—something surely George W. Bush would never have condoned. With investment rendered extremely difficult, small and medium-sized businesses have trouble getting loans. This in turn has been bad for bank stocks, and so it goes.[34]

Like a runaway train, or an avalanche down a mountainside, it is very difficult to stop the Big Government entitlement state until it is too late. Like both the runaway train and the avalanche, the welfare state grows on its own momentum. The Section Eight program, which was introduced in the 1970s under Nixon, is a perfect example of this: originally created to help the homeless by providing housing subsidies, Section Eight has been growing and growing. Today, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) “subsidizes more than two million households—payments can reach as much as $2,800 per household or more.”[35] In 1994, the budget stood at $7 billion. If that sounds like a lot, in 2011 the budget stood at $19 billion. But all of that goes to keeping the neediest families housed, right? Wrong. The mission of HUD has expanded, to the point that it will dole out subsidies for people in order to secure a certain quality of life for them. That’s right: the government is using taxpayer dollars, $19 billion of them as of 2011, to maintain “quality” standards of living. And what does that entail? In fact, it can be as simple as a new teen mother getting into a fight with her mother or grandmother over her baby’s presence, and opting to run off to a shelter. There, she can be classified as “homeless,” and the government (complements of the taxpayers) will pay for her to move into a new home.[36]

So far, the liberals have been winning the war for Big Government entitlements. They are very good at convincing many Americans, at least in blue states, that they have the moral high ground. Anyone who has ever been in a debate with a liberal on the subject of entitlements knows this. They will invariably, as if by some law of nature, start bleating about how cruel, heartless, vitriolic, and full of hate you must be for opposing a handout program run by Big Government and funded by extortion from the taxpayers. Indulging in their favorite pastime of guilt-mongering, these liberal scolds will wag their fingers and tell you to ‘Check your privilege’ or sanctimoniously waffle about how they bet you’d feel differently if only you were homeless/starving/etc. There was a time when I attempted to respond to people like this by telling them that I am all for voluntary giving, and believe firmly in Christian charity and mutual aid. I also believe in the credo, which sadly seems to have disappeared from the crudely-lettered cardboard signs that panhandlers carry, “Will Work For Food.”

What I have learned in more recent years, however, is that there is absolutely no reasoning with these people. They defend insane, ruinous ideas like Marxism in the name of ‘helping the less fortunate’, and they defend kleptocratic autocrats like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. As some of us who spend a lot of time on Facebook and other social media sites cant attest, the liberal left indulged in a wave of eulogizing for Chavez when the cancer-ridden despot finally shucked the mortal coil; this liberal sniveling was a spectacle as revolting as it was pathetically predictable.

But in truth, even with all of this, I didn’t entirely understand the mental disease that is contemporary liberalism until I started to view it as a psychological disorder. The works of authors like Michael Savage, Al Snow, and, of course, Forbes and Ames were of immense help in this regard. Actually, I think Forbes and Ames sum it up best for my purposes here: the roots of the mental disease of liberalism lie with the entitlement mentality. Think about it: from the pathetic Occupy Wall Street protesters to Big Government-run welfare, to Obamacare, to practically everything else the liberals have advocated, it all comes down to the idea that people are entitled to goods and services, just for existing. This is the idea that “I deserve [X, Y, Z] from the government [the taxpayers] because I need X, Y, and Z.” Instead of “I very much want/need X, Y, and Z, therefore I will go out and get a job and earn them,” we have a nation where everyone is always demanding that it come out of someone else’s pocket.[37]

Big Fur Hat recognizes this, much to his credit, and—crucially—he recognizes Obama’s destructive role in expanding it. As Big Fur Hat pointed out, the Obamabots LOVE to shriek about how Bush plotted the whole thing out in advance: his evil program for world domination by invading Iraq in cahoots with the Bilderberg Group (or whatever). But what about Obama? Do they recognize the real-world parallels between the real actions of Barack Hussein Obama and the phantasmagoric narrative they’ve conjured up about Bush? No, of course not, that would be asking them to think.[38]

And yet, Obama’s war plans are undeniable. He is going to war with a force that he has been indoctrinated to believe since childhood is the enemy: American capitalism. His mentor in Marxism Frank Marshall taught him to view capitalism as oppressive and unjust, and Obama drafted out his anti-capitalist war plan long before he was elected. He has appropriated trillions, and the useful idiots in the lamestream media have followed his lead in calling this a “stimulus package.” This, despite the opposition of half of America and all but three Republicans. Make no mistake, Obama’s war on capitalism is the execution of a long-held design, one that aims at nothing less than the destruction of all we hold dear.[39]

There is actually a movement afoot, right now, to get McDonald’s and other ‘low-wage’ employers to pay their workers a ‘living wage’. “We Are Worth More” their signs proclaim. How much, one might well ask, do these people think they are worth? How much is the labor of someone tasked with flipping burgers, asking customers “Do you want fries with that?” and barely maintaining an acceptable bathroom worth? As Tom Woods, a senior fellow of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, handily explains, “If they were worth more, other firms would have captured their extra worth by bidding them away from the fast-food industry and hiring them themselves.”[40] Since Woods lives in the real world, the world of conservative economics where people are expected to actually earn their keep, he sees through the protesters’ nonsense quite handily. People who work those jobs without either advancing themselves within the company or using their work experience to get a better job really have no one to blame but themselves (if there is blame to be parceled out at all) if they’re still stuck there after many years have gone by. But then, that would actually be doing something other than whining and asking other people to pay up for one’s own disappointments in life.[41]

And oh yeah, what are the strikers asking for, anyway? What do they think they’re worth? $15.00/hour. Welcome to Obama’s America, where you’re supposed to be entitled to $15.00/hour job at McDonald’s. Never mind if you have zero skills or previous work experience, never mind if you barely graduated high school and are only semi-literate, never mind if you lack the motivation or the drive to build on your skills and improve yourself, you are Entitled To A Living Wage. And you’re entitled to it merely because you live. You exist, therefore you are owed. Naturally, the useful idiots of the liberal left have hastened to step up to the plate. Brimming with bonhomie and full of idealistic ideas for helping the Less Fortunate, these Latte Liberals have proposed that McDonald’s and others could simply raise their prices slightly, or keep the prices the same but make less money. This, in Tom Woods’s words, “gives the game away”: these liberals are perfectly happy to help some poor people by hurting others (price increases) or by having someone else pay for it (McDonald’s making less money). Forget economics, so long as somebody else is paying the price! And if it’s a member of the evil capitalist class, preferably a Rich White Man or an Evil Corporation, so much the better![42]

The absurdities of the “Fight For Fifteen” campaign are merely a recent symptom of the underlying pathology that is liberalism. At the heart of liberalism is a mentality that is decidedly anti-capitalist, holding as it does to a view of the world where everyone is entitled to have their needs met, especially at someone else’s expense if that person is deemed to be well off. Big Fur Hat wisely recognizes that Obama is contributing to this: he is the logical culmination of this mentality. Only by returning to the founding principles of the Republic can our great nation be saved from the total destruction to which Obama and the legions of liberal-progressive Marxists would consign it.

Molon Labe: A defiant declaration of freedom against the demands of tyranny, the Greek saying “molon labe,” roughly “Come and get it!” was first uttered by King Leonidas of Sparta to the armies of the Persian tyrant Xerxes I. The Persians had invaded Greece, their aim being to subjugate still another people to their empire. But when Xerxes I demanded Leonidas and his Spartans surrender, the Spartan king dared him to make good on his threat. Needless to say, but this is a fitting new watchword for patriots in the age of Obama! With Barack Hussein the Destroyer riding roughshod over our Constitutional liberties, spreading his tyranny of Big Government, the imperative for molon labe has never been clearer.[43]

Big Fur Hat has become involved in the molon labe movement, the emerging consensus among patriots that Obama’s attempts to confiscate our weapons must be resisted at any and all costs. Big Fur Hat is taking up the cause by selling molon labe merchandise, first a t-shirt and now a line of custom shoes.[44] It’s a fashion statement that reflects his own deeply held convictions. In a superb episode of his “99 Second Radio Show,” Big Fur Hat did an “Obamatax Special” with C. Steven Tucker. The episode explored the many outrages against our freedoms committed in Obamacare, notably the tax assessed for not complying, and the fact that in practice, it will be the 53% who end up paying for it. Since only 53% of Americans pay income tax, 47% will not face penalties on their taxes for not complying with Obamacare. Thus, our leftist community organizer/promulgator of socialism president will yet again be committing active class warfare. And there are the other absurdities of Obamacare, notably the fact that there’s nothing to stop a young, healthy person who doesn’t pay income taxes from just opting out, thereby undermining even the feasibility of the system. Fortunately, patriots are fighting back, and the episode also discussed how we can defeat Obamacare.[45]

Of course, Obama’s war on the Second Amendment is more directly responsible for the popularity of molon labe. There has never been a more ruinous presidency in the history of this nation, but out of all Obama’s abuses of power and flagrant displays of contempt for the values that made America great, this may very well be the worst. As the Oath Keepers organization declares: “We will never disarm. We will never surrender our military pattern, semi-automatic rifles and the full capacity magazines, parts, and ammunition that go with them.”[46] This is why molon labe is necessary: to protect freedom from liberal tyranny.

Liberal tyranny, typically fueled by some mixture of fear and moral sanctimony, is the common thread tying together all of Barack the Destroyer’s campaigns on freedom. Obama went after guns with a vengeance in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, capitalizing (now there’s a funny word to apply to a socialist!) on the wave of fear, sorrow, and moral revulsion that swept the nation. The fear, sorrow, and moral revulsion were all perfectly normal responses to a tragedy of such magnitude, but Obama’s sinister manipulations are inexcusable. And yet, this is an old trick, one he’s consistently used with his attempts at socialist redistribution. “Obama evokes the image of our yet-to-be-born children in a lachrymose attempt to justify his draconian plan,” Big Fur Hat fulminates. Exactly: Obama has consistently resorted to precisely this mixture of fear and liberal sentiment to get what he wants, the destruction of American freedom and capitalism.[47] To this true patriots must ever answer, as Leonidas did, “molon labe!”

Bibliography

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Big Fur Hat. “BigFurHat’s 99 Second Radio Show Obamatax Special with C. Steven Tucker.” IOTW2009. June 30, 2012. http://youtu.be/30ObdY1P4_o

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Oath Keepers. “Molon Labe Pledge: To Resist Disarmament and Registration.” Oathkeepers.org. n.d. http://oathkeepers.org/oath/pledge/?p=1

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[1] Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 2-3.

[2] David H. Fischer, Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America’s Founding Ideas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 184-185.

[3] Lorraine Smith Pangle, The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 15.

[4] Pangle, The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 15-16.

[5] Qtd. in Gary Galles, “Ben Franklin on Liberty,” Ludwig von Mises Institute, February 03, 2003, http://mises.org/daily/1144

[6] Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition, 3^rd ed. (San Francisco, CA: Cobden Press, 1985), 1-2.

[7] Pangle, The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 16.

[8] Benjamin Franklin, “Apology for Printers,” National Humanities Center, 2009, 1-2.

[9] Franklin, “Apology for Printers,” 1-2.

[10] Pangle, The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 128-129.

[11] Mitch Michener, Barack Obama: Hope Destroyed (Mustang, OK: Tate Publishing, LLC, 2011), 20-21.

[12] Qtd. in Gary Galles, “Ben Franklin on Liberty,” Ludwig von Mises Institute, February 03, 2003, http://mises.org/daily/1144

[13] Peter Schweizer, Makers and Takers (New York: Random House, 2008), 29.

[14] Schweizer, Makers and Takers, 29-30.

[15] Qtd. in Gary Galles, “Ben Franklin on Liberty,” Ludwig von Mises Institute, February 03, 2003, http://mises.org/daily/1144

[16] Michael Savage, Trickle Down Tyranny: Crushing Obama’s Dream of the Socialist States of America (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 22.

[17] Davy Crockett, “Not Yours to Give,” Congressional Record—Extension of Remarks, Proceedings and Debates of the 102^ndCongress, First Session, May 01, 1991, http://www.linkamerica.com/freedom/lessonlearned.html

[18] Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames, Freedom Manifesto: Why Free Markets are Moral and Big Government Isn’t (New York: Random House, 2012), 154.

[19] Forbes and Ames, Freedom Manifesto, 154-156.

[20] Crockett, “Not Yours to Give.”

[21] Crockett, “Not Yours to Give.”

[22] James R. Kennedy and Walter D. Kennedy, Why Not Freedom!: America’s Revolt Against Big Government, 2^nd ed. (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 2005), 17.

[23] Kennedy and Kennedy, Why Not Freedom!, 17, 23.

[24] James A. Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 1956 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 47.

[25] Daniel E. Harmon, Davy Crockett (Stockton, NJ: Chelsea House, 2002), 44-47.

[26] Shackford, David Crockett, 48-51.

[27] Forbes and Ames, Freedom Manifesto, 156.

[28] Forbes and Ames, Freedom Manifesto, 156.

[29] Forbes and Ames, Freedom Manifesto, 157.

[30] Qtd. in Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), 134.

[31] Big Fur Hat, “Obama’s #105—Occupation,” iOwnTheWorld.com, October 16, 2011, http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=99426

[32] Big Fur Hat, “Obama’s #105—Occupation.”

[33] Big Fur Hat, “The Obamas #63,” iOwnTheWorld.com, http://iowntheworld.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/obamas63strip.jpg

[34] Forbes and Ames, Freedom Manifesto, 157.

[35] Forbes and Ames, Freedom Manifesto, 160.

[36] Forbes and Ames, Freedom Manifesto, 160.

[37] Forbes and Ames, Freedom Manifesto, 162.

[38] Big Fur Hat, “Obama’s War,” American Thinker, March 01, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/obamas_war_1.html

[39] Big Fur Hat, “Obama’s War.”

[40] Tom Woods, “The Fast-Food Protests,” TomWoods.com, August 2^nd 2013, http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/the-fast-food-protests/

[41] Tom Woods, “The Fast-Food Protests.”

[42] Tom Woods, “The Fast-Food Protests”; Tom Woods, “Who Needs Economics: Double Everyone’s Wages by Paying 17 Cents More!” TomWoods.com, August 12, 2013, http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/who-needs-economics-double-everyones-wages-by-paying-17-cents-more/

[43] Russ Vaughn, “Molon Labe, the Code of Those Born Fighting,” American Thinker, January 30, 2013, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/molon_labe_the_code_of_those_born_fighting.html

[44] Angry White Dude, “Conservative Designer Big Fur Hat Selling Custom Molon Labe Shoes!” Angrywhitedude.com, June 18, 2013, http://angrywhitedude.com/2013/06/conservative-designer-big-fur-hat-selling-custom-molon-labe-shoes/

[45] Big Fur Hat, “BigFurHat’s 99 Second Radio Show Obamatax Special with C. Steven Tucker,” IOTW2009, June 30, 2012, http://youtu.be/30ObdY1P4_o

[46] Oath Keepers, “Molon Labe Pledge: To Resist Disarmament and Registration,” Oathkeepers.org, n.d.,http://oathkeepers.org/oath/pledge/?p=1

[47] Big Fur Hat, “Obama’s War.”