Welcome to the Party

There comes a time when the blinders come off for all of us. In our private lives it usually happens as we find that we can no longer defend the actions of a loved one (or possibly even our own actions). Eventually your prejudices are overwhelmed and you succumb to the reality others have seen all along.

Having read Slate.com for quite a while I have come to expect decent writing and mostly reasonable arguments when filtered through a leftist shaded world view. So imagine my surprise when I read Jacob Weisberg's "Make It Stop" where he removes his own blinders in public. In the bright light of reality he sees that the legitimate concerns the conservatives, libertarians, independents and yes, even the Tea Party denizens have harped on all along. The Obama Administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress is out of control.

Weisberg opens with:
Amid the right's hysterical repudiation of everything President Obama has done or wants to do, one legitimate concern stands out: that Washington will grow without limits.

Now I would contend that the left's hysterical repudiation of everything President Bush did was easily equal to what the right-wingers are doing today. Regardless, the point is of course Weisberg is right about the out of control growth of the federal government. For those who don't understand what the Tea Party movement is really about - this is it. To be clear these sentiments didn't start with Obama, after all the federal government grew faster than ever under GW Bush. But Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress has kicked in the afterburners and shifted the expansion of the national government into overdrive. People are right to be concerned.

The last two gigantic expansions of the federal government had some serious side effects. Weisberg remarks that Obama has said in his defense that the issue isn't how big government is but whether it works. Define works. Historians still argue about the ultimate effect of FDR's massive expansion of federal power, but most people can see with their own eyes what LBJ's Great Society has wrought. Riding the wave of Federal expansion big-government-Democrat controlled big cities are in shambles. (Democrat controlled states aren't far behind). The so-called underclass LBJ sought to rescue have been devasted directly and indirectly by government policy, both in the social realm and through economic inopportunity.

Today the federal government is sucking up all the oxygen leaving the states - the government entity best able to address the needs of their own citizens - stranded and gasping for breath. The states can't raise taxes when the federal government is bleeding those still employed dry.

I have no illusions that the folks at Slate.com including Weisberg would actually jump from the good ship Obama, but it is interesting that the light of truth is getting through.


CW