Obama's motivation?

Many of my posts here are influenced by various forum discussions on political happenings. Most of them are ideas that I have fleshed out while taking my morning shower. This morning, though, I sat down and wrote an entire post, first draft, straight from my head, while giving my baby her breakfast after a record eight hour stretch of sleep! Upon re-reading it, I thought it was worth simply posting in its entirety.

The discussion started with the new credit card rules and soon moved to things that the administration has been doing that have raised or will raise prices on the average person, thanks to taxes, inflation, and/or changed business practices. One person doubted my take on the situation and basically suggested that I believed everything was Obama's fault because he and the "Demon-crats" had an agenda to bring the American traveler (the last subject was a Democrat-floated proposal to use tax to keep the gas price at $4) to his knees, because that "makes SO much sense *eyeroll smiley*". This was my response:

No, it doesn't, because that's not his plan. It's hard to say exactly what his plan is, but I think I've got the gist of it...it springs from a genuine desire to 'set things right' for the people he believes have been disenfranchised by capitalism.

I don't know if he personally endorses the $4/gallon plan. It springs, however, from a belief that Americans use "too much oil", thereby ruining the environment, and the only way to keep them from doing it is to raise the price until they start cutting back of their own accord. The idea itself follows logically... it just doesn't start with reality. The reality is that though a swatch of middle-class Americans may be able to slim out a small percentage of their driving, the working poor have already gotten it as far down as they can and now have to cut down on food and medical care, and the rich have enough money to continue paying for the increased prices and won't be affected much.

His actual ideas, as well, follow logically from their premise. The only problem is that the premise is not grounded in reality. The car fiasco springs from a belief that hybrids are utterly affordable and easily makeable and the only reason why they aren't all over the place is because the auto companies want bigger profits and the oil companies have it in for us. The truth is that hybrids are losses. They're significantly more expensive as new cars. you can't find them as used cars, and they STILL present a loss between manufacturing costs and selling price.

Obama and most of the Democratic majority are not businessmen, and they're not working poor families, and they're not farmers. They don't understand how you can make more without taking it away from someone else, something any six-year-old with a (supervised) vegetable garden learns by August. They don't realize that you can't make something happen just by saying it'll happen, because they've been steeped in the notion of "positive thinking" (which has its uses, but ordering the sun to shine isn't one of them). They've all gone to these huge famous colleges where the ivory tower notion of the way the world works is passed around and around and around like a cow chewing its cud, and then they have lived lives of privilege (compared to most of the rest of us) surrounded by people who have merely reinforced their beliefs.

This, by the way, is why the percentage of people who approve of Obama as a person, the much-quoted 55-60% depending on which day it is, is much higher (twice as high, last I heard) than the percentage of people who approve of his policies. Lots of people like his charisma, but polls keep showing that Americans don't want the government running banks and companies and such and Obama and his crowd just keep doing it, because they believe they can do a better job. And they can't, because their beliefs are based on a perceived notion of justice and injustice and equality and discrimination, instead of the kind of understanding about profit and loss that any business major already has.

But they won't hear it from businessmen, because they believe that businessmen are all collective Scrooges strip-mining the populace because they like to see people suffer as long as it makes them money money money hahahahaha, like any Saturday Morning villain from the '80's and '90's... at least, the ones whose goals weren't destroying the environment Just Because.

Giving back to whom?

President Obama said something in his speech at Notre Dame that caught my attention. Actually, he said many things that caught my attention, but there is one that I want to focus on here. I knew that there was something wrong with his statement, but I did not realize what it was until I started reading today's transcript from the talk show host Rush Limbaugh. I'll be using quotes from both Obama and Limbaugh before taking the discussion in a slightly different direction. Obama was trying to speak as a Christian. Limbaugh was trying to speak as a Conservative. I will be considering this from the perspective of a Christian Conservative. Let's start with Obama.

Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice.

Of course, Obama has a fix for this. He spoke of it during another speech, this one at Arizona State:

With a degree from this university, you have everything you need to get started. Did you study business? Why not help our struggling non-profits find better, more effective ways to serve folks in need. Nursing? Understaffed clinics and hospitals across this country are desperate for your help. Education? Teach in a high-need school; give a chance to kids we can't afford to give up on - prepare them to compete for any job anywhere in the world. Engineering? Help us lead a green revolution, developing new sources of clean energy that will power our economy and preserve our planet....one thing I know about a body of work is that it's never finished. It's cumulative; it deepens and expands with each day that you give your best, and give back, and contribute to the life of this nation.

Part of this is not news... he's been mistaking personal charity for nationalism for a while now. Nowadays what's important isn't helping people, it's contributing to the nation. This is, of course, the point at which patriotism becomes fascism.
Now Rush Limbaugh responded to the phrase on his radio program today, and brought up a very interesting point:

And then he was telling them, "Give back, give back," all these college graduates. Give back what? They've got nothing to give back. They haven't acquired anything yet! The things they do have, have been given to them, everything -- by their overindulgent Baby Boomer mommies and daddies. Now when they can go out and earn money so they can repay what they've been given, Obama is trying to tell 'em, "Don't do that! Don't give back. Go back and 'give back' by working at a nonprofit or some such thing." It's convoluted.

I hate this whole concept of "giving back" anyway, that somehow it is the duty of the successful to "give back." Walter Williams, an occasional guest host on this program, has it exactly right on this whole notion of "giving back." The only people need to give anything back are the thieves among us: the thieves and the criminals, the people who have taken things which are not theirs. They're the ones that need to give back... But this notion of giving back is so convoluted because Obama is talking to a bunch of college graduates who don't have anything yet and telling them to give back.

This whole notion of giving something back is rooted in the belief whatever you have is somehow ill-gotten. That you've cheated, lied, or stolen to get it or that you're somehow not entitled to it, and so you need to give back.

Now for a different perspective.

Obama is not telling people to do something wrong. It isn't a terrible thing to work for a non-profit. It's true that the country could benefit from more people being engaged in charitable work. Also, Rush is not off-base. To give, you need to have something to give. Some people choose to acquire and give money. Some give their time. Those who give their money support those who give their time. When's the last time you heard a missionary speak at your church? What's the first thing a new missionary needs if he's ever going to make it to the field? Funding. However, this is getting off my intended subject, so let me actually begin to make my point.

The problem with Obama's bent is that he is motivating by guilt. He would have you believe that being well-off is intrinsically evil, and trying to work at a well-paying position is nothing but rank selfishness. He also would have you believe that the rich only become rich at the expense of the poor, and there is no other way to do it except to not be rich. I've spoken on this before.

But the Bible does not motivate charitable giving by guilt. The story of Ananias and Sapphira proves that, when they are told that while they still owned the land, it was their own, and when they sold it, the money was under their control. In the Gospels, we learn that God loves a cheerful giver. Obama is trying to produce the fearful giver.

God wants us to give because we have charitable feelings towards our fellow man, because we care about others, and out of gladness for what God has provided for us. Obama is telling us to give because we owe our fellow man for the simple fact that we succeeded and they did not. (Of course, the definition of success is rapidly shrinking. At first it was $250K/year, then $200K/year, then $120K/year, and now it seems that merely having a college degree puts you in the crosshairs, even if you are not yet employed.) Obama is not approaching this from a Christian viewpoint, no matter what he claims. He is approaching this from a very authoritarian socialist viewpoint.

In the authoritarian socialist government, the State craves control. It cannot bear to rely on people's goodwill, which is why it seeks to control us through fear and coercion. The tax increases Obama is planning is the coercion, and his speeches to these colleges is the fear. He, like most or all liberal Democrats, do not believe that enough people will give to others unless they are giving back... unless they are paying a debt that they know will be collected upon one way or the other. Remember the death threats made against the AIG executives.

I actually have a way to describe the State craving for control. With my first baby, I had to bottle-feed. I got used to it pretty quickly and had him on a schedule. At x time, he got x ounces of milk. Now, for my second, I am able to successfully breastfeed. Breastfeeding is not like bottle feeding. It is a co-operation between the mother and the infant, a matter of supply and demand. It does not run on a schedule. She lets me know when she is hungry, which could be anywhere from one to five hours since her last feeding. There is no gauge, no ounce markers, and I have no way of knowing how much she has had when she refuses the breast and decides that she is done. The only way I can measure my success is when she is weighed at the doctor's office. Then I find out that, despite my fears that she isn't getting half what I would have given her on a bottle, she is actually gaining so well that the doctor is surprised that she is only on breastmilk. Now if I gave into my fear and switched to bottle-feeding, she would be deprived of a wide variety of benefits so well known by now that they no longer need to be proven, and that for no good reason, because breastfeeding is working perfectly well.

The authoritarian socialist government has the same sort of fear. It wants to know how much money is going into charity, and where it is going. It wants to be sure that everyone is "doing their fair share". It is not content with trusting a people who are so generous that, though our government's charitable contributions put us near the bottom of the list of contributors, the private outpouring put us clearly at the top. Obama will not be content with "measuring success by weight gained", in this case merely checking to see if there are fewer poor and/or they are better off than before. No, he must have full control over the very process, even if it is not the best and healthiest way for society to operate.

The Christian Conservative does not scoff at charity, nor does he believe that people can only be poor because they do not deserve help. He sees helping the poor as his blessed duty, blessed because he is capable of doing so, a duty because God's love motivates him to help. However, he must watch out for the liberal rhetoric, and understand that charity should not be coerced; nor must it be motivated by fear and coercion.

Personal News: Update

For those of you who only read this blog and have been wondering, I had my baby on April 2nd. She had the cord around her neck, probably as a result of the version, but the capable doctor and midwife untangled her right away and she started breathing on her own.

She's perfectly healthy, 8lbs 13oz at birth, and already sleeping a 5-6hr stretch during the night. I'm still technically in post-partum recovery and doing alright. Of course I think she's the prettiest baby ever!

So in the midst of diapers, nursing, and juggling the schedules of homemaker, mother-of-infant, and homeschooling mother... I return to my blog.

Shattered Dreams

Have you ever hung out with friends or coworkers and started talking about what you would do if you were rich? Usually the conversation starts the same way. "Man, if I won the lottery, I would..."

Stop. Full stop.

If you win the lottery, your winnings are taxed. If you win big, you will be taxed big. Obama is planning on putting a heavy tax on earnings over $250K. Of course, that $250K will be taxed too, at varying rates from the first dollar to the last, so you won't even net $250K. But he's decided that's as much as any reasonable person should ever make in a year, even though you'd hoped that lottery winning meant that you'd never have to work again.

You'd be better off to not buy a lottery ticket at all. The worst that could happen is that you could win, and why are you bothering to spend the ticket money? If you get lucky, it will all be taken away.

Ever been a kid in the basement with a dinky cheap guitar hoping to become the next big hit? Got your friends together, the level-headed bassman, the over-excited lead singer, the wacky drummer? You might want to rethink your plans. You're a musician, not a business. If you make it big, you'll make lots of money. If you make lots of money, Obama will take it away from you. You'd be better off just getting some midrange job and not trying to 'make it big' at all.

Same thing goes if you're a budding inventor, composer, actor... want to make it big? Watch out. You might make it big enough to attract the government's attention. All the risk you took, sleeping in your car, failure after mind-numbing failure, all the years you spent honing your art, all the college debt you accrued trying to stick out from the rest, all gone. Obama and the Democrats have decided that anyone who puts in the work and risk to make it big is destined to hand their money over to people who took neither the work nor the risk simply to make it at all.

What about small businesses? My brother, a tax accountant, clued me into this one. The common designation for a small business is an "S corporation", due to its risks and advantages. Unfortunately, "S corporations" require you to report your business earnings as income, and you do so before you start paying your employees or rent. So if you make a business income of $300K and have expenses of $250K, guess what? You're going under.

From reading what proponents of socialism have to say, I can only guess that they believe that if you take away the incentive to excel, to 'make it big', to win, that people will continue to try. They seem to believe that people will still reach for the prize, even when there is no prize to reach. Capitalism and the free market believe that they are wrong. History is on the side of capitalism and the free market in this case.

What will happen to this country when nobody bothers to risk becoming The Next Big? When inventors no longer fiddle in their garages, and teenagers no longer form impromptu bands in their basements? When nobody buys lottery tickets for fear they might win? When doctors and surgeons do as some are already planning and quit working halfway through the year to avoid making 'too much money', reducing their numbers and making it very hard to get an appointment in October?

What will become of us then?