The Middle is Always Evil

Barack Obama supporters are starting to creep me out in a serious way. You know the ones; chanting his name, crying during his speeches, fainting during his speeches, screaming “I love you!” as he passes.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. had this to say about Obama’s Nomination clinch:

“I cried all night. I’m going to be crying for the next four years,” he said. “What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history. … The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance.” (italics mine)

Michael Morse, a teen columnist for TeenLink, a newspaper aimed at young people in South Florida, went to an Obama rally and shared his experience:

The crowd immediately ceased the roar when Obama approached the mic, eager to hear whatever the man has to say… I can’t believe the man whose speeches I watch on YouTube everyday is so close to me. His speeches give an aura of immortality that belies the fact that he’s a living breathing human.

Its very upsetting to hear this kind of thing from someone my age; it bears a frightening similarity to Hitler’s level of popularity in Nazi Germany, where he was elevated to a sort of demi-god status. This is especially concerning, considering Obama’s support for compulsory national service for American high-school, middle-school and college-age students, which is (if you accept my earlier analogy) more than a little similar the imfamous Hitler Youth, Hitler’s version of compulsory national service.

Obama’s supporters seem to have forgotten that Barack Obama is just a man– and less than a man, hes just a politician. Worse still, he isn’t even a good politician. Its been said over and over again, but Obama is all fluff and no substance. One struggles to find anything material on his webpage, aside from one, large PDF ominously titled, “THE BLUEPRINT FOR CHANGE” (caps his, not mine).

Time columnist Joe Klein knows what I’m talking about:

Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.

Have you seen Obama’s website? Its creepy! On the main part of the site there’s a Kids for Obama page, where kids are given 10 ways in which they can get involved, encouraging children to host Obama-themed sleepovers and parties, to get a pen pal to talk to about Obama, among other things. If you sign up, you can set up your own little facebook right there on his homepage, give all your information, and join other Obamunists to celebrate his birthday, hold Obama-themed spa parties, book clubs, and any other kind of get-together you could think of– all in Obama’s holy name.

Worst of all, though, is Camp Obama, a four day training camp paid for by the Obama campaign, which teaches Obama supporters to learn more about how Barack Obama is a great and wise leader.

Hitler and Barack Obama have too much in common for me to not feel uneasy going into election season. Gun control, socialized healthcare, compulsory national service, an anti-market economic position, all on top of a creepy, cult-like leader worship by supporters. Thats five too many similarities.

I commented on gas prices in an earlier blog post, but I feel that more needs to be said.

Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic Nominee, has said that if elected, he would impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies. It is said that companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobile have made an “unfair profit, ” and that they should have to give the excess money that they made “back to the American people.” Obama himself has said:

“I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills.”

Other liberals have spouted similar rhetoric. Here’s Hillary Clinton:

She wants to “take” their profits.

Obama and Hillary aren’t the only ones. Every Democrat in the Senate– as well as two Republicans– voted for such a windfall profits tax, which– thankfully– did not pass.

If you take away the windfall profits of oil companies, they will be unable to reinvest in new supply; they will be forced to slow their own production of crude oil. Where will they go for crude oil then? Ah, yes, the Mideast; where else? But buying their crude oil from the Mideast will be much more expensive than it would be if they were able to process it themselves. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to because Obama will have “taken” the money that they would need. But what does all of this mean for the average American?

As George Will notes in a video that is viewable here, Corporations don’t pay taxes, they just raise their prices, and the consumer pays them. Taxing away gas companies’ profits will only hurt the American consumer. That’s what happened in the 80’s under Carter’s profits tax, and it will happen again under a similar Obama tax– only this time it will be much worse. Why? Because this time around supply is being even further restricted by environmentalist congressmen–Democrats mostly. What exactly are they doing to restrict the supply of oil? First, a bit of history.

In 1995, Congress passed legislation that would have allowed oil production on a small fraction– less than one tenth of one percent– of ANWR. With this land designated for oil production, America could have produced an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil. Such a measure would certainly have been a huge step toward relieving America of its dependence on foreign oil, but the bill was vetoed by Clinton. Why? The same reason that the Democratically controlled Congress opposes the same drilling in the present day– Environmentalism.

Democrats today want the same things they wanted in ‘95: A complete and permanent halt of all development on ANWR, as well as a ban on offshore drilling on the east and west coast of the United States. The men who draft such proposals talk about the devastating effects that such acts, if taken, would have on the affected ecosystems. Not only are these claims unfounded (offshore drilling has actually been fairly clean since the ’70s, and as I said above, the ANWR drilling in question would be over less than .01% of the reserved land, thus affecting little of the wildlife, if any), but it is my sincere belief that the men who make them do not believe what they themselves are saying, and their motives are sinister in nature.

Think hard about what the liberals in Congress actually want.

First, they want a huge windfall profits tax of at least 25% on an industry that already has 45% of its income taxed, an action that will cause a decrease in supply, a rise in demand, and ultimately, an increase in gas prices. Next, they want to ban oil exploration and drilling everywhere. But thats not all: liberals want heavier taxes on coal companies, as well as the continuation of a very heavy tariff on ethanol from Brazil, which is a de facto ban. And it doesn’t even stop there: most liberals, including ‘Bama, do not support nuclear energy, the cleanest, safest energy source known to man, because– guess why? Environmental hazards.

If Barack Obama is elected president, this kind of supply restriction will occur, and it will result in a kind of perfect storm for the American consumer. Over time, gas prices will hit an unimaginable level, and the American economy will be devastated. But just as always, the guilty parties will receive no blame. The blame will fall on “greedy corporations,” and like fuel onto a fire, more harmful restrictions will surely be put in place.

If liberal Congressmen actually wanted lower gas prices for Americans, they would take the opposite position on all of the above issues. But they don’t. Why not?? These men are not stupid; they are not misguided; they are elected officials; they all have been well educated, and have a significant amount of experience in the world. They know what they are doing. They want our gas prices to go higher. George Will put it well when he said:

“On the left in this country what they want is a manufactured scarcity so that government can have the rationale to ration [oil supplies], which gives the government what the left wants: an ever more minute supervision of our daily choices.”

And while this is what the left wants on the surface, it is only a means to an end, which is, ultimately: the destruction of all that is good. The Dems in congress hate the profits of the oil companies, not because they are evil, but because they are good. They hate the production of oil refineries and drilling for oil, not because those things represent ruin, as they claim, but because they represent production. They consider that which is good to be evil because it is good. Ayn Rand wrote about this view of life in her book, Atlas Shrugged:

They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.

How can we defeat this kind of evil? As believers in Capitalism and the free market, we have historically put ourselves at a disadvantage. We must start believing that we are right, and that what we believe in is virtuous. We cannot win a fight in which we consider ourselves to be evil, and our opponent good.

We allow these men to escape from moral judgement by accepting that the cause that they say they fight for– environmentalism– is virtuous. As I have said before, to hold nature as an end in and of itself is not a moral position, it is an immoral one. All of that which is anti-mind is anti-life. By accepting the premise that environmentalism is a fundamentally positive ideal, we are giving them a moral sanction that they do not deserve. It is for this reason that we get candidates like John McCain, who compromise progress and pay lip service to “stewardship of creation.” McCain tentatively supports offshore drilling, but only recently, and only because it has become so politically convenient in the last few months.

Proclaim Capitalism to be your moral sanction, and that each man’s right to his own life is an absolute that cannot be superseded by any legislature. This is the truth they fear, but will never admit.

Tell it.