Howard Dean: “We owe something to the government.”

By Robert Ringer - Monday, June 18, 2012

Note: emphasis is added in bold italics


Last week, the Dean of Dumb, Howard himself, was at his outrageous best on The Kudlow Report, debating Bernie Marcus, cofounder of Home Depot. Marcus is an unabashed champion of capitalism and an advocate of shrinking the size of government.

In response to Marcus’ statement that the answer to America’s economic woes is not taxation and that the government doesn’t own his money, Dean shouted:

“You made a lot of money because you live in the United States of America. We owe something to the government [my emphasis] to grow up in this great country. And I’m tired of hearing people in the private sector talk like they don’t owe the government anything, because we [sic] do. … You’re damn lucky to live in America, and you ought to pay the right bill for it.”

Sorry, Howard, but if a person makes a lot of money by selling people products and services they want, he doesn’t owe anyone — especially the government — anything for his success. The progressive notion of “giving back” implies that a person took something from others against their will.

I realize that Dean’s brain resides in the never-never land of the lunatic left, but … c’mon … the man was governor of a state. And in 2004, he campaigned for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States. Even today, Dean makes big bucks on the speaking circuit and is a regular guest on television. So, either he knows better than to make such statements or he should know better.

For years, I’ve been preaching that rather than ignoring your enemies, you should learn from them. Yes, you can even learn something from Howard Dean’s idiotic remarks.

For me, his jaw-dropping statement on Kudlow — that “We owe something to the government to grow up in this great country” — was a sharp reminder of how statists view the world. Note that I said statists rather than liberals, progressives, socialists, Marxists, or communists.

Statism goes beyond ideological labels. Statism is the arrogant, anti-liberty belief that all power should be concentrated in the state and that people’s rights are derived from the government. George Bush I and II are statists. And recently another Bush, Jeb, made it clear that he, too, is a statist when he warned that the Republican Party must become “more moderate.”

That’s right, it’s not enough to run back-to-back candidates like Mush McCain and Mushier Romney for president. No sir, Republicans must work on becoming even more “moderate.”

Regardless of political-theater speeches to the contrary, the majority in both wings of the Demopublican Party agree on the foundational premise that the state has a right to ignore the Constitution. Their differences lie only in how much of the Constitution it has a right to ignore, and to what extent.

I will shout it from the rooftops until the government shuts me up with a well-aimed drone: It is the government — not the people — whose rights are limited by the Constitution, and those limitations are made clear by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments!

By contrast, individuals can do anything they damn well please, so long as they are not committing acts of aggression against others. And what they do is none of the government’s business. That’s what Natural Law is all about. Unfortunately, however, politicians have zero interest in Natural Law.

Most of the time, of course, government does not have to use violence to protect its statist agenda. There are always more than enough useful idiots around to cheer on politicians at political gatherings — particularly at nominating conventions and election victory celebrations — to assure the perpetuation of the statist system without having to resort to the use of force.

Of course, the useful idiots who are most helpful to the statists in Washington are the ones employed by the media. Take Bill O’Reilly, who represents those patriotic folks who can always be counted on to fall in line when the state employs its age-old pomp-and-circumstance tactics. As just one example of his unflinching patriotism, O’Reilly constantly reminds viewers that they must respect the office of the presidency.

Strange … very strange. I thought you could only respect — or disrespect — people. How do you respect an abstraction such as an “office?” Pretty silly when you think about it, but that’s what pomp and circumstance is all about.

Even if it were possible to respect an office (it isn’t), how could anyone other than a diehard statist respect an office that has been held by such scoundrels as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and, of course, the current Scoundrel-in-Chief, Barack Obama?

Sorry, but “respecting the office of the presidency” does not make you patriotic. Nor are you patriotic for paying more taxes, as Delaware Dimwit Joe Biden would have you believe. Patriotism is about having the courage to demand that the government abide by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Patriotism is also about having the courage to refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils. Urging people to be a part of this sham is a crucial element in perpetuating the corrupt, one-party, statist system we now have.

In that respect, the lawsuit now pending against the Republican Party by Ron Paul supporters is a supreme act of courage and principle. Throughout my lifetime, the Republicans’ excuse for voting for yet another statist candidate has been, “Let’s just get the Democrat out of the White House by closing ranks around the ‘most electable candidate’ we have, then we can pressure him into moving to the right once he’s in office.”

Sounds like a great strategy, but, unfortunately, it’s a strategy that has never worked. Nor will it work this time around.

If there is an election in November … and if Romney ends up getting the nomination after an ugly slugfest with the Ron Paul troops in Tampa … and if he then beats the current presidential pretender in the White House, some of his once-conservative converts (e.g., Ann Coulter) will realize that the Republican copout strategy failed once again when MittMan starts lecturing his subjects on how lucky they are to live in America.

I hate watching reruns of old movies!

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Copyright © 2012 Robert Ringer

Comment:

Ringer is obviously a Libertarian.  But they have no real chance of winning.  He makes valid points, but they aren't going to carry the day.  It may be hard to accept, but Romney is the better choice in my opinion.  He isn't at war with this culture, as Obama is.  I don't like Romney, but Obama is suicide.