You are invited to read the latest commentary from the Free Enterprise Foundation. It will make you think!

Leave My Guns and Bibles Alone!

“…And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”(Senator Obama, California fundraising gathering, 4/6/08)

The airwaves and Internet blogs have been having a field day with Senator Obama’s gaffe before a group of San Francisco supporters complaining about the difficulty in getting through to lesser mortals living in small town America. Though few in words, it has been so damaging because it was a “Shazam” moment tearing away the veneer so carefully prepared of Obama being a different kind of liberal.

Here he is revealed to be the worst kind of intellectual snob. His redeeming comments, making light of the mistake, have only compounded the certainty that we see the true candidate in all his patronizing sentiment. In Muncie, Illinois on a campaign swing, he responded, It was just, “…a little, typical sort of political flare," but conceded, "I didn't say it as well as I should have." Senator, to the contrary, you said exactly what you meant. In the immediate aftermath, before the damage was clear, one site has the Senator saying that he was “…only telling the truth.”

From his perspective, that is the way he sees us. He only wants to “take our pain” onto the shoulders of the overburdened federal government, whether we want him to or not. Pollsters are missing that the reaction of the public rejecting the politics of the past is not some “Gumbaya Moment” where the public wants to join hands together with the government to provide a solution. Right now the public doesn’t trust either party.

The fact is the public is not interested in the non-solution he and liberals generally are peddling. The public wants us out of their hair and out of their pocketbooks. On their own or together with NGOs and volunteer organization, the public can more effectively focus on what troubles them every day. Many limousine liberals, however, want to spend your money to assure there is a national safety blanket for virtually every conceivable injury or failure of mankind. Taxing all of us into penury will salve their conscience as they drink their lattes while wending their way to their trainers in their BMWs and Lexii, but it won’t do a thing for the average citizen except eliminate growth in tomorrow’s jobs and make those that exist today fewer and less remunerative.

I am really happy when liberals spend their money to make the world better. I applaud their help for mankind. They become part of the $260 Billion spent annually on measured charity by all of us including those Senator Obama wants to tax into the middle class. Many of these donors are those who make up the top 1 percent of our tax payers supplying 36 percent of all income taxes collected annually or the top 5 percent that pays 52 percent of personal taxes collected. What they give beyond taxes collected is true charity.

While applauding all who are in this group, I am frustrated by wasteful expenditures of federal money for programs that work only for the thousands of workers hired to implement them or monitor their implementation in a further exasperating weakening of our basic national fabric.

The National government does not create wealth. It only spends what it takes from us. When we layer an already inefficient bureaucracy with a one size fits all package of new entitlements, we compound the true challenges our economy faces. Wealth inevitably must come from a vibrant private sector. When we vilify its leaders and its motives; when we layer it with restrictions that drive business to foreign shores; when we tax it into a non competitive posture, how can we be surprised that the economy falters? The world is out there to compete not to make us look good. They like it when we are healthy enough to buy their products but are not going to do a thing to remove the shackles from our businesses nor to address our mistaken economic policies.

The small town “bitterness” of which he speaks, and which goes for big city residents as well is that the voters aren’t buying it anymore. The nation is headed in the wrong direction, but it isn’t because government is in our lives too little. Government is in our lives too much. The electorate has grounds to be upset with a Republican Congress that acted like Democrats and an Administration that did nothing about it.

The solution, however, is not a Democratic Congress that makes a shambles of our trade policy and hurts us and our friends. The Columbia Free Trade Agreement will do, by most estimates, more for the U.S. than Columbia but will also be an important recognition of all they have done to get their human rights and economic house in order. It has been delayed in the Democratic Congress because of the anti trade message being spread by its presidential candidates, who no doubt, if elected will soon find that it is a fine agreement.

Ranting is not normally my way, and I know often it evokes a “turtle response” by those of a contrary persuasion. For them let me say that you are correct; we are going to solve our problems together or not at all. If those of us who resist your approach are truly your brothers, then let’s engage in a non partisan effort to devise solutions both sides of our family can believe in.

If you are truly interested in solutions to our most pressing problems of entitlements out of control, energy dependence on uncertain providers, escalating medical costs and a need to provide for universal care; If you are concerned for our decaying national infrastructure, and declining competiveness of our schools and our children, and if you care about a fair, simple tax structure that will minimize the difficulty and intrusion it makes into family finance while providing the funds the government needs to operate, then I challenge you to accept this offer. You call your people ( Brookings) and I will call mine ( Heritage), and we will go work on this together until we can come up with agreed approaches utilizing the private sector, NGO’s and government that will harness the energies of all sectors and set them on the road to solutions. How about it? Let’s do it for our children’s sake.

Robert E. Freer, Jr., is president of the Free Enterprise Foundation, (www.FreeEnterpriseFoundation.org). He is a professor at The Citadel and was selected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, Prof. Freer may be reached at Robert.freer@citadel.edu. Copies of his earlier columns may be found at www.FreeEnterpriseFoundation.org. A new book from Professor Freer, Citadel Values, containing the wisdom of some of his most beloved columns, is available on Amazon.com, through the Foundation’s website and at The Citadel Gift Shop. Copyright © 2008 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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