When Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, I could see nothing to cheer about. A friend calmly assured me that "The Republic will survive." He was right, but only because enough Americans concluded that Clinton must be opposed. We now face the same challenge with the ascension (if that is the right word) of Barack Obama as the 44th person to hold the nation’s highest office. In plain words, what made the Clinton Administration endurable was the election of a Republican Congress in 1994, which gave substance to vague talk of fiscal responsibility and even gave us the greatest reform of the welfare system in our history.
Naturally enough, the media are full of sophomoric enthusiasm for the new president, but this is hardly surprising, given the fact that 90 percent of the national media are Democrats. Under the circumstances, Republican criticism is muted, one hopes only until the first Obama policy proposals are put forward in Congress or implemented by executive order.
For make no mistake, this administration will constitute a comprehensive assault on the "flawed" regime which Obama wishes to "transform" into the perfect polity wherein, as he said in front of the Lincoln Memorial Sunday, "anything is possible." The idea that there are limits to what can be accomplished by political action has never occurred to the man raised in the soiled world of Chicago politics.
Our constitutional republic will be subjected to what a close friend has called "the death of a thousand cuts." Because Obama’s liberalism is not endorsed by a majority of Americans, because many voted for him because they were so angry at George Bush, and because his cabinet choices are reassuringly "moderate," i.e., Clinton Administration retreads, public attention is deflected from the seemingly vacuous but actually pernicious utopian rhetoric of the political campaign.
Obama knows how to make the right music that appeals to the hopes of his fellow citizens, but only those who can read music, as it were, can know with precision what the melody is. Lots of rock ‘n roll, country and soul music was played in the joyful celebrations that marked the Inauguration, but perhaps the real strain is Wagnerian tragic opera.
It is hardly a secret that Obama is the most vociferously pro-abortion president ever. For those who think Evangelical Protestants, Roman Catholics and Mormons–and anyone else who takes seriously the principle that all men are created equal–can safely be ignored as fringe elements, it is almost rude to point out that they understand that our rights are in peril.
More unborn babies are going to die each year during the next four, perhaps eight, than in the history of the country. Obama has pledged to sign a vile piece of legislation dishonestly labeled the "Freedom of Choice Act," which would effectively remove every federal and state limit on the judicially imposed "right" to kill unborn babies.
That is not all. Obama will reverse Ronald Reagan’s policy which forbids funding for abortion overseas, and he will overturn George Bush’s ban on embryonic stem cell "research" that entails the destruction of human embryos. As Abraham Lincoln said about slavery, we must daily "crucify our feelings" about baby killing because it is permitted by law and even hallowed by an alleged constitutional interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The greatest aspect of the current euphoria over Obama arises from his being the first American of any degree of African descent to be elected President. Many words have been written about how this will give peace to our nation in that no legal or other barriers prevented it. All of that is true as far as it goes, but there is no assurance whatever that racial peace will occur.
The Democratic Party has for more than 40 years been the advocate of reverse discrimination, known variously as "affirmative action," "diversity in hiring," remediation of past wrongs, and so on. Even if Obama wanted to end the "temporary" policy purported to be necessary to overcome many years of racial injustice, Congressional Democrats would not hear of it. There are too many people, especially well-connected people, who benefit from the liberal racial plantation for there to be any motivation to close it down.
Our commerce, so damaged by government manipulation of credit and currency, will hardly recover from Obama’s policies of even greater doses of interventionism that brought on the sickness in the first place. There is insufficient space here to discuss the perilous times ahead in the international arena, but for now "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."