Obama's agenda: Forcing us to 'share'

Obama's agenda: Forcing us to 'share'

The devil hath power

To assume a pleasing shape.

-- "Hamlet," Act II, Scene 2.

Sen. Barack Obama overflows with disarming charm and silver-plated oratory. In his visits to New Hampshire, he has made crowds of thousands swoon. He promises the most pleasing of things: purity in government, harmony on earth. Poets champion him; artists enshrine him; romantics love him.

This dashing figure might be weeks away from elevation to the most powerful position in the history of the world. Soothed by the pleasing tones and comforting words of Obama's rhetoric, too few Americans have asked themselves what this man would actually do with so much power if given it.

Removing Obama's glistening rhetorical veneer, what one finds at the core of his campaign is the rotting carcass of American socialism -- that is, socialism leavened with certain freedoms granted at the pleasure of the government, and removable at its displeasure.

In Ohio on Sunday, Obama provided us all with a glimpse of his agenda. A plumber who aspires to open his own plumbing business -- and hence earn more than $250,000 a year, the income at which Obama proposes dramatically raising Americans' taxes -- asked Obama about this tax hike.

"It's not that I want to punish your success," Obama replied. "I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success, too.

"My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

In Obama's world, Washington must not simply ensure an even playing field for all Americans; it must ensure equal outcomes. His way of doing that is to "spread the wealth." Americans have always spread the wealth, though. They do it through the marketplace. They trade goods and services for cash. Those who do it well take the most risk and are most rewarded. Those who don't are cared for by churches, neighbors, families, charities and the state.

But to Obama, the market is too risky. It does not distribute outcomes evenly. And so he proposes to use the power of the state to redistribute outcomes as he prefers to see them. That is a recipe not for success, but for servitude.

There is no question, Barack Obama the man is a new and exciting presence on the national stage. His plan for governing this country is not. It is nothing more than failed redistributionism wrapped in pretty new paper. That isn't change. It is a failure of imagination. And it is a betrayal of trust in the American people and of the ideals on which this great and free nation was founded. Source>>>

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