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The Republican Gazette
MONDAY APRIL 6, 2009
It was inevitable, I suppose. A society that increasingly thinks of the federal government as a giant panacea would slowly but surely reach the point where it quietly acquiesces to that same government taking over our major corporations and banks, redirecting our faith and our focus, and finally becoming the Big Brother that has been warned about for decades, but now seems like a comforting and trusted older sibling rather than a totalitarian boogeyman.
The most effective and lasting coups are those that happen without a shot being fired, and instead occur by a people willingly handing over control. That is what we are witnessing today in the United States of America, as a lonely nation turns its eyes to Washington and says, please, solve our problems and protect us from ourselves.
Despite what some conservative commentators and columnists try to postulate, this is not a Democrat vs. Republican issue, since our society as a whole shares equal culpability in this quiet but swift shift from capitalism to socialism. The groundwork for the current movement was laid as far back as the Great Depression, and the last real effort to stem its inexorable march occurred in the 1980s. But an entrenched Congress by then was already too dominated by pork barrel adherents to let any term-limited president enact lasting change.

A nation of victims has finally won out
The liberal philosophy that we are a nation of victims in need of government’s heavy hand became foundational enough through the years that all that was needed to make the transition complete was a financial crisis on Wall Street and a quick series of government bailouts that began, yes, with a Republican president, a fact that kept conservatives at bay long enough for a True Believer to take the White House and show everyone what government intervention is really all about. George W. Bush may have succumbed in part to Big Brother’s siren song, but Barack Obama has trained his whole life to lead the choir in its most perfect melody. There has seldom been such an ideal coming together of a man and his times.    
Simply put, Barack Obama has always believed that the government should control every aspect of the lives of its countrymen, and he has stepped into the presidency at the exact moment that a majority of Americans, for the first time, essentially agrees with him and is ready to declare that the capitalistic model no longer works. Aided in large part by capitalists whose abuse of the system led to public outrage, Obama’s cure is not to reset the structure so it can be self-corrected, but instead to end it completely. With a willing nation at his side, not to mention, just importantly, a compliant and supportive Big Media, Obama is leading the United States into a new era of socialism and totalitarianism, while Americans not only stand by and watch as it happen, but say thank you as well.
Pay attention, America. You are witnessing the most historic change in the very fiber of our nation since our founding. You are watching a president who thinks of himself as "transitional," and the transition is much more than many understand. Barack Obama fancies himself no less than the second coming of Lincoln. But whereas Lincoln was a man who almost reluctantly rose to his occasion, Obama is a man who fought tooth and nail to make sure he was here when the opportunity presented itself. Where Lincoln believed in freedom and equal opportunity for all, Obama believes that opportunity is not in and of itself enough; the government must ensure equality for all – in income, housing, education and status  -- even for those who have little interest in lifting a finger to acquire it through their own initiative. Under Obama, we will not have equal opportunity to live the American dream; we will all be handed the American dream, even if doing so requires a Robin Hood form of government, and the boundaries of the dream are narrowly redefined.

Big Brother has been handed power willingly
There is no shock or surprise about any of this. For years, the “sovereign states” have been happily empowering the federal Big Brother at the cost of their own independence. The federal government says it will withhold highway dollars unless states agree with its driver alcohol limit of .08? No problem, we’ll lower the alcohol limit to get the federal funds, and thank you very much. The federal government says it will create education standards that must be met, or no money for your schools? Then meet those standards we will. Through the power of its massive purse (or, absent that, the ability to print its own IOU’s to be paid back decades later), the federal government holds its states hostage through its endless mandates, and no state has the willpower to resist.
And now, the President of the United States and his government will set the rules for industry and corporations, and decide how much money executives will be allowed to be paid and, in some cases, who those people will be who get to be executives. The president and Congress will eventually decide the wages of workers, the benefits that will be provided to them, and the costs of goods and services for all of us. It will not be difficult; many countries have been doing it for decades and offer a time-tested model to follow. 
Even more compliant in our current transition from democracy to socialism are those states, like West Virginia, that engage in their own form of Big Brother-ism. From empowering unelected health departments to control the rules of private businesses well beyond the safety of the food they serve, to handing over control to the governor of agencies and departments that were previously independent, to requiring restaurants to post calorie contents to protect us from ourselves, to the very acceptance of the philosophy that a Robert C. Byrd has been the state’s great benefactor because of the tax dollars of others he has redirected to his state in lieu of the state supporting itself, we have surrendered all rights and responsibilities. In the name of better health or more effective government, we now stand and applaud as the very fabric of freedom is being ripped out from under us, like a magician removes a tablecloth with the flick of a wrist without jarring the condiments, plates and silverware that are resting upon it.

The only god left to worship is Mother Earth
Not only have we surrendered our daily lives to the wisdom of those we elect, we have also forfeited our ability to talk bluntly and openly about issues. George Orwell called it “newspeak,” but we know it better as political correctness. Taxes are “revenue enhancements.” Liberals are “progressives.” Abortion is “choice.” Being handicapped is being “differently abled.” A silent prayer is a “moment of silence.” An actress is a “female actor.” Being blind is being “visually impaired.” A stewardess is a “flight attendant.” A garbage collector is a “sanitation engineer.” To be fat is to be “full figured.” Illegal aliens are “undocumented workers.” And, of course, the War on Terror is now an “overseas contingency operation.”
It has been said – not by President Obama, of course -- that when we are constrained from speaking freely, we are likewise constrained from thinking clearly. And so, we can now do neither, trading frankness in favor of hyper-sensitivity to all. To control speech is to control thought.
The final great blow to freedom has been, of course, the governmental manipulation to “go green.” Environmentalism has moved swiftly from simple good stewardship – pick up your litter – to global religion, and anyone who is not willingly baptized in the name of the New World Order into the Church of Global Warming is an enemy of our new god, Mother Earth, whom we all must obediently worship. The penalty for falling from grace is not in this case eternal damnation in a fiery hell, but instead everlasting fines, and requirements to purchase “energy credits” to pay for our sins.       
When the only god left to worship is Mother Earth, which can do nothing for us beyond our mortal lifetimes, the only moral standard left to us is our own ego, and the self-importance which each individual has now attained is realized through the appropriately named “My Space” (“me, my and mine” becoming the new Holy Trinity) and similar “social networking” sites where each of us can strive toward the fullness of our own significance via, what else, the  World Wide Web, where every eye can watch us and every trivial, useless action or thought can be immediately shared with the Whole Wide World, because, well, because our own vanity justifies it.

The great experiment is gasping its final breath
And so, goodbye, America. The great experiment in freedom, democracy and capitalism is gasping its last painful breath. To be sure, there are pockets of protest – the “tea parties” and such currently being held offer visible evidence that there are protestants afoot – but as a whole, Americans have not just surrendered, they have welcomed the complete capitulation to Big Government’s open arms.
Can there be another awakening, another movement toward independence, reaping the rewards of individual initiative, work and creativity, and openly practicing a belief in a power higher than our own who has somehow managed, and will continue to manage, to keep the earth safe and sound throughout the ages without draconian government intervention? Perhaps, but every day that we allow Big Brother to remake the rules, to put us into a heretofore unthinkable debt which most of us will never see erased in our lifetimes, to establish governmental authority over those things that once were the province of private enterprise, the further away the day when those things can even begin to be reversed, even if the national will returns to do so.
We are locking ourselves into socialism and totalitarianism for the foreseeable future, and even the most free enterprise-loving president who might be elected in 2012 will have little power or ability to undo in the near future what we have already done (although even beginning to do so would be a hopeful sign).
The United States of America was once a shining city on a hill, and a beacon of freedom and hope to oppressed people around the world. Government was of, by and for the people. Now, in America, people are for the government. It is no longer a free country, because Americans are daily surrendering their own freedoms and welcoming their own growing oppression, and it is no longer important to be free, or live in the land of opportunity. It is more important now to make sure we are loved by the rest of the world, which means becoming more like the rest of the world, which is the opposite of what America tried to be in its best days.  And the rapidity with which it is happening is startling, as we sleepwalk into the 21st Century and embark on a future whose path has been well trodden by fellow travelers of the past.
We are entering a dark, dark age, the irony being that in this new dark age, those of us who continue to resist will be increasingly labeled as the unenlightened ones -- backward thinking, racist, selfish, unhealthy, insensitive bigots who somehow don’t care about our fellow man (and, excuse me, PC police, our fellow woman). 
The world is officially upside down, and many of us will no doubt fall off, leaving Mother Earth to those who are willing to make any sacrifice to spread the Gospel of Obama, and be well thought of by like-minded brethren who have been properly indoctrinated.
The Republican Gazette is owned, operated, written and edited by Gary Abernathy, and does not represent the views of any other person or organization, except for guest commentary signed by other contributors.
Goodbye, America
Pay attention, Americans. You are witnessing the most historic change in our fiber since our founding.