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The Election

Eight years ago – actually for six or eight years before that – I had the same emotional reaction to that election as apparently some of you are experiencing to this one. That was painful, very painful and its affects have lingered, and at times returned over the better part of the past decade or more. 

I am pleased with the outcome of this election, but I am not overjoyed.

What we have witnessed over the past twenty years or more is a direct assault on liberty in the form of expanded federal power, the extension of federal requirements into our lives, and the complete corruption of the federal government including the court system. It has been made blatant under the current President in almost every way imaginable.

·         He has used the IRS to oppress and intimidate political and religious opponents.

·         He has refused to enforce law and has used the intimidation of the FBI and the Justice Department to silence opposition and free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association.

·         He has used the tax code as a threat to those who don’t want to make their personal health decisions in accordance with federal preferences.

·         He has initiated, fanned, and failed to intervene against racial, sexual, and social unrest. Rather than bringing unity, he has repeatedly encouraged division, hate, and violence on our streets. 

The rhetoric and behavior of the President and federal agencies have never been about liberty, really. We have witnessed the greatest expansion of elitist federal power and at the same time, intentional attacks against any social system that might pose a threat to that federal power. We have witnessed ongoing separation of parents from their children, we have seen assaults against religious institutions, and individual privacy, we have seen the use of law made arbitrary and unpredictable.

We have seen the elevation of emotion as a primary driving force and the use of mob and violent action to oppress and delegitimize societal norms and even the application of law. We have degenerated from a society of free expression of ideas to one in which we now provide safe places for weak-minded college students. The country – or large enough segments of it – is simply emotionally unstable.

The intent of all this is to make the federal government not the servant of Liberty and a free people, but to remove every social support except the federal government. The intent is simply to create as much dependence – actual and emotional – on the federal government as possible.

But he hasn’t done this alone, and in fact he is simply the most recent symptom and result of what the Democrat party has engendered since the 1990’s. Have all the Democrat players been intentional in their complicit participation in this assault on the country? No and many of them are good people at heart. Even so, their behaviors and rhetoric have served to propel the destruction of liberty at a faster and faster pace. Whether it is Pelosi’s insipid “you have to pass it to see what’s in it,” or Reid’s complete ignorance of the world and political reality, they have simply served to facilitate in their own ignorant and yet dangerous ways, the further weakening of liberty.

They have repeatedly used personal attacks against their political opponents, ridiculing, name calling, and insulting as a form of statesmanship. In this way they have engendered the acceptability of emotion as a policy setting standard, and ridicule for government policy, rather than reason. And so we have college women demanding that others pay for their birth control because lord knows, it wouldn’t be fair to expect her to either pay for her own, or control the behavior of her own body. Emotion is used as a tool for distraction, blaming a video for the deaths of an entire diplomatic station even while knowing those deaths were preventable. Emotion has served as the vehicle to attack the fabric of society. The President doesn’t care about wedding cakes, birth control, Gay rights, the plight of migrants, or bathroom use; nor does the federal government have a legitimate interest in most of those. Rather, these are simply points of destabilization of society – against sexual norms, faith practice, social stability, and personal privacy.

It has been a classic destabilization assault on liberty, and one that has been very painful to experience on an almost daily basis – because it has been so plain.

I am pleased with the outcome of this election, but not overjoyed.

The Democrat party nominated a woman who is as corrupt and oppressively mean as the current President, dismissing her enabling of sexual predation, selling government access, directing mob violence, releasing highly classified information directly related to the security of the country, insulting and demeaning uniformed and protective staff who cannot respond to her. She lives, operates, and expects her staff to treat her as the clear tyrant she is. She had two selling points: she would continue the assault on liberty by continuing the extension of the federal government, taking more of your money, and the continuing destabilization of society. Except with her, the further destabilization would be through negligence because not only does she have no governing experience, she is and can only be interested in herself. Unlike the current President whose behavior has been an intentional assault on liberty, she just doesn’t care. Her second selling point: she’s a woman. Even in an atmosphere where being a woman is accepted as simply personal choice, this was her other main selling point as President.

The WikiLeaks emails revealed just how corrupt the Democrat party as a whole, the DNC and the candidate’s own campaign staff not was, is. They are disappointed, even emotionally hurt today, but that has not and will not change their character of ego-centered behavior fueled by emotional entitlement and vindictiveness.

The greatest evidence of the extent of the current President’s effectiveness in his attempts at destabilization is that most of the voters in this election voted for the Democrat candidate, and we have violent protests across the country because she wasn’t elected. Protests and violence prompted by and fueled not by reason, but emotion, in complete disregard for law or others.

We have lived with a President who is demonstrably a violent racist who is not above using the power of the federal government to intimidate and oppress anyone and everyone; destroying the liberty of an entire nation if at all possible. Even in the face of this, most of my neighbors voted for more of the same.

The cancer of emotionalism, growing dependence on the federal government, destabilization of society, and the destruction of liberty has not been excised. It has been slowed but it still festers and remains a palpable danger and threat. 

I am pleased with the outcome of this election, but not overjoyed.

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