Barack Obama ran for president on a promise to raise taxes on everyone who makes $250,000 or more a year. His running mate defended the tax hike by saying that “people who are well-off have a patriotic duty to pay higher taxes.” Under the guise of “[spreading] the wealth around,” Obama acts as if his goal is to lift the poor above poverty so they too can enjoy the American dream. But in reality, his plan is to push the rich down closer to the poverty line, so that the equality Americans enjoy can be one of dependence on an intrusive, but increasingly necessary, federal government.
This is Obama’s way of leveling the playing field. Instead of removing the myriad of government regulations that hinder the entrepreneurial spirit in this country, he will use tax hikes and redistribution schemes to break the will of the ambitious and energetic, forcing everyone to accept a life devoid of opulence or ease. It seems the rich have become so only off the sweat of the poor. Or to use Obama’s own words: “The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice.”
In April 2008, Michelle Obama explained how her husband’s goal of taxing the rich into paying their fair share was going to work: “Most Americans don’t want much. They don’t want the whole pie. There are some who do, but most Americans feel blessed just being able to thrive a little bit. … [Yet], in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”
On June 7, 2009, the Great Leveler proved his wife’s explanation correct when he said he “wants Congress to consider taxing the wealthy instead of workers to pay for a health care overhaul.” He also urged Congress to further limit “all tax deductions for Americans in the highest tax brackets.” So that those making the most will also be paying the most, and those working the least can be promised a windfall.
Yet what’s even crazier than this Marxist approach to taxing the rich into poverty is Obama’s use of similar tactics to ensure America will not enjoy a superpower status in this world much longer. Like the wealthy citizens whom he portrays as the enemy in order to get the poor to vote for him, Obama demonizes the idea of “American exceptionalism” in order to gain applause from people who feel threatened by America’s military superiority. Then in the midst of the applause he does his best to diminish that superiority by promising to give up our advantages.
As early as 2007 Obama announced his intentions to disarm America, saying that as president he would end “most modernization programs for the U.S. Army,” as well as the continued development of “unmanned vehicles, missile defense, nuclear weapons, and space-based weapons.” And just to let the world know he was serious about crippling America’s military via his leveling efforts, he also pledged to “[slow] the development of the Army’s Future Combat Systems program,” a pledge that was no less than a promise to retard America’s combat readiness.
The dangers of such unilateral disarmament notwithstanding, the Great Leveler’s chief commitment is to changing the world, and the hallmark of that change will be the altruistic “fairness” the Left has sought for so long, a fairness which has always rested on punishing the good guys while rewarding the bad ones — as well as simultaneously removing the distinction between good and bad.
An example of these things came in Obama’s recent apology over the fact that the United States has nuclear weapons while the majority of Muslim nations don’t: “I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not [have]. No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.” Following this equivocation between the West and many terrorist-sponsoring countries, which made it seem like those who blow up skyscrapers full of innocent women and children should have equal access to the weapons used to defend those women and children, Obama made nice by saying that if everyone can’t have nuclear weapons then no one should. To that end he “strongly reaffirmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.”
What this means is that the Great Leveler intends to dismantle our nuclear program and leave us as sitting ducks, because it’s not fair that only a few countries are sitting ducks.
As reprehensible as this is, it actually makes sense when considered in light of Obama’s leveling mindset. For example, it makes sense that he supports Iran’s “right” to nuclear power as a source of energy while rejecting that same right for Americans. He’d much rather see Americans use windmills and solar panels which rely on federal subsidies for their survival.
To put it simply, the Great Leveler is encouraging the rest of the world to move forward while simultaneously forcing us backward to meet them. And although this will prove antithetical to the survival of the America we know and love, it seems to be the price Obama is willing to pay to be fair.
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