As I watch some of the “highlights” (which is a questionable description) of the Democrat debate last night, I weep as presidential candidates aggressively fight for the destruction of both the history and future of the United States.
Sentiment 1: “The country was and is racist, and we are the wealthiest nation on the planet because we abused Blacks for two centuries.”
This one particularly bothers me. For the entirety of human history, slavery was a common practice. Asians did it. Europeans did it. Africans did it. South Americans did it. Native Americans did it.
Europeans worked with Africans to bring African slaves to the shores of the “new world.” It was the English that built slavery into the economy. The United States was born through fighting the British, but some states continued the practice. Many Founding Fathers were reluctant slave owners who could not release them due to state laws.
This country fought one of the bloodiest wars in history to end slavery. That should count for something.
Then we, unfortunately, still had Democrats in the south support segregation, Jim Crow, lynchings, etc. Another civil war, this time a peaceful one, was fought and won via the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Discrimination based on race was made illegal. That should count for something.
Yes, there are some laws – especially drug laws – that were created to target specific races. Opium laws were for Asians. Crack laws for Blacks. Cocaine and marijuana for Hispanics. That does not mean that currently policing and drug enforcement is designed to disproportionately affect minority communities.
If no laws were being broken, no one would be getting arrested. Murder is just as illegal for a Black man as it is for a White one, but Blacks disproportionately commit murder. Is that because of systemic racism in the criminal justice system? No.
Even so, there have been many changes to the laws and the justice system throughout the years. More change is necessary, but the system is not racist. The police are not racist. Judges are not racist. There may be racists in the bunch, but the vast majority of those in the system are not racist.
And now there are calls for slavery reparations. The lunacy of this policy jumps well over the cliff of absurdity. Must we all do a genealogy to determine if our ancestors were slaves or slave owners 150 years ago? Will all White people be taxed higher and all Blacks be cut a check? What about Whites or Blacks who are first or second generation immigrants? What about those who have both slave and slave owner in their ancestry? What about Whites whose White ancestors were owned by Black slave owners? What about the Chinese who worked on the railroads? The Irish who did the same?
This is an idiotic and divisive campaign issue that keeps gaining popularity, and not one Democrat has the guts to call it out for being stupid.
Sentiment 2: “free stuff.”
Medicare for all is a terrible premise. Medicare does not cover all medical expenses, which is why supplemental insurance like AARP exists to fill in the gaps. Way back in the 2012 election, the argument that Medicare/Medicaid were financially insolvent was a big part of the campaign. I guess we are supposed to pretend that the problem is solved now?
Student loan forgiveness sounds great to me. My wife and I are saddled with over $200,000 in combined student loans. Our “investment” has not come close to helping us out as was sold. Neither of us can get a good enough job to offset that amount of debt. However, I also understand that taxing the wealthy to pay for our stupid decision to take out loans would collapse the economy. There is over $1,000,000,000,000 in debt that would have to be forgiven, and the country is already $22,000,000,000,000 in debt with another $1,300,000,000,000 in debt being added each year.
Our economy is not doing well. Calling us a “wealthy” nation is not true anymore – and the government is responsible for that.
Free college is also a horrible idea. The market is already saturated with college educated people who cannot get jobs because it is difficult to be set apart from other college educated people. It used to be that someone with a bachelor’s degree was more in-demand than someone with a high school diploma. If everyone can get a bachelor’s degree, then it basically becomes the new high school diploma, and the problem of competition becomes even larger. The more time we all have to spend going to college, the fewer years we will spend working and earning money, which limits the amount of taxable income, which means less revenue, which means less money to spend on free college, healthcare, etc.
Sentiment 3: “we need a $15 an hour ‘living wage.’”
Right now, an assistant manager of a retail store makes about $12 an hour. Imagine that conversation when they are supposed to make as much as the new seasonal sales associate who is still in high school.
Thousands of jobs are being lost in the areas of the country where they are trying out $15 an hour. Business are either automating or closing to offset the cost. Full-time workers are forced into part-time positions or are seeing their workload increase as part-timers are phased out. Anyone who knows anything about history understands that a similar thing happened when the first minimum wage was instituted. Prices went up, jobs were lost, labor was increased, and under-educated, low-skilled Blacks were the most negatively affected group.
There is evidence to support the theory that minimum wage is more systemically racist than the criminal justice system.
Sentiment 4: “the climate is changing, and we are all going to die.”
40 years ago, we were all going to freeze to death.
25 years ago, we were burning a hole in the ozone layer.
20 years ago, the polar bears were dying, ice caps were melting, and a global flood was coming within 15-20 years.
In 2019, we have a record number of polar bears, ice caps are growing, and we are still waiting on that flood. Apparently, we have another 12 years before the coasts disappear and we all die from global climate change.
All we have to do to stop it, is give the government control over all of our energy, healthcare, and plastic straws, as well as close down the entire coal and oil industries, end manufacturing, tear down and rebuild every single structure, stop driving our cars, close airports, and stop cows from farting.
The cost? Only about $100,000 per family for the first year, $73,000 over the next four, and $67,000 each subsequent year for the foreseeable future. Get out your pocketbooks!
I have never heard a climate scientist or politician define what the “normal” temperature of the Earth is. We have been in an ice age for about 10,000 years according to scientists, so the continual warming is likely just coming out of that state. Perhaps Florida and California are supposed to be under water. Does anyone know for sure? No, and the cost to find out that the science is wrong would destroy the economy.
Sentiment 5: “the rich need to pay their fair share.”
How do we pay for all of this? Taxing the rich, of course.
To believe that the rich would not simply invest in foreign countries with lower tax rates instead of the United States is foolish. The higher the rates go, the less revenue will be collected. Less revenue, less “free stuff.” The rest of us will suffer as jobs are moved to other nations and access to newly nationalized services will disappear. Without private companies to pick up the slack, the economy will collapse and we will be in an Orwellian dystopian nightmare.
So here we are. This new Democrat Party in which every single candidate is fighting over how quickly they can collapse the economy and destroy America as we know it. Even the “moderates” believe that we should implement radical climate initiatives and universalize healthcare.
Well-intentioned or not, these people are dangerous! What we need is a return to the small government solutions that this country was founded on, without the slavery or segregation that the Democrats used to (and I believe still do) desire. The larger the government, the more immoral the country seems to become. Empires like ours have always collapsed once they became as apathetic and ignorant as we are. In fact, we should have already fallen if not for what I believe has been nothing short of God’s providence.
We are in a bad place. We are abandoning our Judaeo-Christian principles and the Western way of life, and our time is running out to change course. We can never return to the way it was, but we can use our past to create a better future.
These Democrats who claim to be “progressive” are marching us back toward government sanctioned economic slavery. What will you do about it?
Simmons' Opinions 