The Political Inquirer

The 2008 Presidential Elections brings yet another halfhearted gesture at “freedom”. America is quickly approaching the greatest evidence of our overarching liberty this November. The election is seen as what defines “us” from “them”, what makes America great and others weak. The November election shows that the American people have a say in matters and that politicians bow to our will. Nothing is farther from the truth. As H.L. Mencken put it,

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

And to this day it is nothing more than that. Americans are foolish, believing that they live in freedom and liberty when in fact they do not. It is the illusion of liberty that allows politicians to move through political life unscathed except when they upset their other corrupt friends. An excellent example of this is the now-former Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer. He was involved in corruption just like every other politician, but he made enemies as Attorney General. His “enemies” are as corrupt as he was, no doubt, but they intended to have their revenge.

Politicians in America are corrupt–from John McCain to Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama to even the ’saintly’ Mike Huckabee. Nearly every legislator in the State and Federal governments are corrupt, even when we are least likely to suspect it. Under the cover of darkness your legislator you might know personally and think is an honest fellow is more than likely taking bribes and casting a few votes for those he owes favors to. The great historian of liberty, Lord Acton, put it most bluntly:

All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

America has only one choice in 2008’s elections: tyranny. Whether John McCain, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama is the President of the United States does not matter, for we will face a growth in government and an increase in the tyranny of the state, all while officials and politicians continue their underhanded corruption. All three candidates favor an increase in the size and scope of the Federal Government, each in their own way, but none in a good way. The state always grows, and grow it must, for the appetite of the corrupt for more is never ending.

For thousands of years man has suffered under the servitude of others. The great classic liberalism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries showed that man could throw off the chains of government and be free–but mankind was deceived by socialism and interventionism, for a person in power only desires more power. The fact that the state was not eliminated or better restricted is the great failure of the classic liberals. Simple ignorance allowed politicians to make petty excuses to expand the size and scope of government, whether by “need” or by war. In American history, war was the only way to vastly expand the Federal Government–until the Great Depression came and FDR found it was possible to exert more control over people in any time of crisis.

The 20th century became the century of government expansion, and it continues into the 21st. In America’s upcoming election we see a selection of government growth through any combination of these things: war, healthcare, education, the financial system, or taxation. There is little difference between Obama, McCain, and Clinton. They are all from the same basket, the one labeled “destroyers of freedom”. These people are like most politicians in America. They do not care about your freedom, they do not care about the Founding Fathers and the vision the classic liberals had for this nation, and they are ready to deceive each and every citizen to obtain their own private agenda and profit.

Citizens of the United States have put themselves in danger of having no freedom left at all. Decisions on the right to life and the right to own a weapon are given to a body of nine judges. The president is now responsible for telling the people when they must go to war. In the recent past we have actually had a draft instituted by our own representatives–slavery. All three branches of government overreach their bounds and institute new rules and regulations on small groups of people, never to be repealed by future politicians with a different agenda, yet as long as the average person can watch American Idol, the biggest football game of the weekend, and buy enough beer to drink during the game, then everything is alright.

No, America is not a third world country. We could never have so many politicians staying so wealthy off corruption if we were driven into the ground. The problem, though, is the decisions of these politicians has put America in a bad spot. We are surrounded by a shield of debt created by the government itself. The spirit and endurance of capitalism alone has allowed us to stay aloft this far, but America’s end is in sight. Like the Roman Empire of two millennium ago we will slowly crumble and fall. The State refuses to be destroyed, and those who believe in American liberty somehow think one step back for every two steps forward of state growth is an advance for limited government. It is not, but the Liberty Bell has been cracked and is eroding our country.

The State must be destroyed and begun anew, lest we leave disastrous consequences for our future descendants. America is choosing tyranny again this November, but will it choose freedom again in the future?