I'm mad as hell!

Domestic Enemies

by Rob Oates, Chair, Libertarian Party of Idaho

“I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” said Peter Finch as newscaster Howard Beale in the 1976 movie “Network”. Are you that mad? You should be. 32 years ago “Network” documented many of the outrages and dangers we’re still facing.

In the past couple of weeks we have seen the biggest slide down the road to serfdom in history. Never have such massive lies and half-truths been sold to the American people. Never have the perpetrators been so open and unrepentant in saying that what they’re doing to our country is for our own good.

Republican and Democrat presidential candidates both voted for the bailout. We now know that nationalizing our banking industry is one of the unstated goals of this program. Nationalizing banks happens in socialistic, third-world countries run by dictators.

But it’s different here, you say, we have free enterprise and capitalism. Not anymore. Not when Treasury Minister, half-billionaire Henry Paulson calls in the CEOs of nine major banks and tells them they WILL sell shares of their banks to the US Government or be on Treasury’s banking blacklist. Funny thing is, a short time ago Paulson, as CEO of Goldman Sachs, was helping create the massive financial problem he now tells us can only be solved with tax dollars that he controls. He’s wrong.

Our forefathers fought and died in the American Revolution over far less than this.

But, from our couch, as we watch our televisions in digital widescreen, high definition, everything is resolved by the end of the hour-long program. Howard Beale accused his viewers of relying on only the TV for their information and he said they were crazy for doing so. Howard was right.

A key component in this drama is the mistaken notion that government can actually do anything productive.  Government can only tax, control and destroy.  The bailout and most of what Congress and the President do to us today are so far beyond constitutional boundaries that it’s accurate to say our Constitution is given only lip service and is seen as an annoying roadblock to “getting things done.”

Conventional wisdom says all citizens need do is “vote the scoundrels out” and we can retake our country. Libertarians have offered a peaceful path back to our roots for over 30 years if you’d elect their candidates. How well has voting for one of the two old parties worked for you these past 75 years? Talk about wasted votes.

Economists now recognize that FDR extended the Recession of 1929 into the Great Depression through government bailout programs. It was wrong then and it’s wrong today. Politicians and bureaucrats must not force us down a bailout path that will insure our destruction from within through fraud and greed.

We desperately need citizen-statesmen, not career politicians, to represent us. Voting for Libertarian candidates still offers what may be the last hope for a peaceful return to the roots of our constitutional republic. When will you take a principled stand?