Concentrating on the goal of repeal will help us stay focused through the two decisive election cycles needed to reverse the legislative putsch of March 21, 2010. We must revert to republican congressional rule in 2010 and follow that with a presidential replacement in 2012 before we can for repeal and replace the health care disaster with a market-focused plan.
But what if we’re unsuccessful? Obama is nothing less than a capo of a vast, uncompromising thugocracy, utterly drunk with power and completely unconcerned with public opinion or public will. To imagine where he might drag America it is wiser to compare him to Hugo Chavez than to Franklin Roosevelt.
Many of us spend time trying to place Barack Obama in the correct collectivist phylum. Is he a Saul Alinsky socialist? An Anita Dunn Maoist? A Van Jones Marxist? A mummified Wilsonian progressive suddenly come back to life?
Or, given his corporate and unionist cronyism, and complete control of a fawning, propagandistic media, is the label most fitting for Obama also the most frightening one: fascist?
Obama is instinctively a dictator, and dictators are surprisingly quick at seizing power
Whichever label is most apt, Obama is instinctively a dictator, and dictators are surprisingly quick at seizing power.
We should not assume that free and fair elections are guaranteed in our future. We should not assume that 20 million illegal immigrants would not be granted citizenship and voting rights in 2010 or 2012. We should not assume that some sort of fairness doctrine would not be enacted. It is far safer to heed Rush Limbaugh when he warns that America is hanging by a thread than to hope along with some good-natured Pollyannas that Obama will be a one-term president.
So as we fight to take America back—and there is no shortage of great books appearing about how to achieve it—we might also think about how to escape and where to go if the dreaded prospect of an America governed as a (benign?) autocratic state becomes our reality.
Escape is simpler if our roots are shallow, so now seems a good time to be a renter instead of an owner. With interest rates set to rise and unemployment higher than in decades, homebuyers will likely become more and more scarce in any event. And with banks sitting on large inventories of foreclosed homes and with more foreclosures to come, home prices are unlikely to rise significantly, even if higher inflation becomes manifest in other parts of the economy.
Luckily there might still be some states worth escaping to. With the exception of Washington and Florida most states free of income and capital gains taxes (Alaska, Texas, Wyoming, South Dakota, Tennessee) are solidly red and firearm friendly. Certainly most of these states are healthier economically than their worst blue counterparts whose fiscal futures are bleak, and probably beyond repair.
California, insolvent and bankrupt in all but name, now presides over a $35 billion deficit and unfunded pension liabilities of $500 billion. Illinois and New York are hardly better. These states cannot survive without massive restructuring, in the form of radical shrinkage of government and forced reduction in both future and present state retirement payouts. When these brutal restructurings are ultimately forced onto retired firemen, police, teachers and other gilded recipients, some only in their fifties, it’s hard to imagine that our towns and cities will remain calm. Recent street scenes like those in Greece, defined by chaos and violence, could come to define Obama’s reign.
Living in civilized bastions, we aren’t used to hurled Molotov cocktails and tear gas filling the air, but it could become a common occurrence. How can civil order be maintained if, as
Steven Franks catalogs, some California cities dispense five times more in pension payouts than on law enforcement? Think of all those 21st century Joads who reverse the dust bowl migrations of the 1930s and start limping back to Oklahoma and Texas in search of the good life.
But even those who find a stable internal exile will still be tied economically to a diminishing dollar, one smaller in reputation, relevance and value. It might be a good time to hold personal reserves denominated in hard assets—gold, silver, oil and gas—not for profit gain but merely in hopes of retaining some fraction of our lifesavings.
But if Obama declares war on the red states, after placing California, Illinois and New York under federal receivership, where next do we run? Assuming Obama lets us leave with our money, some countries might be tolerable. But every patriot knows that there is no second America waiting for us. A few remaining outposts of the British empire—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Hong Kong—still retaining deep historical attachments to the rule of law might even welcome us in, especially if we’re sufficiently wealthy and skilled.
So a bleak future awaits if we are not victorious in 2010 and 2012. We all need to attend and help fund every tea party rally we can; to support the most conservative candidate in every primary; vote for any republican against any democrat in every general election. And then we might avoid the outcome most feared and battled against by Ayn Rand: a socialist America.
