Posted by
Steve on Friday, January 13, 2012 8:21:14 AM
In the campaign for President, I am getting upset with some of the so-called Republicans and their ads. We are supposed to be the party of freedom. That means people should be free to pursue their dreams. It means people can succeed and fail. The economic system that best fits our view of freedom is capitalism. Two Republicans have forgotten that principle.
In their effort to knock Mitt Romney from the first place position, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have decided to become Democrats and statists. They decided that Mitt Romney was vulnerable about Bain Capital and his time as CEO. So, they took the position that capitalism is bad and socialism is good. They put that into speeches and ads. As a result of those speeches and ads, any support I may have wanted to give to them is totally gone.
I am a free-market capitalist by heart. To have that attacked by so-called friends is hurtful. I lose respect when people say that they support my position then proceed to attack it. Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have done just that. In my humble opinion, they should resign from the race for President because they no longer support American values. The Founders put the Constitution in place to give us a system where capitalism can thrive and grow. Gingrich and Perry have forgotten that message, if they ever truly knew it.
Politicians are continually accused of saying anything to get elected. I think this is a case of just that. In my heart I cannot conceive that either Gingrich or Perry truly holds the position that capitalism is wrong. But, they are giving Barack Obama ammunition that will come back and haunt Republicans all the way up to November. Obama can now say that he agrees with Gingrich and Perry that capitalism is bad. That will confuse many people into thinking Obama’s position is the correct position to take.
Republicans should talk about freedom and how it is important to every person in this country. We should have the freedom to pursue our dreams and succeed. The flip side of that coin is that we should also have the freedom to fail. There should not be a “safety net” to save us from bad decisions. The way we learn is from making bad decisions. We then correct them and go on to the next bad decision and correct it. A “safety net” prevents us from learning the lessons that are there when we fail. We just think that our failure was someone else’s fault and not ours. People at the top have made more mistakes than anyone else. They just learned from their mistakes and prospered.
Freedom is the kind of message that resonates with everyone. To talk about freedom is to give voice to the yearning in everyone’s soul to be free and make their own way in the world. The problem with freedom is that it gives less power to those who “lead” us. That is one reason that our supposed leaders refuse to talk about freedom. They want us to be dependent upon them for things. That gives them power over us and makes them important. If we were free and independent, the “leaders” would become less important. They would never be irrelevant because of the system of government we have. But if we truly had freedom, the power would be diffused among the people, not in Washington. We need more freedom to choose for ourselves. We need to clean out all the garbage that holds us down and unleash the true American spirit.