The Patriot Post - Defeating Obama's Socialist Propaganda

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The Patriot Post - Defeating Obama's Socialist Propaganda
From The Federalist Patriot
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Defeating Obama's Socialist Propaganda
By Mark Alexander · Thursday, February 2, 2012
The Fallacy of the Left's 'Fairness' Doctrine

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free." --John Adams, 1787

Barack Hussein Obama centered his recent State of Disunion1 campaign speech on the worn socialist refrain of "fairness."

"We can go in two directions," Obama said. "One is towards less opportunity and less fairness. Or we can fight for ... building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few."

His subsequent 2012 stump speeches include a variation of these words at his most recent whistle stop in Michigan: "I want this to be a big, bold, generous country where everybody gets a fair shot, everybody is doing their fair share, everybody is playing by the same set of rules."

Let's briefly review our nation's history in regard to Liberty, taxation and "fairness."

The first American Revolution2 was galvanized by a Tea Party protest against a small three pence tax surcharge on imported tea.

Our Founders were uniformly concerned about government power to lay and collect taxes and, accordingly, enumerated specific limitations on taxing and spending.

James Madison addressed the issue of unlimited spending, and his words are applicable today: "It has been [said], that the power 'to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States,' amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defence or general welfare." Rejecting that "misconstruction" of our Constitution, Madison went on to write, "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one."

To ensure that federal taxation would be limited to these constraints, Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of our Constitution (the "Taxing and Spending Clause"), as duly ratified in 1789, defined the "Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises," but Section 8 required that such, "Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States." This, in effect, limited the power of Congress to impose direct taxes on individuals, as further outlined in Section 9: "No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken."

That Constitutional limitation survived until 1861, when the first income tax was imposed to defray costs of the War Between the States. That three-percent tax on incomes over $800 was sold as an emergency war measure. In 1894, congressional Democrats tested the Constitution, passing a peacetime tax of two percent on income above $4,000. A year later, that tariff was overturned by the Supreme Court as not complying with the limitations set forth in Article 1.

However, the greatest historical injury to economic Liberty was dealt in the presidential campaign of 1912, when the father of Democratic Socialism3, Woodrow Wilson, was elected on his mastery of class warfare rhetoric, as outlined in Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto in the mid-19th century. He used Marx's populist redistribution theme, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs," to gain passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, which stated, "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

The top tax rate levied under the new Amendment was just seven percent on incomes above $500,000 (about $12 million in 2012 dollars).

But the ability to impose direct taxes gave rise to a century of class warfare political rhetoric that would be anathema to our Founders and the Liberty they fought so hard to secure for their posterity.

Two decades later, Franklin Roosevelt gained acceptance of his New Deal4 programs via his refined classist rhetoric -- and American socialist propaganda has been the bookmarked page in the political playbook of all Democrat presidents since.

Though the contrast between, and debate about, Leftist Tyranny versus Essential Liberty was boldly reinvigorated by Ronald Reagan5 during his two terms of office, never before the election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008 have so many Americans fully recognized the cumulative manifestation of collectivist socialism.

A second Tea Party protest6 has been brewing since Obama took office, demanding tax reform -- but no such reformation will succeed unless accompanied by tax conformation, ensuring that taxes collected are only for expenditures authorized by our Constitution.

Post Your Opinion: Tell us how you will act to oppose Obama's re-election.7

Laying the groundwork for his 2012 re-election bid, Obama's SOTU was devoid of any free-market economic remedies, and every "solution" was predicated upon government engineering via intervention, regulation or redistribution -- consistent with his perfected version of Wilson's and Roosevelt's Democratic Socialist3 platform.

Additionally, Obama has dumbed-down his classist "fairness" rhetoric8 to comport with the latest populist appeals9 of the "occupy movement10."

Anticipating that his opponent in the general election will be Mitt Romney, an easy-to-target "rich Republican11," Obama has rallied his own stable of uber-wealthy Leftists in support of his "Wall Street v Main Street" disinformation campaign.

In his SOTU, Obama declared, "You can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense."

To further advance his classist "divide and conquer" strategy, he trotted out Debbie Bosanek, the secretary of billionaire Obamaphile Warren Buffett, as a prop for invoking the Buffet Rule -- "If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes."

"Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans?" asked Obama. Predictably, our Class-Warrior-in-Chief has refused to tell the American people how much Ms. Bosanek is paid in order to be taxed at a higher rate than her boss. Forbes Magazine, however, uses current IRS tax tables to estimate that she makes "well above $200,000 annually." Clearly, Ms. Bosanek isn't just any old secretary.