A Regime of Resentment By David Nace

12/28/2009

In 1980, Ronald Reagan ushered in a new era of optimism and prosperity. By reducing the burden of taxation and allowing ordinary Americans to achieve their potential, we ended an era of rampant inflation and produced a decade of prosperity. By pursuing a policy of Peace Through Strength, America won the cold war and forced the break up of the Soviet Union.

Contrast this to the policies pursued by the Obama administration. Since January 20th, we have ushered in a regime of resentment. The policies of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid show resentment toward the values that produced 230 years of the American Dream. They resent the fact that America has been a land of opportunity where hard work and personal sacrifice are ultimately rewarded. They resent that Americans are willing to forgo immediate gratification to achieve long term goals. They seek to replace the equality of opportunity that has been a hallmark of America’s success with equality of outcome, the hallmark of failed socialist governments throughout the world.

They believe in replacing the invisible hand of the market place with the heavy and easily corrupted hand of government. One need look no further than the take over of Chrysler and GM to see how these policies really work. Bankruptcy laws dictate that secured bondholders have the highest claim on the assets of a company. However in the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies, bond holders received 29% of their investment while the United Auto Workers, an unsecured creditor, received 78% of their claims and partial ownership of the company.

Each one of the major domestic policy bills introduced by the Administration demonstrates that they resent those that work hard and save. Although, they try to promote “spreading the wealth” as a noble concept, the reality is the policies they promote take money away from hard working Americans and give it to their political friends.

Card Check legislation allows the coerced unionization of thousands of workers without fully informing them of the financial conditions of the pension and health plans they will be contributing to. The health care bills do nothing to enable responsible Americans or their employers to purchase more affordable coverage by allowing purchases across state lines or reducing malpractice and defensive medicare costs. Cap and Trade uses the myth of global warming to impose on energy tax on all Americans to enrich environmental and corporate contributors to the Administration.

Not only do the triumvirate of Obama, Pelosi and Reid reject the American Dream when it comes to domestic policies but they reject the concept of Peace through Strength in foreign policy. We have become the laughing stock of the free world by naively pursuing
policies of accommodation toward the enemies of opportunity and free enterprise. Our allies clearly recognize that such policies embolden our enemies, even if the Obama Administration does not.

The real question is how much damage a Regime of Resentment can cause before it can be ousted and replaced by an administration that believes in the 230 year American Dream and promotes equality of opportunity not equality of outcome.

David Nace is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer for Americans for Limited Government.