I wrote this post on HOPE for my friend Danny at Waking Ideas.
So, a little over one year into the Obama presidency, and here we stand. The depression has deepened, the homeless and jobless rate is skyscraping, but The Administration insists the worst is over. The war is expanding into new territories, even though we stretched our military too thin years ago. Civil liberties are being taken at a record pace, for any reason our rulers can find to take them. We’re spending money we don’t have like it’s going out of style, to the point where other countries are refusing to lend to us anymore, and for good reason. Picking up in almost every way where the Bush administration left off, Obama’s approval rating is below 50% and dropping fast, and America’s praise for his colleagues on the Hill is barely half that high.
And therein lies the hope.
Recently the people of Massachusetts, the most liberal state in the nation, rattled the Democrats’ cage when they elected a Republican senator, a clear and outright rejection of the anti-capitalist, anti-free-market, anti-freedom policies of Obama and his party. Because of popular outcry, the government healthcare takeover bill has been severely weakened and even has a good chance of failing, forcing Congress to go back and take a fundamental look at what they are trying to accomplish and work towards it slowly instead of ramming something through. Ron Paul’s initiative to, for the first time ever, audit the Federal Reserve, the keeper of America’s fiscal policy, is growing wings. The man himself can be seen on news programs almost daily, a surprise but yet an encouragement to people like myself who support his platform.
Even if it is, for now, a bit overshadowed by the faux/pseudo-libertarian neocon movement, the true libertarian party is growing, its ideology spreading. Americans are starting to reject the Republicans and the Democrats, realizing they are just two wings of the same party. An intellectual the likes of Peter Schiff who, four years ago, was being laughed at for his economic outlook, is now running for Senate with a great shot at winning, and there we can take hope in the gradual restoration of sound money policies and Constitutional values. The libertarian ideology’s threatening effects to the establishment can be seen in the removal of people like John Stossel and Lou Dobbs from the airwaves. Andrew Napolitano will probably be next. But we must take hope that it’s too late to chill a movement that’s already taken hold.
It has become clear that Obama, his administration, and much of the Congress have lost touch with the American people. But there is hope. When the banks and corporations are bailed out before the people, they start to call Obama’s false populist promises for what they are: lies. Civil disobedience against the State is making a comeback, in a way that would make Thoreau proud. The number of thought insurgents is growing every day. Baby roots of iconoclasm are growing in our culture. The paradigm is shifting. The curtain is being torn, and the man behind it may finally have to show his face soon.
People are waking up. The insurgency is alive.