Before I can tell you about way way out in left field liberal website and their “Contract for the American Dream”, we must first address the concept of the American Dream. My how THAT has changed! For generations, the American Dream has been rooted in the concepts of freedom, self reliance and liberty … the idea that through hard work and good decision making we could achieve a better life for ourselves as compared to the generations before us. Not only that, but we could set the stage for our children to enjoy a better life than we. The American Dream has always been based on the freedom to pursue your dreams and the enabler for the American Dream has always been our Constitution, the rule of law, and economic liberty. Our free enterprise system lifted more people out of poverty than any other system this earth has ever known. Government exists to protect your rights and to prevent other people from interfering with your pursuit these dreams, free of harm.
The American Dream is different for every person in this country. For some it is to own a home. For some it is to have a successful business. Whatever that Dream it is to be achieved through your own personal perseverance, drive, determination and responsibility. It’s not anybody else’s job to deliver your American Dream to your doorstep, and that includes the government. The American government is not in the business of achieving your American Dream. The American government is in the business of protecting the freedom of its citizens to pursue their dreams.
Unfortunately that is not the definition that all Americans are using nowadays, particularly the progs and the libs. Somehow, through generations of liberal-directed education in government schools, the definition of this dream has changed. Somewhere along the way, government became the provider of the American Dream, not the enabler. Liberals have managed to convince the American people that it is the role of the government to make them successful. The fundamental flaw in liberal logic is that it fails to believe in the power of the individual and puts its faith in the power of the collective – in this case, government.
So now that we understand the differences in my definition of the American Dream versus the prog definition … let’s talk about this “Contract for the American Dream” That has shown up on the Internet. Thus far there are about 150,000 people who have “signed” the online petition to put this contract into force.
This contract includes 10 critical steps to getting our economy back on track. Without further ado, these steps are as follows:
1. Invest in America’s Infrastructure
2. Create 21st Century Energy Jobs
3. Invest in Public Education
4. Offer Medicare for All
5. Make Work Pay
6. Secure Social Security
7. Return to Fairer Tax Rates
8. End the Wars and Invest at Home
9. Tax Wall Street Speculation
10. Strengthen Democracy
How many of these “critical steps” involve empowering individuals or securing our freedoms? Not one. How many of these steps involve empowering government, promoting government spending schemes, encouraging government dependency and growing the size of government? Pretty much every one. It is clear the Progs consider the American Dream to be MORE government with HIGHER taxes and LESS freedom. Is this what you think America should be?
But wait! There’s more! To really understand this leftist dream for America, all you have to do is scroll down the website a bit to see who the sponsors are. Here’s a partial list:
We have MoveOn.org, Demos, Color of Change.org, Center on Wisconsin Strategy, Democrats.com, Daily Kos, AFSCME, CWA, Progressive Congress.org, the FairShare alliance, Peace Action, Code Pink, People for the American Way, Democracy for America — yup, pretty much the spectrum of anti-Capitalist, pro-Government organizations. Just what you might expect.
And don’t even get me started on this “fairer tax rates” argument. More specifically, this means an end to the Bush tax cuts and the creation of two new tax brackets – a 45% rate for millionaires and a 49% tax rate for billionaires. Let me put this into perspective for you. Only 0.2% of households in America have incomes of a million dollars or more (about 200,000). And there are a lot more of those who earn closer to $1 million than $1 billion. But if we just wanted to shore up our deficit for one year – that doesn’t include any increase in spending like this prog plan has called for, but just close the deficit gap for this year – you would have to increase taxes on each of these millionaires and billionaires by $6 million each. That’s on top of what they already pay!
And what’s with this idea that strengthening our Democracy will somehow lead our economy out of the trenches? Don’t these people know that Democracy was once a dirty word … not to mention the fact that the United States is not a democracy? The only reason these Progs push democracy on the dumb masses it strengthens government. How so? If the dumb masses can be convinced that, since we are a democracy, the government should be able to do whatever the political class convinces the majority of Americans it should do … then we have stronger politicians and weaker protections for our rights. Simple as that.