Ministry of Fear

by Lance Thompson

 Barack Obama rode to the presidency on a tidal wave of campaign enthusiasm, famously promising Hope and Change.  Instead, his administration has been governed by Fear and Loathing.  The arguments for Obama’s health care reform bill–ten pages shy of two thousand pages at last count–have all used fear.  Twenty million Americans are without health insurance, we are told, then 32 million, then 47 million.  If we don’t pass this massive, indecipherable bill, insurance will be unaffordable, you will go broke if you get sick, millions will die.  Prescription drug companies, insurance companies, doctors and hospitals who question the grand prophecies of the bill’s proponents are told that if they protest this massive takeover of one sixth of the economy, they will be punished with retributive amendments and strangled by federal regulation.    The cap and trade bill was sold in the same way.  If we don’t hobble our industries with restrictions and regulations, the Earth will grow warm, ice caps will melt, polar bears will starve, coastal cities will be inundated.  Carbon dioxide, a gas all animals exhale, is now a toxic substance that must be regulated as well.  We are all polluters, and we must literally be saved from ourselves.  The stimulus bill passed on fear and panic.  If we don’t pump $800 billion into the economy within a week, the market will crash, millions will lose their jobs, your savings will vanish, your home will be foreclosed, you will be living in an appliance box under the freeway.  The federal government took over banks, auto companies, Wall Street firms, this time applying the voice of terror to the corporate officers and boards of directors.  If you don’t agree to a government takeover, your pay will be cut, your pensions cancelled, your stock made worthless.  Go along with us, or the full weight of the federal government will be used to crush you.  What the Obama administration cannot convince us to fear, they loathe.  The administration loathes our international allies.  The White House significantly recharacterized the “special relationship” we’ve had with Great Britain since World War II to a “special partnership,” putting our English cousins at arm’s length. We observe diplomatic niceties with Iran, Libya and leaders of Hamas while warning the Israelis we may shoot down their jets if they do the world a favor and knock out Ahmadinejad’s nukes.  The French, whose relationship with the United States warmed when Sarkozy took over, are snubbed when Obama is too busy to meet with the French President on a European trip.  Taiwan and Japan look for backup from us against North Korean missile launches, but we scarcely can find the time to lodge a half-hearted protest.  The Obama administration holds our allies in contempt.  The administration loathes a free press.  They like the main stream media, as long as they are Obama-worshiping cheerleaders and not impartial referees.  But if Fox posts a critical story, the administration attacks them, and threatens to cut off access to top officials.  When the Associated Press found last week that the White House had overstated stimulus-created jobs by 5,000, the White House immediately attacked the wire service.   If a conservative commentator lambasts the administration, he is discredited, insulted, and prevented from engaging in his right to enter a bid on a football franchise.  Most of all, the Obama administration loathes America.  They despise its military power, so often used to defend against tyranny and aggression.  They are ashamed of its capitalistic system and economic strength, though both are inspirations for the world.  They dismiss the independent spirit, the individual liberty, and the unlimited opportunity that characterize the American dream.  Instead, they believe in an all-powerful state that redistributes wealth, picks winners and losers in the private sector, and takes over companies and entire industries by fiat.  The Obama team’s loathing for America becomes more evident every day, as more and more administration officials are shown to be involved in corrupt organizations like ACORN, sympathetic to or adherents of communism, or enablers of terrorists foreign and domestic.    The fear weapon also has a limited term.  Just as Al Gore’s shrieking alarms of global warming become less and less credible with passing time and lowering temperatures, so will all the dire predictions the Obama administration uses to run up massive debt, pass nationally destructive legislation, and appoint subversives to positions of power.  The case that only government can save us from catastrophe becomes harder to prove each day, as government itself is clearly shown to be the greatest danger we face.  When Americans become wary of their government, then the Obama administration will find that fear is a two-edged sword, and an irresistible motive for change.  Or so we hope.