REFLECTIONS

The latest craze in the libertarian/conservative blog o sphere is the cry “Shrug, Atlas Shrug.”  This and the tea parties sweeping the nation are a cry for the producers of the nation to fight back against the mad dash for socialism sweeping  the country since Nov. 4, 2008.  But what I can’t help wondering is that perhaps Atlas has already shrugged.  Perhaps what we are seeing now is not the piling of a thousands points of socialism onto the backs of the American taxpayer.  Perhaps we are seeing the American people shrugging off once and for all the weight of the world’s security and the weighty burden of liberty.

In the latest issue of NRODT Mark Steyn  http://nrd.nationalreview.com/  points out, as he has before, that the burden of European socialism is footed on the backs of the US taxpayer.  From Dec. 7, 1941 the American taxpayer and the American soldier have kept Europe safe from threats which Europe either created or supported.   We defeated Hitler, guarded Western Europe from Stalin and eventually freed the rest of Europe from Stalin’s heirs.  Now we have taken it upon ourselves to control the threat of Islamic fascism.   Europe has the luxury to give itself cradle to grave benefits and 6 weeks of vacation because the United States took the burden of self-defense off their shoulders. 

President Bush liberated 50 million people from two of the worst despots on earth and is hated for it.  The American people are frankly sick of liberating others.  Peggy Noonan, who was there when Reagan brought the evil empire to its knees, criticized the President for believing that American liberty is dependent on spreading liberty throughout the world.  What Noonan never explained was how we alone would stay free?  The answer of course is we can’t.  The United States tried to stay true to our founding ideas and principles when the rest of the world wants only to trade liberty for free health care, or Allah’s virgins.  The burden has proved too much to bear.

So we are tired of liberty.  Tired of the expense and the responsibility.  Why shouldn’t we rest in a government cradle, protected from our own foibles?  Why shouldn’t we have the chance to enjoy what Europe has enjoyed, safe from the burden of payment, or fighting the world’s evils?   Let’s take a break.  Let’s give the Presidency to a man who talks real purty like and promises us a lot of stuff.  Atlas defended the world and paid its own medical bills for a century.  Atlas is tired and just wants to lie down in a big ol’ social safety net.  So Atlas has shrugged, and  Marx is our new colossus. 

We for whom liberty and Property Rights are sacred rights can join with the lovers of Life.  We too can march on Washington every January in a futile attempt to persuade Atlas to once again pick up the burden of it’s own stated Declaration of Principles.