By MacPundit

Transforming America Obama Style

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” President Elect Barack Obama.

The Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, is designed to give our government control over one-sixth of our entire economy. It is the largest, most aggressive grasp for power in U.S. history. It is precisely the kind of big government-vested power that our founders feared most. It is because of this fear that they created a constitutional republic in which the power is vested in the people.

Vladimir Lenin, the father of Russian Communism, said:

“Socialized Medicine is the keystone to the arch of the Socialist State”

While Barack Obama’s ultimate goal is still not entirely clear, that he is a hardcore proponent of radical Liberal big government is perfectly clear. There should be no doubt that he advocates for a significant shift of power from the people to the government and that he has already made remarkable progress toward that goal.

Other big-government initiatives not withstanding, Obamacare alone is a huge step in that direction—both in its function to redistribute private sector wealth and its overbearing intrusion into our private lives. Obamacare restricts our freedom to make our own life choices and it punishes personal success through government-imposed redistribution of wealth. It is wholly un-American and if left in place it will destroy our great American economy, which has been the envy of the world for countless decades and which has fed, housed, clothed, and generally raised the quality of life for more people—here and abroad—than any other economy in world history.

A great and grotesque irony is that while Europe struggles to untangle itself from the failures of Socialism and other liberal big-government economies, President Obama and his cadre of Liberal Democrats in Congress, are relentlessly determined to transform the U.S. into the very same model of a European-style nanny state that has never been able to approach the success of our traditional U.S. model.

While this correspondent cannot know whether their intentions are good, I am reminded of the old saying that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Then again, I honestly cannot be sure that Mr. Obama’s intentions were ever good.

After five years, the results of Mr. Obama’s purposes and policies have been abysmal. Our economy is in what appears to be a chronic state of non-growth. The so-called recovery is the worst in U.S. history. The real unemployment/under-employment rate has been stuck at about 14 percent for years. While he continues to claim that he is the savior of the middle class, his policies have caused a significant decline in annual middle class income. At the same time, taxes and the overall cost of living have risen sharply and remain high with no relief in sight. These core factors as well as an alarming increase in restrictive government regulations and massive and unsustainable debt have severely diminished the capacity of the private sector to expand and create new jobs. Hence, the quality of life for average American citizens is degraded. Additionally, our debt, which now exceeds $17 trillion, has imposed a literally unimaginable financial burden on our children and grandchildren! This alone is both deplorable and unconscionable.

Then there is the debacle of Obamacare. As noted earlier, Obamacare was designed to put the healthcare of U.S. citizens under the control of the government. If fully deployed, the government will control about 17 percent of our entire economy, or one-sixth. That is why Vladimir Lenin, the father of Russian Communism, identified healthcare as the key to gaining power over the people. But after three full years of preparation, the launch of Obamacare has been a monumental disaster—a government failure of unprecedented magnitude. It is just one more example of why big government is a fundamentally bad idea and why transforming America President Obama style is not and cannot be good for America.

by Michelle Malkin

(Re-printed from MichelleMalkin.com)

As we celebrate our nation’s 237th birthday, a crucial facet of American life has all but vanished. We have forsaken, in a systematic and deliberate public manner, one of our most fundamental duties: fostering civic virtue in each and every one of our citizens.

What does it mean to be an American? Politicians in both parties keep pushing to create a new “path to citizenship” for millions of illegal aliens. But if sovereignty and self-preservation still matter in Washington, citizenship must be guarded ferociously against those who would exploit and devalue it at every electoral whim.

The pavers of the amnesty pathway think illusory requirements of paying piddling “fines” and back taxes will inculcate an adequate sense of responsibility and ownership in the American way. Other fair-weather friends of patriotism satisfy themselves with shallow holiday pop quizzes on American history to fulfill the “well-informed” part of the “well-informed citizenry” mandate of our Founding Fathers.

But Thomas Jefferson said it well: “No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and … their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice… These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.”

John Adams said it better: “Liberty can no more exist without virtue … than the body can live and move without a soul.”

And Thomas Paine said it best: “When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.”

Civic virtue cannot be purchased with token gestures or passed down in perfect form like a complete set of family china. A life of honor, honesty, integrity, self-improvement and self-discipline is something you strive ever to attain. Being American is a habit of mind, but also a habit of heart and soul. Abraham Lincoln spoke of the “electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”

Calvin Coolidge, profiled in “Why Coolidge Matters,” a terrific new book by Charles C. Johnson, echoed the Founding Fathers’ emphasis on virtue, restraint and work ethic. “If people can’t support themselves,” he concluded, “we’ll have to give up self-government.”

The failure of public schools to impart even rudimentary knowledge of self-government principles, natural rights theory and the rule of law is compounded by the suicidal abandonment of civic education. As Stanford University education professor William Damon notes: “Our disregard of civic and moral virtue as an educational priority is having a tangible effect on the attitudes, understanding and behavior of large portions of the youth population in the United States today.”

Add militant identity politics, a cancerous welfare state, entitled dependence and tens of millions of unassimilated immigrants to the heap, and you have a toxic recipe for what Damon calls “societal decadence — literally, a ‘falling away,’ from the Latin decadere.” Civilizations that disdain virtue die.

Independence Day sparklers will light the skies overhead this July 4th, but George Washington’s “sacred fire of liberty” belongs in the breasts of Americans every day of the year.

How to rescue citizenship and civic virtue?

Let’s start by sending a message to politicians in the nation’s capital who imperil our sovereignty.

Citizenship — good citizenship — is not just a piece of government-issued paper. It is not merely a bureaucratic “status.” It’s a lifelong practice and propagation of founding principles. A nation of low information is just half the problem. A nation of low character cannot long remain a free nation.

Copyright 2013 by Michelle Malkin