Comment du Jour

America Roars Back...



The Democrat Party took a drubbing at the hands of a pretty upset and politically energized electorate.

Anxiety over the economy and the unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent was a primary cause of the Congressional defeat for the party in power. But the election was more than just economic angst--it was a Referendum on the Preisdency of Barack Obama and the structures of Big Government.

In the Mid-Term Report Card, the Administration was handed a historic defeat with loss of the House of Representatives and a reduced majority in the Senate.

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the young American Republic in the 1830’s the visiting Frenchman was enchanted not only by the pursuit of freedoms but by the individuality and spirit of the American people. In his magnificent narrative “Democracy in America,” de Tocqueville’s message was that America was great for many reasons, but first and foremost its freedom and the individual pursuit of wealth and happiness.

De Tocqueville coming from a France which was and remains a very Statist country, no matter the government of left, right had discovered the American Republic as a refreshing alternative to chaotic barbarism of the French Revolution or the theatrical militarism of Napoleon. America presented an alternative offering individual opportunity.


Fast forward to 2010. What used to be called “American Exceptionalism” by scholar Seymour Martin Lipset, has evolved into what I deem, American Dependency. I do not mean our economic dependency on Middle East oil. Instead I refer to an entire dependency culture which has emerged across all classes, creeds and colors which looks to Washington “programs” as a panacea to every problem and donor to every need. The Middle-class has been especially seduced by the handouts.


Much as the French are wedded to their entitlements and can recite their benefits as secular scripture, so too an increasing number of Americans (especially the Yammercrats of the Left) who see the State as the solution, the benefactor, and the arbiter for all matters of commerce and culture.

And that bring us back to the Mid-term vote.

Naturally with government funding on every level comes the natural consequence of higher taxes, but well beyond this emerges the control. What properly defined America as a Federal Republic and land of checks and balances, has increasingly become a unitary state dispensing checks but also dispensing with the traditional balance and dialogue between Washington and the fifty states.

Now there's an increasingly vocal majority of Americans who do not accept this path.