Although I mentioned the President's State of the Union speech in passing the other day when I broke my political silence, I didn't give an opinion on it. So, since it's the weekend and I am recovering from a persistent headache, I find myself in the perfect mood to do so.
Most people gave the President good marks for his speech. I was braced for boorish buffoonery, tortured logic and syntax, with a dash of demogoguery. So, when he actually gave a reasonably decent speech, I was relieved. The only line I can remember was the best line of the speech: "My job is not to represent the world, my job is to represent the United States of America." Its about dang time an American President had the stones to say this. Take your Globalist one-world government and stick it...in a safe place.
But, just because he gave a perfectly presidential speech doesn't mean I liked it on the substance. The primary takeaway for me was this simple truth...the Era of Limited Government (which hasn't actually been a thing in nearly a hundred years) is clearly over, and now with Trump, even lip service to it is over. This speech could have been given by any big-spending Democrat in America over the past fifty years. You want an infrastructure spending program? Check. You want your brand new entitlement program of child care? Check. You want a protectionist trade policy? Check.
Somebody once described the American Man as the European Man left alone. No longer true. We are now as completely ruled and regulated as any man from Finland to France. And it will only get worse. Especially now that the party of small government has been taken over by a world class Statist like Donald Trump. Yes, I'm aware of his promises to reduce the regulatory burdens in America, and I am aware that he promises a wave of tax cuts. But, it's very hard for me to believe that he can or even wants to deliver on either of these promises. My gut instinct is that for every regulation he dismantles, a new one will appear. I also fail to see how you can cut taxes while at the same time creating new entitlements and presiding over a trillion dollars of infrastructure spending. And yes, he did mention his desire to actually cut some government budgets, real cuts, not some voodoo baseline budgeting gimmickry sleight of hand. But, then he admits that the goal of these cuts is to free up 54 trillion for increased military spending. That's where he lost me...sigh....
I realize that I am a weirdo on this subject, and my views on government and it's proper function died out over a hundred years ago, but, if you're serious about debt and the financial health of this nation, everything needs to be cut, including the military. If you're the type of person who believes that spending nearly $600 billion on the military in 2015 was woefully inadequate...then, there's nothing I can say to help you.
So, I watched the speech for a while at least. After thirty minutes it became boiler plate and I tuned out with a heavy sigh. Activist, intrusive, ever-expanding, liberty-encroaching, centralized planning, power-grabbing government is here to stay and more robust than ever. We all better get used to it.
Most people gave the President good marks for his speech. I was braced for boorish buffoonery, tortured logic and syntax, with a dash of demogoguery. So, when he actually gave a reasonably decent speech, I was relieved. The only line I can remember was the best line of the speech: "My job is not to represent the world, my job is to represent the United States of America." Its about dang time an American President had the stones to say this. Take your Globalist one-world government and stick it...in a safe place.
But, just because he gave a perfectly presidential speech doesn't mean I liked it on the substance. The primary takeaway for me was this simple truth...the Era of Limited Government (which hasn't actually been a thing in nearly a hundred years) is clearly over, and now with Trump, even lip service to it is over. This speech could have been given by any big-spending Democrat in America over the past fifty years. You want an infrastructure spending program? Check. You want your brand new entitlement program of child care? Check. You want a protectionist trade policy? Check.
Somebody once described the American Man as the European Man left alone. No longer true. We are now as completely ruled and regulated as any man from Finland to France. And it will only get worse. Especially now that the party of small government has been taken over by a world class Statist like Donald Trump. Yes, I'm aware of his promises to reduce the regulatory burdens in America, and I am aware that he promises a wave of tax cuts. But, it's very hard for me to believe that he can or even wants to deliver on either of these promises. My gut instinct is that for every regulation he dismantles, a new one will appear. I also fail to see how you can cut taxes while at the same time creating new entitlements and presiding over a trillion dollars of infrastructure spending. And yes, he did mention his desire to actually cut some government budgets, real cuts, not some voodoo baseline budgeting gimmickry sleight of hand. But, then he admits that the goal of these cuts is to free up 54 trillion for increased military spending. That's where he lost me...sigh....
I realize that I am a weirdo on this subject, and my views on government and it's proper function died out over a hundred years ago, but, if you're serious about debt and the financial health of this nation, everything needs to be cut, including the military. If you're the type of person who believes that spending nearly $600 billion on the military in 2015 was woefully inadequate...then, there's nothing I can say to help you.
So, I watched the speech for a while at least. After thirty minutes it became boiler plate and I tuned out with a heavy sigh. Activist, intrusive, ever-expanding, liberty-encroaching, centralized planning, power-grabbing government is here to stay and more robust than ever. We all better get used to it.
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