By Star Parker
Monday, December 09, 2013
When presidents give speeches, the affair is
choreographed like a Broadway production. The message is not just the words of
the speech, but where it is given and who happens to be the chosen audience.
So it was not by accident that President Obama chose a
theater in a poor black neighborhood in Washington, DC, where the average
income is barely half the national average, to speak this week about economic
opportunity and fairness.
What exactly was the President trying to achieve by
sharing with a low-income black audience that “today’s CEO now makes 273 times
more” than the average worker?
Did he want to inspire hope that one day they can earn
money like this? I don’t think so. The point was to create despair and convey
that America is not fair.
Even though the president doesn’t deny there are many
American success stories (he knows - he raises lots of money from them), he
implies that somehow they are the exceptions to the rule. His core message is
that average Americans are not getting ahead, and the reason is that America is
not fair.
I can’t find a word in the President’s remarks that would
do anything but reinforce the sense of helplessness, meaninglessness, and
disenfranchisement that already exists in generous doses in low-income
neighborhoods.
Is this leadership?
Is this the message those trying to get their lives
together really need to hear?
Maybe they do need to hear it if it is true. But it’s
not.
There are indeed unhealthy trends in America today that
undermine opportunity and the chances of many to get ahead.
But they are not the things the president talked about.
In fact, the trends that are reducing opportunity are the things that President
Obama and his liberal friends love to promote. And the things that increase the
likelihood of improving one’s life are the very things the President and his
liberal friends fight.
There is today reams of data, piles of studies that show
that more economically free nations grow faster and create more wealth.
What is economic freedom? It means citizens can run their
lives and do their business with minimal government interference. It means
keeping taxes, government spending and regulation low. It means more powerful
citizens and less powerful politicians.
In 2000, the United States was number 2 in the world as
measured by the Economic Freedom of the World Index. By 2011 it dropped to
number 19.
This dramatic drop in economic freedom in America helps
explain today’s sluggish economy and slow job creation.
But liberals, like our president, insist that government
is the solution rather than the problem. We need more of it, according to them,
not less. Then when jobs disappear, they said it’s not fair.
What about individual realities?
According to Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution,
“Kids in single-parent families are about five times more likely to be poor as
children in married-couple families. Yet the share of children in single-parent
homes families has been rising for decades.”
And liberal government policies have been contributing
for decades to marriage breakdown.
Now Obamacare gives Americans a new reason not to get
married.
Kaiser Health News reports that two low-income earners,
say one earning $30,000 and one earning $40,000, would each qualify for health
insurance subsidies. But if they married, their combined $70,000 would
disqualify them.
The president told his black audience in Southeast
Washington, DC that “we need to set aside the belief that government cannot do
anything about reducing inequality.”
You’re right, Mr. President, it can.
Government can start protecting rather than violating our
freedoms.
And our leaders can start promoting policies consistent
with rather than in violation of traditional biblical values, like marriage and
personal responsibility, so that our citizens will be in good shape to take
advantage of their freedom, if we can ever get it back from our government.
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