Change We Should Run From

The New Hampshire Union Leader half-way nails it in a brief editorial ("Statism on Parade: The Dems in Denver") regarding the Democratic convention:

When Democrats today say they want to "take America back," they mean it. They want to take this country back to the 1970s, when government was thought to be the answer to every problem and weak foreign policy was thought to make us safer.

That is not change we can believe in. It is change we should run from.

While it was refreshing to see that some members of the press weren't at the Democratic Convention cheering for Barack Obama, I would not be surprised to see this paper endorsing the other statist in this campaign, John McCain. That is a shame, because McCain is even more dangerous than Obama: Obama's true nature as an empty suit will quickly become apparent if he is elected, and the only way, it seems, to get Republicans to oppose a statist agenda is when they have to stop the Democrats from enacting it before they do. If McCain wins, we'll wish all we had was Bush in the White House.

Yes, we need to run from this kind of change. Too bad the Republicans have been helping build the fences to block our escape.

I'm pondering whether to register my dissatisfaction with the "choice" at the top of the ticket by writing myself in. I don't want the office and I'd probably be impeached in short order for refusing to enact some form of statist legislation. These two things alone make me more qualified than Obama or McCain -- and in today's cultural context, a safe bet to lose.

Gallows humor aside (HT: Diana Hsieh), the ultimate answer to today's political disaster is cultural change -- to make people once again more generally aware of the nature of freedom and the proper purpose of government. Along those lines, I remind my readers that there is a way, now, to help reverse our altruist-collectivist cultural trends: Consider ordering and distributing, or even just donating to The Undercurrent, which is once again set to hit campuses nationwide.

Our colleges will remain full of Obamatons (and worse) -- and any opponents they have will remain intellectually disarmed -- until and unless students are presented with a rational alternative in political philosophy.

-- CAV