By Terry Paulson
12/19/2011
Conservatives must be taking the wrong approach in getting the attention of American voters when comedians find that half of the people they interview on the street can't even name one Republican presidential candidate. Neil Postman's writes in We Are Amusing Ourselves to Death, "Americans have a constant need to be entertained, a short attention span, and an inability to look at anything in depth.” Maybe it's time to give in and use the lighter side of politics to help voters laugh and learn conservative principles.
An anonymous sage asserted, “God, can’t alter the past, but politicians can.” It's amazing how the importance of faith in God can be written out of American history and how the Founding Fathers' treasured equal rights can be transformed into today's entitlement to equal results.
Benjamin Franklin warned, "Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship." We have so many leaks in our boat, many companies are rowing their lifeboats to a more welcoming shore! Wouldn't you love to have a budget that automatically goes up 8 percent every year no matter how much you made! If spending more than what you take in doesn't work in your home, what makes you think you can allow politicians to keep spending on your government credit card!
There's wisdom in this international proverb: "There's always free cheese in a mousetrap." Passing more and more programs to make life easier today when we don't have the funds to pay for them now or in the future is a deadly trap risking trading our treasured life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for national bankruptcy and economic chaos.
Bill Vaughan reminds us, “Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.” Whether we're funding studies on how long shrimp can run on a treadmill or whether Twitter can predict the stock market, isn't it funny how research costs expand to fill available federal budgets! Hey, let the shrimp pay for their own gym membership.
Herbert Hoover didn't know how prophetic he was when he said, "Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt." Don't you think there's something wrong with extending the payroll tax holiday to fund our "Black Friday" excesses while making future generations pay for our exploding national debt? Give to me now so others can pay later!
Will Rogers had fun with painful truths: “I remember back when a liberal was someone who was generous with his own money.” When it costs you nothing to elect politicians who will take from your neighbor to do your "giving" to those in need, that's not caring--that's politically correct stealing.
Milton Friedman was another truth teller: "Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a large number of the populace that somebody else will pay.” Do you really think the "rich" don't pay their fair share when the top 5 percent of the wage earners pay more income taxes than the rest of the 95 percent of tax payers combined.
Phil Gramm made common sense fun: “Change welfare so that people riding in the wagon are not better off than people pulling the wagon.” How long will hard -driving producers keep pulling the wagon when you take more and more of their earned rewards, make them pull more weight, and blame them for being the problem.
Robert Nudelman observed, “If you throw more birdseed on the ground, you’ll get more pigeons.” The more programs governments create and the more rewards they provide for failure, the more people become dependent on government. Washington doesn't just throw the seeds on the ground; they advertise where the seeds are!
Let's end with Harry Truman's admission, “If you can’t convince them, confuse them.” In the coming months, you'll hear how a failed stimulus plan actually worked, how raising taxes on the people who could start companies and create jobs is a good idea, and how giving President Obama four more years of his "hope and change" is better than returning to the founding principles that made America great. You can laugh or cry. Either way, vote for a return to sanity instead of European-style socialism.
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To read another article by Terry Paulson, click here.
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