This is the first election in living memory where I couldn’t care less about the outcome. \u00a0Yes, I think Republicans will take\u00a0the Senate. Big whoop. What will this mean in terms of its practical impact on the nation at large?<\/p>\n
Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.<\/p>\n
Every piece of significant\u00a0legislation that might reverse the damage Obama has done will be summarily vetoed. And, conversely, every attempt by Obama to advance his agenda will be nipped in the bud. There will be a flurry of partisan activity and a marked increase in rhetorical volume, but no\u00a0actual lawmaking will take place.<\/p>\n
That’s actually just fine with me, as I find government inaction to be a preferable default position to well-intentioned, expensive, and ultimately destructive social engineering. But there is action government needs to take to avoid the fiscal implosion\u00a0of the entire nation – entitlement reform, anyone? – and neither party will take it. A Republican Senate will not stop or even slow our inevitable collapse.<\/p>\n
So forgive me if I’m not giddy with partisan glee.<\/p>\n
My exile from the GOP has given me a different perspective on the party that was once my home. It occurs to me that the Republicans will always be at a disadvantage, because we can never out-promise the Democrats. The Left believes that government is the primary – indeed, the only – vehicle for positive social change, and that all the ailments of humankind can be attributed to an inadequate amount of government. Poverty, violence, disease, despair, the global thermostat – all these can ostensibly be managed and controlled for the betterment of humanity\u00a0if we just send the feds enough money.<\/p>\n
Of course, none of that is true.<\/p>\n
That’s not really a matter of opinion. For decades, we’ve been dumping truckloads of taxpayer cash on these problems, and, if anything, they’re worse, not better. Our fifty-year “War on Poverty” has cost trillions upon trillions of dollars and has created a permanent underclass with no intergenerational memory of self-sufficiency. Those governments that go whole hog and abolish private ownership produce tyranny, corruption, and crushing poverty – but at least everyone is equally miserable.<\/p>\n
But real-world, empirically verifiable results\u00a0don’t get in the way of Democrats who continue to\u00a0dangle the promise of taxpayer-funded paradise in front of voters. Just keep writing checks, and, sooner or later, the government will get it right, even though they’ve gotten everything terribly, horribly, miserably wrong up until now.<\/p>\n
Republicans, on the other hand, don’t offer anything nearly as exciting. Vote for us, they say, and we’ll minimize the damage government does. Of course, there will still be poverty and inequality and misery and pain, but at least it won’t be as bad as it will\u00a0be if the Democrats add huge new gobs of government into the mix.<\/p>\n
So the Democratic promise is “Vote for us and the government will create a paradise!” Whereas the Republican promise is “Vote for us and everything will still suck, but it might suck a little bit less.”<\/p>\n
Which one of those rallying cries is more likely to stir the soul?<\/p>\n
I think government is a necessary evil, and it has a critical role to play in establishing boundaries within which freedom can flourish. But freedom also admits the possibility of failure, and government cannot remedy the pain and affliction that is fundamental to the mortal experience. Only Jesus can do that. And when He comes back as King of Kings, that’s when I’ll get excited about government again.<\/p>\n
Until then, it’s “meet the new boss; same as the old boss.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thisis the first election in living memory where I couldn't care less about the outcome. \u00a0Yes, I think Republicans will take\u00a0the Senate. Big whoop. What will this mean in terms of its practical impact on the nation at large?Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.Every piece of significant\u00a0legislation that might reverse the damage Obama has done will ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3395"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3399,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3395\/revisions\/3399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}