Posts Tagged ‘smoking’

The big picture

Monday, April 20th, 2009

I’ve been giving some attention to the reaction of the local media to last week’s Tea Party here in Dayton, Ohio. Our newspaper, the Dayton Daily News, generally downplayed the event. There seemed to be too many ordinary people who were present, too many blue-collar conservative types. Oh, and let’s not forget–they were mostly white folks.

As I read various articles and blogs, I noticed that of the people who carried signs at the event, there seemed to be no predominant message, other than venting at big government in general. There were lots of people who gathered because of one big issue that troubled each of them. Some people, for instance, were irate about high taxes. Others were concerned about government spending. Still others questioned the bank bailouts. You get the idea.

But I wonder how many people can put all of those little pieces together in order to craft the big picture of what this present administration is really trying to do? And how many folks can look back just a few years ago, to see when and how all of these power grabs got started? The speed of legislative action and the enactment of liberal ideology since January of 2009 has been breathtaking. The dominos are falling rapidly. The closure of Guantanamo Bay; the blitz of tobacco taxes; the reshaping of the auto industry; and now the judgement of the EPA concerning greenhouse gases, are all indications that there is serious social re-engineering going on.

I wish that conservatives could put everything together. The religious right, for example, should get off the abortion soapbox. They think that if a potential congressional or presidential candidate doesn’t say exactly what they want to hear on the abortion issue, they can’t support him. When they withdraw their votes, the liberal fanatics get to fill the vacuum. If the abortion foes would just see the bigger picture, they could help expose the liberal hypocrisy. Namely, the liberals want to give women the right to do as they please with their own bodies (by having abortions), but those same liberals want to take away everyone else’s right to do as they please with their bodies by enjoying tobacco. And these liberals have tried to validate their seizure of the right to use tobacco by citing suspicious and questionable “research” done on the dangers of tobacco use, going all the way back to the 1970s.

They have also been hammering on the oil companies since the late ’70s. Remember Jimmy Carter’s efforts to hammer oil companies with a “windfall profit” tax? And didn’t the liberals raise the same idea last year? Instead of allowing more responsible use of American resources, they restricted further the exploration and production of American oil and gas. What would happen if the oil companies stopped pumping because of the crushing profit taxes? Fuel costs would likely spike even higher.

We all need to see that the liberals have been planning their moves for a long time. They now have the opportunity to implement the many items on their agenda. We need to understand the many issues that are jeopardizing our freedoms. To the world, our President is appearing to be thoughtful, cooperative, and non-threatening. At home, he and his Democratic cohorts are squeezing the last bits of freedom from American society. Can you see the big picture?