Obama Is The Symptom Not The Problem

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT:  I want to make something perfectly clear to my readers.  I DON'T HATE BARACK OBAMA.  I don't even dislike him.  Truth is, if I met him in a pub, and didn't know he was the President of the United States, I would probably have a few drinks with him.  I might even make a friend.  The same is true with G.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

In American politics we tend to get personal, even to the point of hating our leaders.  I have tried to avoid that, and I've tried to teach my kids to steer clear of that as well.  Truth is, while much of what our political leaders do is evil, that doesn't mean they themselves are evil people.  I have friends who are ardent Obama supporters, even to the point of trying to defend his indefensible HHS mandate.  I don't 'unfriend' them just because of their flawed political views.  They're good people and I know they mean well.  It's just that so much of what they 'know' is wrong.

I'm going to tell my readers now that there is a fifty percent chance that Obama may lose the election, and if he does, there is a seventy-five percent chance that nothing big will really change.  Oh sure, a Republican president may get rid of some of the more offensive features of Obamacare, including the insidious HHS mandate, but don't expect the principles of Obamacare to disappear, and you certainly shouldn't expect anything to get better in the healthcare industry.  I would say there is probably a strong chance they will continue to get worse, especially under a Republican president.  Under Obama we may go to war with Iran.  Under a Republican president we WILL go to war with Iran.  Under Obama the federal government will continue to get bigger and more intrusive.  Under a Republican president the federal government will continue to get bigger and more intrusive.  Under Obama the federal debt will continue to grow.  Under a Republican president the federal debt will continue to grow.  I make it a point not to drink the Kool Aid of either the Republicans or the Democrats.  One of the ways the parties poison are minds is by personally attacking their opponents.  They get us thinking that it's all about the personality of the man in office, and in the process, we forget the real problem is a common theme echoed by both parties --  each in their own way.  That theme is Subsidiarity -- or rather the lack thereof.

Neither party believes in Subsidiarity any more.  The Republican party candidates occasionally give lip service to it, but almost none of them abide by it, with of course the exception of Ron Paul in this presidential race, who has been blackballed by the GOP because of it.  The problem is that Americans have literally forgotten what the United States of America was originally about.  They have forgotten our very identity....

1. Americans have forgotten that they are citizens of their respective states BEFORE they are citizens of the United States.  Case in point; I am a Missourian first, and an American second.  To say such a thing is probably the single most 'American' thing I could possibly say, because America is about a state's right to sovereignty and self-determination.  That's what the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution were all about.
2. Americans have forgotten that their most important political ties are the ones made closest to home.  I'm talking about city and county government.  Even state government to some degree, while federal government ties are the farthest and least important.  
3. Americans have forgotten that our rights come from God not government, and the reason why God has given us those rights is to exercise certain benevolent responsibilities.  That without those responsibilities, those rights often become subject to abuse, eventually leading to unjust laws that restrict them.  
4. Americans have forgotten that our first political duty is local and it is to take care of our own people in need.  So long as we abdicate this responsibility to the state and federal governments, we are inviting the very political abuse that is destroying this nation.
5. Americans have forgotten that without Subsidiarity there can be only tyranny.

No I don't hate Barack Obama.  He's just the latest link in a long chain of federal abuse going all the way back to the American Civil War.  Politically speaking, he's not much different than the rest of them, as far as presidents go really.  He's just a symptom.  He's not the disease.  WE ARE!  When Americans begin to return to the principle of Subsidiarity, then and only then will things begin to change for the better, regardless if who sits in the Whitehouse's Oval Office.