Johnson-Carter-Kerry legacy

The John-John’s socialist America

Editorial by Roger Wm. Hughes

" 'There's something else that's important about John Edwards," Sen. John Kerry said after declaring him 'ready for this job' of vice president. Edwards, in his own presidential campaign and afterwards, has talked about the 'great divide' between the 'two Americas,' one well-to-do and privileged, the other poorer and struggling to make ends meet. Kerry embraced the idea. "That concern is at the center of this campaign," he said. "It is what it is all about." ...

Ron Brownstein of the LA Times and Fred Barnes of the Wall Street Journal both are covering the shift in the Kerry campaign to more accurately reflect the John-Johns' leftist records in the U.S. Senate. Kerry is ranked the farthest to the left and Edwards is ranked fourth.

"Kerry's goal, aides say, is more to project empathy for middle-class aspirations than to stoke populist resentment of the interests Gore targeted," Brownstein reports in the LA Times.

Barnes argues that from the time of the Democrats' great Williams Jenning Bryan, the Democrats Populist-Socialist wing of the Democrat Party has not been successful. He further points to the failed effort of Al Gore just four years ago to bring the "era of big government   B A C K" did not work.

However, the Kerry campaign is hopeful that the repackaging of growing the bureaucracy, redistributing the wealth, bringing back protectionism, leaving America’s defense to the French, supporting wacky environmentalism, implementing socialized medicine -- in general, the bringing back the eras of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter -- will be the message of hope and caring that will win them the election.

How, you might ask, are they going to package these failed policies so that they can win? Through the Orwellian slogan of "One Nation."

Edwards' adopted message (honed in Iowa) that there are two nations – one rich and one poor – is nothing more than class warfare. It is not a message of "One Nation." It is a message of division. It is a message that we will destroy our seed stock so that they can win an election.

The tax cuts of John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich’s Congress and George W. Bush have proven that if you want to increase the revenues of government, you must tax its citizens in such a way that promotes the entrepreneurial spirit of the nation. Kerry’s tax increases would hurt the heart of America’s entrepreneurial spirit, small businesses that are mostly personally owned, the most.

John-Johns' message is that government can solve America’s problems and manage our economy in such a way that avoids what Fredrick Hayek referred to as the "Fatal Conceit." The fatal conceit that anyone or any group of people can know everything. This is the very necessity of a managed, thereby socialist, economy.

The audacity of the John-John duo is not in the repudiation of the Democrat salvation through Bill Clinton’s the era of "big government is over." No, the audacity is in the fact that President Bush is and has made the American economy better because of his policies and actions.

It is President Bush who is offering hope to America. It is President Bush who is trying to remove the death grip hold of the teachers' union on the spiraling decline of education and moral corruption that is passed off as public education. A public education not experienced by Kerry. It is Bush who is forging alliances with the growing "new" Europe of the former Warsaw Pact. It is Bush and the American public that recognizes that there was a long association between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. It is Bush that is not only offering America hope but is doing the hard work of making it a reality.