About
Frank Salvato
Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and Director of
Terrorism Research for
BasicsProject.org a non-profit,
non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative. His
writing has been recognized by the US House International
Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict
Prevention. His organization partnered in producing the original
national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical
Islamist terrorism. He serves as the managing editor for The New
Media Journal. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor
on FOX News Channel and is a regular guest on talk radio
including on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent
Radio Network and on The Captain's America Radio Show catering
to the US Armed Forces around the world. His opinion-editorials
have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The
Washington Times & Human Events and are syndicated nationally.
He is occasionally quoted in The Federalist. Mr. Salvato is
available for public speaking engagements.
Frank Salvato,
Managing Editor
It’s Americanism vs. Socialism
on November 4th October 17, 2008
At a recent campaign swing through
Ohio, while going "door-to-door,” Senator Barack Obama was asked a
question by a young prospective business owner about taxes and how
Obama’s economic plan would affect him, his family and his business.
Obama’s response – his unscripted, from the heart, authentic, no-spin,
off-the-teleprompter response – was something that would have made Karl
Marx proud. Make no mistake, “my friends,” this election is about
Americanism vs.
Socialism, and little else.
As Barack Obama was making his way from house-to-house in Toledo, Ohio, a
young plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher, standing in front of his house,
asked Sen. Obama a pretty straight forward question:
“Senator Obama, I’m going to
have a business that makes $280,000 a year. You want to tax me. Why do
you want to do that?”
And Obama gave him a pretty
straight-forward, albeit chilling response:
“It’s not that I want to punish
your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you,
that they’ve got a chance at success too. I think that when you spread
the wealth around it’s good for everybody.”
“I think that when you spread
the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” There is so much wrong with
not only this statement but this ideology it’s hard to know where to
begin, but I’ll start with this: Senator Obama...it’s not your
money to give!
Wealth redistribution is one of the core tenets of Socialism: “From
each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
Expressing a desire to “spread the wealth around,” indicates that Sen.
Obama favors the Socialist dogma of
income or wealth redistribution. This means he favors
social/economic engineering; where those who possess less are afforded
more at the demise of those who dedicated themselves to earning more.
Milton Friedman, the American Nobel Laureate economist, famously and
successfully argued that this code of belief, "From each according to
his ability, to each according to his need," turns ability into a
liability, and need into an asset. It rewards those
who simply exist and punishes those that produce, with all due respect
to Mr. Obama’s declaration that he doesn’t want to “penalize” that Ohio
plumber.
Simply put, it is naïve to believe that giving someone something for
nothing – or something simply because he doesn’t have it – instills a
desire to strive for attaining anything. In fact, it demonstrates
to him that he will be taken care of – by his fellow citizens through
taxation and the subsequent redistribution of wealth – even if he
contributes nothing to society; especially if he contributes
nothing to society.
Additionally, taking something away from someone after they have worked
to acquire it – especially when it is given to someone who did
nothing to earn it – diminishes the desire to be productive.
Eventually you are left with an apathetic populace constantly looking to
feed from the public trough; you end up with a situation where
government must provide for all because those who earn have
ceased to exist. This is the sad, albeit prophetic irony of Ayn Rand’s
work
Atlas Shrugged.
This end game – socially engineering a society to create dependency
under the guise of “giving those ‘without’ a chance at success” – feeds
directly into Mr. Obama’s vision of what government should be; the
provider. It creates a power-base more potent than any military
force the world has ever known. It succeeds by killing the strength of
independence and the Right of the individual, and eradicating the
American entrepreneurial spirit while placing government at the center
of society, as the mother, the father, the provider.
Make no mistake, “my friends,” the ideology of the Progressive-Left is
rooted in Socialism and right now their candidate, Barack Obama, is
slightly ahead in the polls.
Our nation stands just inside the beginning of a Second Civil War, one
taking place on the ideological battlefield. Should we lose this
election Progressive-Left Socialists will control the Executive Branch
and the Legislative Branch of our government. Our nation, our
Constitution and especially our Capitalist system will be damaged, very
possibly beyond repair.
We the People cannot afford to lose this battle. Government of the
people, by the people and for the people hangs in the balance this
election.
