Only Nixon

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:33:03 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - commentary on the ascendency of Herr Obama to the Amerikan throne. [tle]

The man burns to have a private army all his own. During the election campaign, he threatened to create a "domestic security force" as large and well-funded as the entire U.S. military, just the thing to send door-to-door (as the police attempted in the Chicago projects) searching for privately-owned weapons. Sure enough, the very first item to appear on his website www.change.org following the election was a proposal to require "mandatory community service"--50 hours a year from junior high school and high school students, 100 hours from those in college--or the individuals in question needn't expect to graduate.

Rather than receiving all this as bad news, however, libertarians should celebrate it as a gift. Think of it as an error of arrogance, the hubris that inevitably undoes the bumbling heroes of classical Greek tragedy. It would appear that, just as "only Nixon could go to China," only the first black president, Barack Obama, would attempt to reimpose slavery on a nation that once tore itself into bloody shreds--or so establishment historians assure us--to put an end to slavery.

The fact is--given his institution of a personal income tax and military conscription on a once-free citizenry--Abraham Lincoln, yet another corrupt politician inappropriately elevated to godhood by his drooling sycophants, didn't abolish slavery, he merely nationalized it.

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