The audacity of deceit

I don't think Barack Obama tells the truth.

Yes, voters had fair warning of this ambitious young man's long associations with radical America-haters and self-described communists, including the literal bomb-makers of the Weather Underground (at least, those who managed to avoid blowing themselves up with their paramours in Greenwich Village in 1970).

Even if, in "Dreams from My Father," Mr. Obama coyly omitted much background information on his communist mentor, Frank Marshal Davis. (How many books, exclusively about himself, has Mr. Obama now written? Should narcissism be a concern, here?)

If they listened carefully, voters certainly could have heard candidate Obama warning that he was going to side with some hypothetical residents of "the rest of the world" who weren't going to stand for our continuing to be wealthy, to heat or air-condition our homes as we saw fit, that he intended to "spread the wealth around."

Those who were courageous enough to issue warnings in September 2008 can now stand proud -- much good it'll do us as we gaze at the wreckage these clowns may yet make of our once-proud economy in their remaining eight months in full power.

But I still say Barack Obama lied.

The freshman senator's whole 2008 campaign spoke of "post-partisanship," of ending divisiveness. The clear subtext was that if Americans would merely put aside their old prejudices over race and elect a president who is half-African, they'd be rewarded with a moderate, middle-of-the-road administration attempting to find bipartisan solutions that were "neither Democratic nor Republican," but some kind of middle course that both parties could live with.

For 15 months now, instead, it's been hell-for-leather to enact at breakneck pace the most divisive, far-left, government-growing, government-empowering agenda seen since 1913, or possibly 1933. No wish list of the radical feminists, government union goons, Socialist Workers, Reconquistas or bow-to-the-sheik, better-red-than-dead peaceniks has been out of bounds.

(I believe someone in authority in Washington said last week we wouldn't promise not to shoot down any Israeli warplanes that might attempt a proactive strike to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, which the shrieking mullahs have said they'd use to nuke Israel. OK. What would Barack Obama's response be, should Iran nuke Israel? A firm note? If we're not going to intervene -- and perhaps that's wise -- shouldn't we at least stand clear?)

Meantime, a bunch of cheerful senior citizens driving their campers to "tea party" rallies against big government spending (and the high taxes and hyperinflation they know such policies will surely bring) are demonized as racist Klansmen spouting hate speech.

Klansmen? There's a real Klansman in the U.S. Senate, you know. In 1944, Robert Byrd, then Exalted Cyclops of his local KKK chapter, wrote to segregationist Sen. Theodore Bilbo, D-Miss.: "I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side. ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

If Sarah Palin or Ann Coulter had said that, I suspect it would have made the news. Yet I don't hear the Obamacrats objecting when Sen. Byrd, D-W.Va., routinely joins their Senate majority. Real Klansmen are fine, it seems, so long as they vote Mr. Obama's way.

Hate speech? Go read the "comments" beneath any moderately conservative or libertarian online blog or newspaper column. You will find any attempt to have a calm discussion of the topics raised by the columnist -- including by those ready to marshal some contrary evidence -- largely drowned out by a tiny handful of shrieking, post-every-10-minutes collectivist harridans, ridiculing the sanity of anyone who dares question the grow-the-government Obama agenda, let alone calmly cite chapter and verse from Founding Fathers who intended ours to be a government of sharply limited powers.

If one of our goals is to make race less of a consideration in American hiring, advancement and politics, does the left really think it will advance this goal to call anyone who challenges any part of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi collectivist agenda a "racist"?

Remember that every call from Washington for more regulation, more taxes designed to punish the rich, is an assault on freedom.

The freedom ideal would be no compulsory taxation, at all -- let all keep their own earnings to invest in growing the economy, while what minimal government is required would be supported by voluntary user fees.

The statists will pretend to object on pragmatic grounds. Let them first answer whether or not they agree this would be the ideal. If they do, then we can try to solve the pragmatic problems. I grew up in a small town, for example, where voluntary membership fees funded the ambulance and the volunteer firemen. The ambulance and the firemen would still respond to a home that had not subscribed -- but that homeowner would then receive a bill for the full cost of their services. Few waited to get a second bill before signing up as paid members.

Similarly, courts and even a minimal police force (once we decriminalize all consensual adult behaviors and turn traffic enforcement over to the private owners of the roads) could be supported by voluntary fees, paid as a form of insurance to spare ourselves full costs should we ever find ourselves in need of such services.

But it's pointless to try to work in good faith to solve the pragmatic objections when they're merely red herrings thrown out by those who really mean, "No, I want a big and powerful government to take away your wealth and let me redistribute it."

Next week: The free market made us wealthy and, of course, free. Is that why the Obama gang hates it?

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, and author of "Send in the Waco Killers" and the novel "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com/.