When Ronald Reagan left office it was more than “Morning in America.” The Cold War was on its death bed. The economy was booming, and there was optimism everywhere. Why? Because Ronald Reagan didn’t see the government as the solution but part of the problem.
There is a story from World War II where the Germans successfully attacked an airfield wiping out many American planes on the ground. When they came back to do a reconnaissance check, they saw that all the planes had been replaced. They knew at that point they could never win the war when the American economy, not just the military was lined up against them.
How did Reagan win the Cold War without firing a shot? Not by negotiating for more arms reductions, but by building up our military. He understood that the planned economy of the Soviets could not possibly keep up with the free market American economy. They were broke and an arms race was not possible to win.
Then and Now
Where are we today? President Obama and his administration are piling more debt on us than at any time in history. His is attacking the most productive in our society as the means to pay for all his plans. How long will they put up with it? He is trying to expand government to unprecedented size. Meanwhile the Chinese Communists are instituting free market reforms and buying up our debt. It is not hard to see at some future date the Chinese Communists doing to us what Reagan did to the Soviets. The Chinese economy is growing strongly, and the Obama Administration is crippling our ability to respond to a Chinese threat of an arms race, with overwhelming debt. His focus may look like it’s domestic, but it carries a dangerous national security component. National security is explicit in the Constitution. Everything that Obama is reaching for is under the cloudy authorization of “the General Welfare” under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. We need to get back to the explicit responsibilities of the federal government enumerated in the Constitution and leave everything else to the states and the people as the Tenth Amendment tells us.
