Beware of populism?

By the standards of Big Media and the learned punditry, the opposition to the President’s agenda represents a dangerous swerve down the populist turnpike that is fraught with mindless anger, fear-mongering and general untoward behavior.

Let’s just briefly look back at where we were and where we currently are. By the numbers:

1. After some warm-up acts in the spring of ’08, President Bush kicks off Bailout Nation back in the fall with the $700 billion TARP legislation that was designed to buy up the bad assets that Wall St. had accrued chiefly through the housing market. Or was it to re-capitalize these firms? We can’t keep it straight. And this doesn’t include the hundreds of millions of dollars that were pumped into government-sponsored mortgage underwriters Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that is all completely off the books.

2. President Obama kicks-in Bailout Nation 2.0 by signing the $787 billion Porkulus bill into law that stimulates jack squat. On the heels of this, the Obama administration initiates a hostile take-over of Chrysler and General Motors which involved firing the CEO of General Motors and the shafting of the secured creditors in favor of the unions.

3. A lot of other demand-side statist tomfoolery (see: Cash for Clunkers and Home Owner’s Assistance Program) takes place in addition to the House passage of the economically ruinous cap and trade bill and the continued force-feeding of a government take-over of the health care industry legislation that the majority of Americans don’t want.


4. During all this, the American public reacts: Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?

5. Many of those same people voluntarily organize in order to exercise their Constitutional rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech with the purpose of expressing their displeasure with the current state of affairs. This results in a blunting and/or stalling of what is essentially an advancement in economic fascism in this country including some highly unlikely electoral upsets (see: New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts) that only re-enforces the notion of the American public’s general dissatisfaction.

6. The Media/Government industrial complex labels these people racist and un-American.

7. These people ignore these charges and repeat steps 4 and 5.

If this all be “populism” then so be it. We, however, simply see it as an exercise in democracy.

You overreach and attempt to extend the influence and power of the federal government beyond the point that the American people are comfortable with, you get your ass kicked. This isn’t rocket science and this backlash sure as hell isn’t motivated out of bigotry or any un-American sentiment, quite the contrary.

That the learned class in this nation willfully ignore these facts is an embarrassment as it is these very taste-makers that should be at the forefront of critiquing this assault on liberty and freedom instead of cheerleading for it.