[img]1640|right|Mr. Schaper||no_popup[/img]In the United States, the libertarianism impulse has been on the rise these past few months. With the expansion of government power the persistence of government overreach rises. Even liberals who had cheered uncompromisingly for President Obama in 2008 and in 2012 now want him to back off. The ACLU and other left-leaning critics are crying out “George W. Obama” because of the massive surveillance programs from the NSA that are going into everyone's land and cell phone lines. U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD,) ranking member of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, no longer can defend the administration's poor nominations. Even he has demanded emails about President Obama's National Labor Relations Board nominee. South Boston Rep. John Lynch from South Boston called out the administration for “scrubbed and inaccurate” talking points on Benghazi.
The Republican Party's Tea Party faction wants to stop the spending, stop the military sprees overseas, and stop the spiraling government surveillance that has not tapped into the phones of millions. Sen.Rand Paul (R-KY), who opted to leave his phone at home from now on (as should the rest of us), demanded a “full faith and forthcoming” response from the Obama administration regarding their power to use drones in domestic strikes against American citizens. After 11 hours of Mr. Rand Goes to Washington, the Attorney General ceded his answer: No. Still, the federal government is doing a lot more these days, all due to an aggressively progressive President who has envisioned a massive expansion of the federal government in our lives. The Attorney General's office seized the phone records of AP reporters for two months. The IRS was targeting conservative groups, and the EPA was frustrating their efforts to expand. From IRS-gate, to AP-gate, to Benghazi-gate, to NSA-gate, the Obama administration has turned into a gated community of corruption, rivaling the sometime stupidity and obstruction of the second-term Nixon presidency.
The following liberating trendy trends in the states suggest a growing unrest with the federal government's overreach. The President's approval ratings are tumbling, all of which merely mirrors the assault that his presidency has endured. Mr. Obama is one of few Presidents to win re-election by a weaker mandate than his first election. States are resisting implementation of ObamaCare's Medicaid exchanges. Individual doctors are foregoing insurance altogether, demanding cash payments, which cost less for doctors and patients. Midwestern states like Wisconsin and Michigan have pushed back against union power, enacting collective bargaining rights reforms or pushing right-to-work laws. More businesses are coming in.
Looking Who Is Benefitting
State coffers are growing richer, even as taxpayers keep their money and more people find work. Colorado and Washington have legalized marijuana, and in every other state, limited use for medicinal purposes has grown unchecked, with declining crime rates in surrounding clinical areas. In Colorado, the initiative to legalize pot surpassed President Obama's reelection margin. States are grappling with proper regulations in the face of federal backlash since marijuana remains illegal at the federal level.
Even Los Angeles faces an uphill battle in saving green crosses that are springing up all over the Southland. Yet crimes are going down. Hopefully the surplus criminal population will diminish in the wake of draconian drug laws drawing down.
Then there is same-sex marriage, as if such a truism has any sense or salience. The radical redefinition of marriage has awakened a long-held respect among religious and limited-government adherents: Marriage is a private matter, one in which the government never should have gotten involved. With the rising transformation of the legal definition of marriage, a growing consensus among conservatives, including religious leaders, has opted for getting Uncle Sam out of I Do entirely to retain its cultural and eternal status. Most gays do not marry. When they do, they may find that whatever legitimate intimacy they were seeking, they still will not find.
No Changing of Minds
As for the rise of conceal-and-carry gun laws, even liberal governors from previous administrations refuse to repeal them. Despite the tragedies of Aurora and Newtown individual citizens and legislators are unwilling to pass any reforms or background checks enhancements. The Toomey-Manchin gun control compromise earlier this year faced a massive uprising from red states with blue senators, all of whom voted against the bill. Today the bill lies in a tomb of compromise for the sake of compromise. In addition to making pot okay, Colorado voters have launched a recall effort is under way to remove the legislator and repeal the law that has enacted stricter gun provisions in their state (So much for Michael Moore's crock-umentary Bowling for Columbine.)
With the exhaustive expansion of Big Government, Libertarian Limited Government never looked so lovely. Perhaps adherents of Austrian economists Murray Rothbard and Friedrich Hayek, along with free market economist Milton Friedman and founding father James Madison, will owe a debt of gratitude to the aggressively regressive Progressive President Obama for government growth so gargantuan, people long for less, little, and limited government once again.
Arthur Christopher Schaper is a writer on issues eternal and unchanging, timeless and timely. A life-long SoCal resident, Arthur lives in Torrance.
Twitter – @ArthurCSchaper
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