Michelle Obama recently described to Oprah the feeling of hopelessness that she feels now grips our country. For the past two months the Gazette has been filled with nothing short of wailing and the gnashing of teeth over the election of Donald Trump as our next president.
Yet consumer optimism has exploded since Nov. 8 and the stock market has had its strongest run ever in the wake of a presidential election. Why the different views? One thing upon which we all can agree is that this election will result in the transfer of power in Washington from one economic vision to another.
We can also all agree that the “hopelessness” is felt by those who had power and just lost it while the optimism is felt by those who now feel liberated from a condescending, oppressive government that was much more prone to lecture than to listen.
In 2010, the voters of Massachusetts elected Scott Brown to finish Ted Kennedy’s Senate term based on Brown’s promise to be the 41st vote to stop Obamacare. Instead of taking pause and reading the tea leaves of just what that symbolized, President Obama stretched the rules and rammed Obamacare through on a party line vote using a budgetary trick the experts call “reconciliation.” That’s not listening.
After eight years of not listening, majorities of 30 states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, wanted to be heard.
So liberals now have a choice. They can now listen or they can continue to parade their hypocrisy. Time was that the first person to invoke comparisons to Adolf Hitler automatically lost the argument. This was one of the corollaries to the so-called “Godwin’s law.” Are comparisons between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler that columnists have made in this paper more than just the usual preening of self-righteousness and vapid indulgences in moral exhibitionism or do they have any useful point? What are the lessons of the Nazis?
The horrors perpetrated by Adolf Hitler cause me to wonder how they happened. Germany was an advanced, civilized country. We’re all familiar with Mercedes Benz and aspirin maker Bayer AG. These are German companies that predate World War II and did business in Nazi Germany. Germans pioneered one of the greatest advancements of the second millennium with the invention of the printing press in Mainz, Germany, in 1453.
How did an advanced, civilized country like Germany descend into horrifying depravity during the 20th century? It’s not just hatred that caused the Holocaust. These pages are filled with hatred every day, albeit the “good” type of hatred for people like Trump. We see that it’s noble to truly hate Trump for so many reasons. We’re fortunate that liberals know how to hate properly. Like holding government power, only liberals should practice hatred for others, especially those they convict of hating first.
So what made Hitler so dangerous? Hitler came to power with the legitimacy of an election in 1933. Once in power, the first thing he sought to do was limit the power of the legislature. He was too impatient to forge a legislative consensus because Germany’s loss in World War I and the onerous terms of Treaty of Versailles created an economic crisis that demanded immediate action. He couldn’t afford to wait. See, he had a phone and a pen and was determined to use them without regard for the role of the legislature.
But the key that unlocked the Holocaust was what Hitler did do legislatively. By hook and by crook, with payoffs and promises, Hitler rammed through the Reichstag a law that not only created the SS but removed it from judicial review.
Let me emphasize that small detail. The newly created Gestapo was not subject to the authority of any court or any other body. Hitler had created a group of government-fed sycophants that was above the law. Without the checks and balances created by the rule of law, the Nazis went completely out of their minds with power. There was no stopping them.
The United States had to send a mobilized army to aid the British and French in trying to stop them because there were no internal controls left within Germany.
One of the key lessons we all need to learn from history’s experience with Hitler is that we always need checks and balances to make sure we remain a country governed by the rule of law which listens to the people. In short, government must protect the freedom of the people, not punish those who seek it.
It doesn’t take 150,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations to describe freedom. The people who voted for Trump, especially in the Rust Belt, saw a president who was intoxicated with power and ideologically opposed to wealth creation.
The socialist view of wealth creation is that it is “unfair.” It’s unfair because it’s uneven. Therefore, the government must only allow wealth creation under government control to ensure that those who do the least get paid first. The result? A stagnant economy where people fight over the limited wealth previously created.
Putin invades Crimea and China seizes international waters in a world where people fight over limited wealth. In a free-market world where wealth creation in encouraged, Putin doesn’t have sufficient incentive to invade Crimea because he’s too busy making money doing other things like developing a vast oil-based economy.
Of course, liberals worldwide want governments to prevent such things as the exploitation of valuable resources because in that case they want to force everybody in the world to bow to their views about climate change.
Dissent can’t be tolerated, resulting in political prosecutors like Maura Healey to save humanity. In fact, liberals want government to force everybody to do everything their way. It’s not enough for them to pay their own employees $15 per hour, everyone must. Hence, 90,000 pages in Obama’s Federal Register and 95 million Americans out of the workforce.
As liberals decry fascism and hatred and wonder how so many deplorable Americans could have voted for Trump, maybe they should look in the mirror.
There is new hope across the country for Americans who value freedom, not freebies. We know that a peaceful transition of power away from a power-hungry government is a time to rally around the flag, not burn it. It’s a time to embrace freedom, not fear it. And it’s time for liberals to start listening and stop lecturing.
Joseph Tarantino, of Northampton, is the Hampshire County co-chairman of Western Mass Republicans.