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The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest
Vol: 41 Issue: 3 - Thursday, February 03, 2005
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"The State of the Union Is Confident and Strong"
Are we the only ones confused about the sudden "there's plenty of time" attitude being adopted by the Democrats over Social Security? For pretty much all of the 1990's, one of the major talking points among Democrats was the looming crisis over Social Security.
In a major policy speech delivered in February 1998 at Georgetown University, Bill Clinton warned about "the looming fiscal crisis in Social Security" that "affects every generation."
When he delivered his Georgetown speech, Clinton had been in office for more than five years, during which time he labored over the federal budget and the long-term consequences of fiscal policy.
In addition, before the 1998 speech, three national panels had already been commissioned during the Clinton administration to review Social Security reform options: the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform (1993-1995); the 1994-1996 Advisory Council on Social Security; and the 1997-1998 National Commission on Retirement Policy.
All three panels offered long-term reform plans that included individual accounts. Moreover, a policy paper presented in June 2001 and published by the National Bureau of Economic Research the following September revealed that the Clinton administration itself intensively analyzed such accounts as part of a long-term solution to "the looming fiscal crisis."
Only days after the Georgetown speech, "the administration launched a systematic process to develop a Social Security reform plan," according to the very revealing 2001 paper — "Fiscal Policy and Social Security Policy During the 1990s" — delivered at a Harvard conference.
The Democratic administration screamed that Social Security was in serious trouble, campaigning on the theme that many younger workers in America didn't believe that when it came their time, arguing that if we didn't re-elect them, Social Security would soon run out of money.
Hal's Assessment:
I can recall writing a column during the Clinton era pondering the dichotomy created by the Democrats simultaneously using Social Security's potential insolvency to scare seniors into voting Democratic while using the abortion issue to scare liberals into voting Democratic.
Since America has aborted 165 million potential workers since 1972, the reason Social Security is in trouble is patently obvious. Clinton's policy speeches about fixing a Social Security shortfall created by his party's support of abortion seemed, say we say, a bit disingenuous?
But nowhere nearly as disingenuous as the vitriolic Democratic opposition to the Bush proposal to privatize a tiny percentage of the system that would allow workers to invest a portion of their tax contributions in the stock market, which would return a much higher-yield than it would sitting dormant in the Social Security trust fund.
They were for it under Clinton. They are against the same proposal now. The only discernible reason is because Bush proposed it. So they oppose it. The consequences to the country are, at best, a secondary consideration.
Watching the Bush State of the Union speech, I actually felt sorry for the Democrats who booed and hissed his address. They missed the wonderful sense of pride the rest of America felt when Safia Taleb al-Suhail, leader of the Iraqi Women's Political Council, flashed the Congress a 'V' sign, showing her index finger, still ink-stained from participating in the Iraqi election.
Beside her stood Homira G. Nassery, who voted in Afghanistan's first democratic election in five thousand years. Both expressed their gratitude to the American forces who liberated them from tyranny, while the Democrats sat in stony silence.
It was a stellar moment, except among those lawmakers who opposed their liberation. To them, our national moment in the sun was a repudiation, and it must have stung.
Listening to the Democratic reaction to the speech, I could only marvel at how sad it must have been to be so consumed with hatred that it overshadowed the sense of national pride and accomplishment the presence of those two newly-liberated women represented.
For all their rhetoric about being the party of the oppressed and downtrodden, it must have made them a bit uncomfortable to have known that they had opposed their liberation at every turn and that, had they been successful, those two smiling women would still be in chains.
As I said, I felt sorry for them.
Jack's Assessment:
The State of the Union, according to the President, is 'confident and strong'. The state of the Democrats, on the other hand, is anything but.
Since 2001, their entire platform has been one of obstruction, opposition and nay saying, regardless of the issue or whether or not it might be good for America. Because anything that turns out good for America is bad for them. They have become the Party of No, as Tom Delay described them in a post-speech interview.
Their hatred for George Bush and the GOP has begun to consume them as a political force. They are morphing from the Party of No that they have been for the last four years, into the Party of Hate. Openly and, evidently, unashamedly.
Howard Dean, who is a shoo-in to win the February 12 election as the new chairman of the Democratic Party, said in New York last week; "I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for -- but I admire their discipline and their organization."
Noted Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe;
"I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for. Not "I oppose the Republicans and everything they stand for." Not "I'm determined to beat the Republicans." Not "I reject the Republican message." No -- Dean wants it understood that he hates the Republicans and all their works. That is the banner under which he is marching as a candidate to lead his party."
What makes this a different animal is the application of the word, 'hate' to the platform of the Democratic Party of Howard Dean. Politics at the national level is always intense and both sides practice the science with a cold, calculated ruthlessness.
The opposition is supposed to play hardball against the majority. That is what the Founders intended as part of the built-in 'checks and balances' system that keeps the country balanced.
Hatred is not cold, and usually, it lacks calculation. Unchecked, in its most extreme, it led Americans into civil war, and Jews into ghettos, concentration camps and finally, ovens.
Hatred, in the political sense, is what one feels for the enemies of one's country. War is the ultimate expression political hatred.
When expressed against one's fellow citizens, hatred is a CRIME so heinous that it has been judicially excluded from 1st amendment guarantees of freedom of speech!
The use, therefore, of the word to describe his view of a rival political party by the presumptive chairman of the Democratic Party is not merely eye-opening, its shocking.
We've both noted in the past that the Bible makes no mention of any nation resembling America during the Tribulation Period. Europe is there. Egypt, Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, -- they are all there. So is Syria, and most unlikely of all, Israel. But nothing resembling the existing American superpower.
But the Bible's description of the last days of the Church couldn't be more exemplary of America if the Author of Scripture had named it by name. Addressing the final Church Age of Laodicea, Jesus described it as 'lukewarm' and "Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."
The Apostle Paul described the social decay during the last days of the Church Age. He described it as being a time "without natural affection." During the last days of the Church Age, "trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good," (2nd Timothy 3:1-7) would be a commonly accepted element of the existing social order.
Paul's description stands in such stark contrast to the America of only one generation ago, that it makes the identification that much more vivid to those of my generation: "Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away."
The characteristics Paul outlined were always part of the fabric of America. But only one generation ago, they were a badge of shame.
Traitors were executed. Philandering politicians lost their seats. Unwed mothers got married or were shamed. God was welcomed in our schools and ALL of America thought of itself as 'Jesus Land'.
'Sexual preferences' were unspoken and private. Abortion was illegal, pornography shameful, Rob and Laura Petrie slept in separate beds, and Barney Fife chaperoned Andy Taylor's first date with a new girlfriend.
Andy was a deacon in his church and played Gospel music on his guitar. America loved Andy Taylor and could identify with the fictional Mayberry, which was modeled after Andy Griffith's home town of Mount Airy, North Carolina.
I remember that America, and so do most people my age.
Paul's description of the final days of the Church Age amount to American politics as usual -- from both sides of the aisle.
It can be argued that America is the world's only Christian nation, but it is indisputable that America is the world's most powerful and influential, and therefore, the most REPRESENTATIVE Christian nation on the face of the earth at this moment in history.
The final days of the Church are a letter-perfect description of America's current acceptable moral code and mirror the American political dynamic developing before our astonished eyes.
America is all over Scripture during the final days of the Church, but utterly absent from the Tribulation Period. Where did it go?
"For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
"Wherefore comfort one another with these words." (1st Thessalonians 4:17-18)
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