By Carlo Barbieri
Historically, the United States abhors class warfare.
The founding fathers fled England to escape this kind of tyranny and created the USA as a land of liberty and freedom for all. A century later, the nation fought its bloodiest war, brother against brother, over the issue of slavery. What came out was a doctrine that said unequal treatment of anyone is wrong, though it would take another 100 years of struggle to bring about full equality.
The goal of every effort along the way has been to make the American Dream possible for all people.
In his bid for re-election, President Barack Obama is undermining that American Dream with his endorsement of “redistribution of wealth,” putting the government in the “nanny state” role of taking care of minorities, the poor, the unemployed and the elderly.
At the same time, he promises to take more money in taxes from the rich. And while he also vows to give the middle class a break, those in the median wage bracket have seen their household income drop under President Obama, and face massive increases in food and fuel costs.
So what the president has done is create three classes, all at odds with one another. Those in or near poverty stay there because jobs are few and the government is perpetuating their state of dependency.
The rich are being hammered with threats of additional taxes. They are also indicted for allegedly “not paying their fair share.” They are faulted for being successful in a country that has always deemed success a wonderful thing. Mr. Obama has turned “success” into a dirty word.
The middle class is jammed between the other two classes, wishing and hoping to move up, but fearful they will drop down. Mr. Obama uses them to shoulder the burden of his excessive spending.
Former New Hampshire Governor and Mitt Romney campaign aide John Sununu defined this issue concisely when he said that Mr. Obama is “the first president in my lifetime who’s decided to run a campaign on class warfare… He attacks success. He says we need to get a hold of more money out of the rich and he condemns those who have succeeded with ‘you didn’t build it.'”
The matter of minorities and immigrants has also entered the mix. Mr. Obama champions himself as a leader in both areas. Yet during the second debate of this campaign season, Mitt Romney pointed out that Obama failed to file an immigration reform bill during his first term – as he had promised.
What Mr. Obama did dream up by executive order was his so-called “Dream Act.” Mainly, it allows young people brought into the country without authorization to avoid deportation if they graduate high school or join the military. Through this order, he has locked in support from a fast-growing demographic group that has been trending sharply Democratic in the wake of increasingly hard-line Republican positions on immigration.
What we need here is an immigration policy that makes compassion and consideration, not self-deportation and misery, its top priority. We cannot have open borders — no nation can — but we can have a much more reasonable immigration policy than we have now, and much more reasonable state policies in support.
The fight among classes is something I can relate to. I am a minority, and not a native American. I have, however, seen my home country of Brazil help lift millions from poverty level to middle class, but not by pitting one class against the other. Rather, it is by providing them with the resources they need to earn their way up.
When he ran for president in 2008, I supported Mr. Obama. His promises of hope and change seemed bold and refreshing at a time when the nation was falling into the pit of recession. But Obama has failed to deliver. He promised to cut the unemployment rate to about 5 percent. It didn’t happen. He promised to trim the nation’s debt, but, rather, has allowed it to soar. And he can no longer blame President George W. Bush for leaving him in the lurch.
Even in the 2012 campaign, Mr. Obama is fighting class warfare by portraying Mitt Romney not simply as a rich man, which he is, but as an unfeeling, uncaring and unworthy person, which is certainly is not.
Mr. Obama is perpetuating class and race warfare. If he is re-elected, he will undoubtedly bring four more years of “same-old, same old.” The nation doesn’t want it – and certainly can’t live with it.