Worrying about Obama

Jennifer Rubin and Thomas Sowell find plenty to worry about.

Thomas Sowell, interviewed by Peter Robinson, walks us through the world view and policy stances of Barack Obama. He provides perhaps the best summation to date:

There is such a thing as a point of no return," he says. If Obama wins the White House and Democrats expand their majorities in the House and Senate, they will intervene in the economy and redistribute wealth. Yet their economic policies "will pale by comparison to what they will do in permitting countries to acquire nuclear weapons and turn them over to terrorists. Once that happens, we're at the point of no return. The next generation will live under that threat as far out as the eye can see. . .This man [Obama] really does believe that he can change the world. And people like that are infinitely more dangerous than mere crooked politicians."

And that really is the nub of it. It is not just the radical substantive ways in which Obama may re-orient domestic and national security policy; it is that as an ideological extremist, Obama's methods may well be equally extreme.

That is why the gushing over Obama's "temperament" is so misplaced. If his apologists would care to look, his "thugocracy" is already on full display. When you label your opponents "racist," set up Truth Squads, invoke the Justice Department to investigate the opposition's campaign rhetoric, and associate with voting fraud racketeers you are telling voters, "Anything goes." You are saying, "Our mission is so grand that any means are justified." This is not the stuff of petty corruption, but of systematic contempt for legal restraint and for political criticism.

So for those who are uneasy about Barack Obama, but think a term or two won't be any big deal, they might think again. Just as Sowell warns, once Iran has nuclear capability, there's no turning back. Once Russia has gobbled up another former Soviet state or two, good luck getting them out. The record of rolling back new accretions to government is not promising. But most importantly, once opposition is cowed and criminalized, there's little to constrain the state. Perhaps the slogan for Republicans in 2012 will be "It's the freedom, stupid."