Courage

            Yesterday, New Year's Eve, my wife and I went out to dinner with some friends, came home, and went to bed at 10 o'clock. We did not feel like celebrating the new year and we certainly did not feel like celebrating anything about 2012, except perhaps its passing.

            A year ago I looked upon the coming year with trepidation. I saw all kinds of problems on the horizon. Except for the possibility of an all-out war in the Middle East, it turned out I was mostly right. We didn't get an all-out war, but one could hardly describe the slaughter of tens of thousands of  Syrians as a peaceful solution to what ails the Middle East.
            Here at home we ended the year with multiple disasters: the triple scandals of Benghazi,  Super Storm Sandy, the massacre in Newtown, and, fitting neatly among them, the reelection of Barack Obama.
            Campaigning for his first term, Obama promised to fundamentally transform this nation. With both houses of Congress behind him, he quickly gave us Obamacare against the wishes of a majority of Americans, and a massive stimulus that added nearly a trillion dollars to the deficit without reducing unemployment. He followed that up with an unprecedented expansion of the federal government, a war against fossil fuels, and the explosive growth of the nanny state with the  addition of millions of people dependent on government largesse. The transformation was nearly complete. Four more years ought to do it.
            The President's agenda is quite clear: raise taxes, increase spending, punish the rich, destroy the Republican Party, and continue to expand the role and control of the federal government. If nothing happens to stop this inexorable movement toward a European-style Socialist state, we will soon be facing another recession, hyper-inflation, a continuing reduction in the workforce, and, above all, a crushing national debt that future generations cannot possibly repay.
            In my view, the only way to stop this madness lies with the House of Representatives. This inept body still has one powerful weapon at its disposal, if it ever gathers the courage to use it: the power of the purse. Forget the doubly absurd holiday comedies of the Fiscal Cliff and the Sequestration; the real stage on which the decisive battle of this war will be fought is the debt ceiling. If the House refuses to raise it, the federal government will have to reduce spending and balance the budget, something it hasn't done since the House and Clinton worked together to do it in the mid 90's. They even produced a surplus! Obama, Democrats, and their sycophants in the media will scream that it can't be done. Oh, but it can.
            All it takes is courage.