Give Us Liberty

Obama: America Was Not a “Great Country,” 1776-1965

April 14th, 2011 Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com

As the nation digests Barack Obama’s plan to ride a tax hike to re-election, one phrase from yesterday’s budget speech confirms what this author has long stated: the president is fundamentally an anti-American Messianic figure who believes he was sent to save our nation from itself and its Founders. Speaking a line that was written in advance, approved by multiple layers of handlers and advisers, and spoken with relish, the president said America is only a great nation if we commit ourselves to big government spending. Obama began by contrasting the nation’s historic belief in “rugged individualism” with real “patriotism” — the kind that requires wealth redistribution. He said:

[W]e contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further – we would not be a great country without those commitments.

By that measure, America was not “a great country” for most of her history. Unemployment insurance did not exist in any state until Wisconsin adopted the program in 1931. FDR made the system national law in the Social Security Act of 1935. Lyndon Baines Johnson created Medicare and Medicaid by signing the Social Security Act of 1965.
That means America has been “a great country” for, at most, 46 years. Coincidentally, this time frame happens to overlap with Barack Obama’s life.
These commitments come with a price tag. In his desperate attempt to hang the national debt on Republicans, he fibbed….
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