Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Election Day - The Central Issue


November 2
– The central issue on this Election Day is: the collective wisdom of the American people spread across this nation versus the knowledge of self-professed experts concentrated in academia , the federal government, and media inner-circles.

In The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004, James Surowiecki, explained that crowds, aggregations of masses of people, usually make better decisions that those made by small groups or people or individuals.

In this election, the American people are saying too much government, dominated by the few, damages the private sector through higher taxes, limits choices and raises costs of health care, deters businesses from expanding, interferes with job creation by small businesses, discourages investors from taking risks, retards entrepreneurial initiatives, and holds back consumers from buying.

Collectively, people are saying we are not stupid. We are not scared. We are not confused. We are angry we have been ignored, disregarded, dismissed, maligned, and not consulted about changing the direction of the country. We want practical results, not lofty rhetoric or condescending lecturing,

Government, they seem to be saying, does not know best. We do.

Moreover, we can no longer tolerate uncertainties accompanying the rapid shift to the left of government, its lack of tangible results, its invasion of our privacy, and its rapid increase in national and personal debts.

The great unwashed middle masses are asserting themselves by declaring: let us govern ourselves. Let us decide what is good for us, rather than elite groups huddled together in remote locations.

We don’t trust the Big Brother inclination of Democrats or the Big Business leanings of Republicans.

We trust ourselves, our belief in America as a unique nation, our pride in individual enterprise, our ability to mobilize from the bottom-up, our power to decide for ourselves.

In America, the majority, those in the center, should rule. We, the middle class in the center of the political spectrum, are intelligent. We know what is taking place on the ground from their collective experiences. We are not confused or frightend. We are not ignorant. We have not been misled, We are not ill-informed, or racist, or extremist.

We have a collective repugnance about being looked down upon.

That is why we fled Europe over 200 years ago, and that is why we still flock to America today, for here is where people are free to make their own decisions, to pursue their own life style, their own happiness, their own opportunities based on individual merits and hard work, rather than government hand-offs, rules, regulations, and redistribution of rewards and benefits.

2 comments:

Michael Kirsch, M.D. said...

Of course, the economy was the main cause of the disastrous Democratic defeat, but Obamacare provided a strong tailwind.

Richard L. Reece, MD said...

Well put, and the tailwind will pick up speed in the next two years as Republicans hold hearings on Obamacare.