Long Knives and Long Noses in Congress

The infamous Night of the Long Knives refers to an internal political purge of the national socialist party in Germany in the summer of 1934, whereby the left wing was attacked and destroyed by the right wing.

We see this scenario played out, in charade and tentatively, this week with the President’s weekly message and the GOP response presented by Virginia’s 6^th District Representative, Bob Goodlatte. On September 3^rd, the President pleaded to an economically shell-shocked nation about a transportation spending bill held up in the Senate. In 2007, when the transportation bill multiyear spending phenom was passed, it was filled with pork. The House sent the extension to which Obama refers over to the Senate back in March, with full Republican support, including a "Yea" vote enthusiastically granted by GOP statist Mr. Goodlatte. The Senate has not acted yet, and time’s a’ wastin’ on this bit o’ fat-packed stimulus.

Hence, Obama’s whine. In all things spending, the GOP and the Democratic Party are public frenemies, wholly devoted to each other to the bitter gallows-on-the-horizon end. Our long knives event in the summer of 2011 was a supercilious attack on the big state "left" by the big state "right," and it ended in preserving the good order of the status quo, as expected.

More spending could be counted on, more borrowing was ensured. Again, Mr. Goodlatte and most of his GOP comrades enthusiastically voted for more, more, more! For the proles, trolls, hobbits and livestock across this country, otherwise known as voters, citizens, and Americans, the debt ceiling increase act was titled, "The Budget Control Act." It budgeted nothing, it controlled nothing, and it insults our intelligence. The political class likes the term "no-brainer." But Mr. Obama, we the people mean that term a little differently than you did in your address Saturday morning.

The Congressional long knife charade of right statist block against the left statist block has resulted in consolidation of the state. A solidification of the clueless and corrupt, a fusion of blind bought-off bureaucrats and the visionary vipers of the federal government who know what is coming, and are getting theirs first. The republic is long gone.

Enter the GOP response. It begins with jobs, and blames the President for spending – when it is indeed the House of Representatives that holds and controls the pursestrings. The GOP response is correct in pointing our that excessive government is burdensome and kills private enterprise. It is correct in noting that government spending (robbing both Peter and Paul) is the most inefficient and counterproductive way to put people to work. But then the GOP response goes all Pinocchio on the people, with the finger-pointing at their hapless socialist co-dependent in the White House.

Partway through the GOP response, the tenor shifts and the GOP nose grows visibly larger. The proposed Balanced Budget Amendment proposal is brought up, out of nowhere. The BBA is toothless, unwise and un-conservative as written, and ultimately unratifiable, and everyone in Washington knows it.

Why the lies? Because the proles and trolls like to hear that "something will be done" about the excessive unsustainable borrowing. This borrowing habit has made serfs of all Americans, helots of our children, slaves of our grandchildren. Yet Congress cannot help itself. A Congress that could not even hold the line from borrowing two more trillion dollars in July, now claims that it can truly, really, honestly this time we will, balance the budget if only they could vote for a law, a toothless one at that, and then if, over the next 6-9 years, three-fourths of the states could accept this amendment to the Constitution – an amendment that would eat into their own degree of federal aid, loans, grants and subsidies while guaranteeing increased taxation on the states’ citizens and tariffs on its exports.

Meanwhile, Congress is happy that they have blamed everyone but themselves for their reckless, impetuous, compulsive spending habits. Same-old, same-old, and when questioned in coming years about the growing and increasingly oppressive debt burden, Congressional Pinocchios will continue to tell the people that it isn’t their fault.

September 7, 2011

LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, blogs occasionally at Liberty and Power and The Beacon. To receive automatic announcements of new articles, click here or join her Facebook page. She is currently running for Congress in Virginia's 6th district.

Copyright © 2011 Karen Kwiatkowski

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