Lou Dobbs Wants You to Lose

by Angelo Mike 

Exclusive to STR

November 13, 2006

Lou Dobbs’ latest column has managed to do it again--to turn every political issue into one in which the middle class’ entire future is at stake; one in which they succeed at the expense of everyone else. I wonder how he would feel if he knew just how much damage he is doing to the very middle class he’s so enamored with.  

He’s grateful for “an awakening of the power of the people,” and is hopes that, just maybe, the middle class will no longer be taken for granted by politicians.  

(How peculiar is it that the same people who the laws don’t trust to decide where their Social Security money goes, whether they can get a job below the minimum wage rate, what drugs they can take, what doctors they may patronize, etc. are the ones Dobbs wants to decide who has the powers vested in the monopolist government.)  

That is, people voted. However, while Dobbs is praising democracy now, he wasn’t just last week, when he complained how the government is beholden to two monolithic parties. Nor the week before, or the week before, and on back, probably until the last presidential election.  

But if Dobbs thinks that a move towards the sovereignty of the individual over himself is good, why should we be beholden to the government’s dictates when the government chooses who can vote, how often we can vote, and what candidates we can vote for? Huh, Mr. Dobbs? You’re busily complaining, week after week in your columns and daily on your television show, how we’re stuck with two parties that don’t care, but you never stop to consider that we have a natural right to choose to influence the government anymore than how and when the government allows us to.  

(Just last week, however, Dobbs was complaining about how, despite whatever the outcome of the election is, it really won’t matter for the middle class, who will be screwed, anyways.)  

But never mind. Dobbs this week praises more influence we have on politics, saying, “…the American electorate is far more discerning and independent-minded than either political party or our elites would like to believe.”  

So why the disconnect with reality? Dobbs claims to be so glad when people get rid of some politicians and replace them with new ones, but why does he support this only when the government chooses to have elections every few years? Would you not like it if people who, tired of being told by “…a Republican-led administration and Congress that for six years has been telling working men and women and their families in this country to shut up, listen up and go to hell,” get to choose even more often whether to uphold their rulers or not?  

If influence on politics is good, why not let people choose with their money and patronage the way they do the businesses they like, ceaselessly being able to dictate to the authorities what their will is? Why not recognize their natural right to secede, and refuse to pay taxes to a system that you admit has been screwing people for so long because they recognize that democracy is enabling them?  

How about our right to disobey unjust laws? At my last job, I was making a meager $1,200 a month while working full time. By the time my check got to the bank, I was shaken down for about 17% in withholding taxes (that’s aside from what my employer had to pay). May we refuse to pay taxes, and exercise ceaseless control over how much the government may be funded, since they are such power hungry scoundrels?  

Dobbs would be hard pressed to even care about the questions of such a radical. It’s clear what Dobbs wants. He wants us to be under the thumb of the government he says is screwing us over. I’m sure that he wouldn’t be so delusional as to view a corporation as having the unilateral and ultimate right to decide for us, whether we want to give them our money or not, what regulations and laws we have to obey, as handed down by Enron or Microsoft.  

But that’s what state power does. It blurs sovereignty, makes its dupes in people like Dobbs, whom the state is dependent upon to garner support and legitimacy, despite the fact that it is run by human beings with the same natural rights as any one of us.  

A mafia could charge people for protection, whether they wanted its services or not, create unions, their own laws and regulations, and it would be called an illegal racket, and rightly so. Yet Mr. Dobbs supports the government’s racket as entirely legitimate and one in which we should occasionally influence.  

Then there’s the specifics that Dobbs endorses. He praises mob rule in Arizona , which has approved of an initiative to make English the official state language. He praises it in the six states in which the mob managed to vote to point the government’s guns on business to raise the minimum wage, further outlawing jobs for those marginal workers who need to compete with lower wages. Now, there’s just more of them who won’t compete at all.  

The mob in California refused to give a majority of approval to the state to point its guns at oil companies in order to steal $4 billion to fund alternative energy programs. But for Mr. Dobbs, all is not lost, since, despite such a regulation being just, the politics of it were just too “weak-kneed.” So even when something is just in Dobbs’ view, it’s OK when it isn’t acted upon as long as it’s not politically strong. How Machiavellian. Hopefully, next time, will should make right.  

Week after week, Dobbs helps the government’s ideological foundation, in which it may rule innocent people against their wishes. He consistently makes the work of government easier, wants us to have no legal recourse against it, and yet expects the government to finally make decisions which are good for us.  

If the government’s interests are so opposed to those of our own, Mr. Dobbs, why don’t you support letting us withdrawing from it and even forming our own?