Wisdom of the Ages

Politics and policy as unusual - tested by time and maturity

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Location: Iona, Southwest Florida, United States

I am an unapologetic conservative. My opinions have been formed by decades of observation of human myopia.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

What's wrong with small business.

Despite his sanctimonious preachings about how small businesses generate most new jobs in America, the President seems to be hell bent on making it difficult, if not impossible, for small businesses to succeed. Burdensome tax penalties and unnecessary regulations hobble small businesses.

I have puzzled about why. What is it about small businesses that makes them such an inviting target for the left-wing statists?

I think I know.

I believe history shows us that the state dictators who have enslaved their populations have done so with the willing complicity of big businesses and major industries.

It's a natural. Big business moguls hang with the politicians, regardless of the political bent. The privileges and threats of ever-growing, all-powerful central government are almost irresistible to the power seekers in large corporate bureaucracies. Witness the predominance of contributions to Obama and the Left in recent years. Moreover, with its influence on labor unions, the left conjures up the mirage of an ability to mollify labor problems.

Big businesses also have an expertise in gathering, managing and cowing individuals. Progress in most big business organizations is not dependent on individual thinking but on the ability to travel with the herd, or more likely, the flock, since we are talking about sheeple.

With the pre-existing business organization, they are easy converts for the Community Organizer in Chief. Nothing needs to change but the color of the jersey.

That may explain why so many big businesses ride shotgun for a left-wing driver.

But, does that cancel out the imortance of small businesses? No. But it spreads a giant and dark shadow over them.

History again shows that the rising dictators go after neutering the small businesses first. Perhaps because small businesses are less powerful, less organized and more easily marginalized. Who misses the closed grocer or the auto dealer that loses its franchise or the plumber who is intimidated by the heavy hand of government?

In Germany and Italy during the rise of Nazism and Fascism, small stores and shops, mostly owned by minorities, were the first to be shut down. In the Soviet Union, it was the small farmers who were removed from their lands and forced in large collectives, run by Moscow.

Come to think of it, organizing a community is not much different than bending it to the organizer's will.

We should be watchful and aware of what is happening to small businesses in America. Without reaching a metaphor too far, they are the canaries in our mine.




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