Envy is the language of Socialism.

The Democrat's mid-term strategy is the same as always; pandering to wealth envy, and buying off the middle class. The Obama administration is keen to hike taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans, invoking the perennial "Soak the Rich!" mentality the left has stuck to since FDR.

Of course the rich did get richer under President George W. Bush, but not coincidentally they also paid an ever increasing share of the federal tax burden. The 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts got the economy moving again after 9/11 and by 2007 the top 20% of earners were wealthier than ever... as a result they were paying a staggering 86 percent of all the income tax collected.

If that seems like a giant contradiction to you, you need to read up on the Laffer Curve.

But class warfare is what Democrats are best at; I mean, when they're not dodging taxes on their 76 foot yachts, or busy planning their daughter's $5 million wedding. They don't have the best ideas, or the most competent candidates, so an appeal to man's baser nature is their best bet. They run again and again on the premise that they will use their legislative powers to allow the poor and middle class average "JOE" to openly victimize the wealthy minority. But in doing so, the person they hurt the most is "HENRY".

High earner, not rich yet.

There is an unspoken assumption among those who back the class warriors that if someone inhabits the Upper Class that they have always done so. There is no allowance in their envy for the Nouveau Riche, or the small business man who after years of scraping by just manage to string together two good years. To people like that the poor are poor because the rich made them that way. They simply cannot fathom of a person building wealth upon their own merits. They cannot accept that any one person could be more capable or prudent than another. They cannot accept that they themselves aren't wealthy because they didn't work hard or long or smart enough. They cannot accept that decisions matter, and that maybe they've made a few bad ones along the way.

Their envy is an insult to themselves. If they're poor, they'll remain that way, because they don't trust in their own ability to achieve enough to really try. That's just what the anti-capitalist, anti wealth Obama agenda is counting on.

The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem.

Of course, that seems to be the one thing the Obama administration won’t do.

They’ve got Democratic water carriers from every part of the media waging a war of words against the GOP, trying desperately to shift the blame by resurrecting memes like “failed Bush policies” and “Party of No”. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner smiling his most reassuring smile, insisting the impending tax tsunami is no big deal, and that letting the Bush tax cuts expire won’t affect growth. Joe Biden has spent the summer busily circling the wagons ahead of the mid-terms, selling voters on the idea that their tax dollars haven’t been utterly wasted on stimulus spending.

The American people have long known that Obama’s economic policies were leading the country down the wrong path. Now with the release of Friday’s Mid Session Budget Review we have hard data backing us up.

The report predicts the federal government will borrow $.41 of every dollar it spends, fueling the largest budget deficit in American history; at $1.47 trillion, roughly 10% of the U.S. economy. With just the current spending programs already in place, the deficit will never fall below $698 billion, ultimately leaving a national debt of at least $18.5 trillion by 2020. Of course that’s assuming the economy will grow at a rate of 4% over the next few years, which it hasn’t done since 1997-2000 during the .com boom. Things just get worse from there.

Remember that when President Obama sold the $862 billion stimulus spending plan, it was on the strength of the claim that it would prevent unemployment from rising above 8%. Seeing that unemployment is currently 9.5%, it’s clear the administration was pulling that promise out of thin air. The expiring Bush tax cuts will increase taxes on the majority of small business owners, further weakening private sector job growth. Expect to see unemployment in excess of 8% until at least 2012.

So just what did we get for all of that stimulus money? Bigger government. The Bush/Obama stimulus plans drained funds from the most productive sectors of our economy, and increased federal spending, crowding out investment from private capital markets. The administration has consistently guarded the public sector from the same contraction affecting the rest of the economy, “saving and creating” government jobs, by taking money out of your pocket and mine to give a civil servant a paycheck. Obama’s economic advisers are telling him to go all in, to borrow and spend even more to try to shock this economy back to life. It’s a convoluted Keynesian nightmare threatening to sink any hope of recovery once and for all.

But we can stop it.

All we need to do to get America moving again is to remove the boot of government from the throats of the people, and allow the private sector to breathe again. Firms are flush with cash, and entrepreneurs are waiting with the knowledge to create and sustain growth for years to come. But to get the capital markets moving we’re going to have to send a very clear message that if they start spending money and hiring workers, they’re going to make money.

First, repeal the income tax and abolish the Internal Revenue Service, instituting a flat or fair tax system. Given that a repeal will be a long process, immediate extension of the Bush tax cuts will be necessary.

Second, drastically shrink the size of government by passing a Constitutional amendment mandating a balanced Federal budget, and that the rate of taxation be fixed in accordance with the first proposal. This will force balancing measures to come from spending cuts rather than higher taxes.

That’s it.

We’ll eventually have to deal with the mass of toxic government regulation of the private sector (Dodd-Frank and Obamacare spring immediately to mind), but much of that will come naturally as government is forced to tighten its belt. We must get hold of Congress and let them know these items are absolutely essential to the continued viability of our nation. Contact your representatives and instruct them to take action, or you will by voting them out.

The problem of central economic planning is one of calculation.

In order for an economy to function, a means must first be in place to allocate scarce resources. A free market economy uses price to convey information to individuals about the scarcity or desirability of resources. Then they make a decision about how to get the best use or utility out of available resources, based on their own rational self interest. As a result markets allocate resources very efficiently.

In a socialist system the resources and means of production are owned by the state. This makes trade an internal transfer of resources within the state. Since goods never really change hands, there is no rational means to determine price, so the state sets one. Man has never yet achieved a means of accurately determining human utility through calculation. When coupled with how sensitive complex calculations are to initial conditions, efforts to allocate resources in socialist economies are at best highly inefficient. Even on paper, socialism only appears viable if one removes the problem allocating scarce resources by assuming resources are infinite.

I call this the Star Trek supposition.

In the fictional world of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, the Earth has adopted a one world government, through membership in a vast United Federation of Planets. The Federation utilizes a socialist economy in which the member planets share ownership in the resources of all other members. The calculation problem is eliminated through interplanetary expansion, providing access to practically unlimited resources, and advanced technology which abundantly provides cheap energy. As a result, the inefficiencies inherent to central planning do not render the system in-viable.

But this is the real world, and resources are finite. It is necessary to allocate resources as efficiently as possible, so as not to exhaust our resources before we have the technology to seek reserves elsewhere. Until that time, like Star Trek, socialism's viability will remain a work of fiction.

Libertarians strive to maximize freedom and individual opportunity. We believe that each person owns his or her own property, to include one's life, and has sole discretion about what to do with that property.

Simply put we believe in leaving everyone the hell alone.

It's rare throughout human history that a majority of a people have been willing to stand up for their own liberties. Our own electoral history makes a strong argument that a majority of Americans desire at least as much government as we currently have now. It's as if the only thing people despise more than oppressive big government, is the lack of government protections when they want them.

Don't let this discourage you, the opinion of the majority is no proof of justice. Your rights as an individual are unalienable and you cannot be deprived of them by any majority. The founders wrote checks upon government encroachment into the Constitution to ensure this would always be the case. The political class in America laughs at the "quaintness" of the Constitution, distorting it with each new generation. Someone has to put a stop to their abuses. Are you going to wait, going to let your freedom be whittled away until you can convince a majority of people that maybe being free is a “good idea”?

No, you’re going to take action. Samuel Adams said, it does not take a majority to prevail but an irate and tireless minority. They few can triumph over the many, over the majority. They’ll call you an elitist, an ideologue, and they’ll be right. In our modern Republic it is incumbent upon the Libertarian to trust his own judgment over that of his fellow men. We're not out to restrict people's rights, but to remove the restrictions placed upon them. To stare into the face of the majority and say "At least on this issue, I know better than you do."

Of course, we have to be more diplomatic than that. If we’re going to change the world we have to convince as many of THEM, to become one of US as we can. We have to break the hold of the political class on the masses. That starts with knowing that we're right.

In overhauling and expanding this blog, I recently came to the realization that I've been doing this almost a year. I have been blogging off and on for years, but feel as though I've finally found my niche with The Warning.

I never set out to be a political blogger. Almost exactly a year ago today I was writing a now defunct blog called SendPet.net about the online game World of Warcraft. I was politically aware and even deeply concerned, but wading into the arena to write on the subject was the furthest thing from my mind.

That all changed when I read a great piece by Michelle Malkin on the corruption surrounding ACORN and their connections to the Obama Presidency. I was struck by how angry I was after reading her piece, and how the simplicity of her writing gave the facts that much more weight.

From that day I knew I too would have to speak out. As I wrote in my dedication, I cannot leave it to other people to defend a Constitution that I swore an oath to protect.

I've enjoyed the writing immensely for it's cathartic effect upon me, and my growth as a person. I probably enjoyed writing one piece about hunger in America the most. As someone who grew up conscious of how hard my mother worked to keep her children fed, I felt like I had something helpful to say on the subject. I hope that my writing provides value to my readers, helping people understand subjects more complicated that just what a Libertarian is. I've written posts which weren't very good but had great titles, posts that too few people have read, and some which spurred great discussions with friends.

It's been a good time and as I take things to the next level, I'm looking forward to what the next year will bring.