The America First Movement and MAGA started long ago with the Tea Party. America First ideology and its policies were a reaction to the Great Recession. Over and over again each day, all we hear is the word bipartisan like it has some magical meaning. Whatever the origin of that term was, it’s been bastardized and has morphed into some changeable idea of its own. Depending on the person using that term, the meaning of this word has a fluid nature to it, tailored to fit the individual who is using it. Even today Democrats and Republicans have different thoughts on what it means.

I’d like to put forth the concept that bipartisanship is wrongheaded eating away at the pragmatic direction our government should be taking. That concept itself is inherently destructive to the future of America in the twenty-first century. The deadly bipartisanship and this go-along-to-get-a-long concept are found in the roots of the Great Recession. If freedom relies on America and the forces of individualism and free markets, how could one be bipartisan to a socialist ideology in which government has a bigger part to play in people’s lives?

Today’s politicians lack the backbone to stand on principle and fight these pernicious trends towards Progressivism. It’s one thing to be bipartisan and fight out varying ideas in a capitalist society and meet somewhere in the middle of an ocean of compromise. It’s another matter altogether to be bipartisan on Progressive ideas and policies. It is here that bipartisanship becomes wrongheaded. The go along to get-a-along mindset becomes destructive.

Only partisanship itself in its most abrasive and unforgiving form could defend against a juggernaut of evil and self-destructive forces such as Progressivism. We must be partisan when facing leftist ideology. Bipartisanship simply does not apply in this situation. What is needed here is a fight. A battle waged on an ideological scale equivalent to the Civil War. Not a human bloodshed type of war, but a war of ideas and principles fought to the death for the survival of our union. It is our survival as a free nation that we are facing, no less important than the shooting Civil War.

Now detractors and critics will tell you that the freedom of capitalism has failed and that this is proven because when Conservatives and Republicans had their way, it failed and brought us The Great Recession. They said that free markets got us into that mess and that their vindication for bigger government has been realized because of this failure. The thought is when the chips were down, a free market president like Former President George W. Bush ran to socialism and bigger government solutions with the bailouts.

The left argued that this reaction from the former president shows that the freedom of Free Markets doesn’t work and that a more intrusive governmental style is truly the answer. This is their argument. So, where has been the counterargument from the Republican Party? Well, the Republican leaders have been too busy frolicking in the den of inequity of capitulation since the Great Recession. Not one among them has countered a thoughtful retort to this dudgeon.

So let me lay out what I believe is the counterargument and the direction the debate should head. First of all, the thought that it was the free market that got us into the Great Recession and no governmental regulation was the impetus of this, is not only false but also a lie. A lie put out by the same people who overregulated industries such as the banking industry in the first place. Since there has been no counterargument, the lie became a truth. Former Congressman Barney Frank and Former Senator Chris Dodd with other salacious politicians of their ilk forced through regulation. The law forced banks to make risky loans to people who couldn’t possibly pay them back.

That regulation, “Dodd-Frank”, that overregulation, was a spark igniting the wildfire that spread through our economy. In fear of the government and their threats, these banks capitulated and gave out these loans knowing full well what would happen to them if they resisted. That was overregulation not Free market. At the same time, the banks were busy bundling mortgages and selling them as “collateralized mortgage obligations” or CMOs which was a pyramid scheme. When the whole thing finally collapsed, the politicians who took us down this road, the Democratic Party and bipartisan Republicans, were able to reshape the reasons for what happened and at the same time save themselves from prison.

The spectacle of Chris Dodd and Barney Frank being the ones to define what happened and being the ones to fix it, took on the feel of a Machiavellian tone at the time. It drifted so far from reality that one would be hard-pressed to follow the money and the power. Also, the argument that George W. Bush’s reaction to this crisis, by taking over the banks and array of industries, is proof that a bigger government works and is the answer, was and is dead wrong. It is the failure of George W. Bush and his kind of Republicans that gave birth to America First and MAGA.

Just because a so-called Conservative Republican president panicked when hearing the news of the banking crisis and resorted to these socialist solutions, doesn’t mean he was right. Bush couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s not any vindication at all. The silence of the Republicans, because it was one of their own, made this concept take hold. It gave the Democratic Party an excuse to further their socialist fantasies and growing Progressivism. It was the seed that was planted that grew into MAGA.

Once the government has the power to pick and choose what a business can and cannot do, it’s over. The government being the arborator of what company succeeds or fails is a concept that is abhorrent to freedom. Last but not least, when does America, to avoid hardship and pain, run to the government to avoid market cycles? Would it not be better to go into the second Great Depression and crawl our way out of it as a free people, no matter how long it took, than to justify and be enslaved by Socialism and Progressivism? To avoid hardship, are we now willing to surrender our freedom to the government? These are the arguments Republicans should be making while fighting this abhorrent change in our way of life. With the forgiveness of student loans, the attack on the fossil fuel industry, and policies like that our standard of living is lit on fire.

The Republican Party is the only entity out there poised to stop this, yet we hear almost nothing from them while they are trying to get along with bipartisanship. If this vacuum in Republican leadership is not filled and filled fast, our way of life as we knew it is over. All of this gave birth to the Tea Party and then the Populace Movement called America First, it stirred the masses. In the end, take heed knowing that the only ideology to fight our country’s pull to the left is America First, MAGA, and its policies.

C. Rich

CRich@AmericaSpeaksInk.com

C. Rich

C. Rich is the voice behind America Speaks Ink, home to the America First Movement. As an author, poet, freelance ghostwriter, and blogger, C. Rich brings a “baked-in” perspective shaped by growing up on the streets and beaches of South Florida in the 1970s-1980s and brings a quintessential Generation-X point of view.

Rich’s writing journey began in 2008 with coverage of the Casey Anthony trial and has since evolved into a wide-ranging exploration of politics, culture, and the issues that define our times. Follow C. Rich’s writing odyssey here at America Speaks Ink and on Amazon with a four-book series on Donald Trump called “Trump Era: The MAGA Files” and many other books and subjects C. Rich is known to cover.

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