The Patriot Post® · Final Debate: Not 'Left or Right,' but 'Up or Down'

As decision 2016 draws to a close, we witnessed the final debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. This debate focused on some of the key issues facing Americans: the economy, gun rights, abortion, the Supreme Court and immigration. This article critiques Hillary’s plans and highlights her ideas to increase government control of the economy, her views on gun control, her overwhelming support of abortion and her plans for immigration. As a nation, we are at a crossroads: Do we choose her path of a government-controlled economy, reduced rights to protect ourselves with firearms, radical pro-abortion judges, and minimized security on our borders? Or do we choose another path?

In reference to the economy, Hillary spoke of one that “works for everyone.” However, the current, American free-market system can work for everyone. What doesn’t work for everyone is the regulations and the bureaucratic red tape that overtaxes small businesses, forces our business and investments off-shore and which can render the system “ineffective.”

It is also particularly alarming that over the debates she has mentioned how she would appoint a “small business prosecutor” to enforce her government-run small business program and, during the last debate, a “trade prosecutor.” What does that mean? What she means is adding excess bureaucracy and “creating” jobs that make everyone else’s real jobs more difficult or so burdensome that they become obsolete. It also means that there will likely be more government intrusion into small businesses. Creating more government-controlled businesses and more “prosecutors” is not only the primary way to induce a sluggish economy, but it does not solve the “unfair” problems with our economy. Rather, it increases them exponentially. Just ask anyone from a post-Soviet country how this has actually worked in real time.

On the Second Amendment, Hillary spoke about her lack of support for the Heller case that, according to her, had to do with gun safety “for toddlers.” The Heller decision, however, had nothing to do with toddlers. The Federalist notes that the word “toddler” is not even present in the majority opinion, dissenting opinion, or the 110-page transcript of the oral arguments. This case involved personal safety and the rights of Americans to protect themselves. Which leads us to the broader question of why we have the Second Amendment in the first place. Our Founders realized that the right to keep and bear arms both protected us from intruders and hedged against government overreach. Strict gun laws have less to do with safety and more to do with control. He who has the guns has the control. If the government is the only entity with a firearm or weapon, guess who’s in charge? They are.

In addition, strict gun laws increase crime ratings, for every place that has strict gun laws has more crime. Case in point, as mentioned by Trump in the debate: Chicago.

Yet even if the case involved toddlers, it should be noted that more children die from swimming pool drownings than from accidental gun fire. To my knowledge, Hillary has not been on the front lines of swimming pool safety reform.

Further, if Hillary truly concerned herself about the health and safety of toddlers, and if she really acted as the Vanguard of Women and Children, like she touts herself to be, wouldn’t she be against partial-birth abortion? When Trump described this procedure as “ripping the baby out” of a mother’s womb in the ninth month, Hillary called this “scare rhetoric.” Actually, he didn’t even talk about the most barbaric part of the process that includes pulling out the baby’s legs with forceps, crushing the skull, and the doctor knowing that it was “successful” when the brain fluid flows out. This is not “scare rhetoric.” This is the truth. She seems to be the only one cloaking it.

For all she says about the evil corporatism of Wall Street, she fails to address the billion-dollar, government-subsidized corporate leviathan called the abortion industry, which gleans its profits from vulnerable women. She says she will appoint justices who uphold Roe v. Wade, the infamous court decision ensuring the “rights” of the abortion industry to continue exploiting women.

On immigration, Hillary’s plan to “not separate families” and provide amnesty with a full path to citizenship cloaks her blind-eye to criminals and drug traffickers who come across our borders and endanger the safety of our citizens.

If we put the personalities aside, the choice is clear:

1.) More government regulations, higher taxes, government control of firearms, radical abortion, and a willful blind-eye and misleading of the American people in terms of our safety and security in reference to immigration, or;

2.) Support of the free-market system, lower taxes, pro-life judges, protection of our right to defend our families with a firearm, and a plan to fix our borders and solve the drug trafficking problem.

The words spoken by Ronald Reagan in his “Time for Choosing” speech could not be more appropriate:

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.

Hillary’s plan is one of economic enslavement and government control while Trump’s is for freedom, safety and economic opportunity. This is why I am supporting him in November.

Remember that, as a nation, we too have a time for choosing. May we choose well.