Joe the Plumber is a Metaphor for the American dream

Joe the Plumber is a Metaphor for the American Dream; entrepreneurs will be encouraged and rewarded. As the Populist Era told us, average persons should become capitalists in their own right. Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher’s goal is to work hard and achieve the American Dream.

Senator Obama’s view: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

The response to Joe the plumber is a metaphor for the rise of statism, income redistribution, and high taxation, all in the name of fairness.

Joe’s sin was to bring to the fore, indeed to put a face on, the core tenet of Senator Obama’s campaign - income redistribution that penalizes the achiever, the doer. The state knows better than you how your income, your hard-earned income, your wealth earned by the sweat of your brow, should be spent, and who your wealth, small as it may be, should be distributed to. That is statism, echoing the failed writings of John Kenneth Galbraith and Charles Wright from the 1960’s.

Fairness is really another name for envy, and class warfare.

Joe’s reward is the standard Clinton-Obama trashing the challenger with the help of the mainstream media. 30 journalists and four satellite trucks showed up on Shrewsbury Street in Holland, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo. Neighbors complained about the spotlights switching on at 5:30 in the morning. No such attention was given to Bill Ayres, Reverent Wright, Father Phleger, or Tony Rezko.

We are told that Joe is only his middle name, that he’s not a plumber, that he owes $1182.98 in back taxes to Ohio, and that his ambition is a fantasy. The 34 year old Joe is divorced, has custody of a 13 year old son, and drives a Dodge Durango. They live in a small beige ranch house on a tree lined street.

What difference does any of this make to the central question of the role of the individual versus that of the state?

Many go by their middle name, but Senator Obama does not want his used.

Joe is training to be a plumber, as many pursue similar dreams through education and vocational training.

Let’s talk about the back taxes owed by Congressman Charles Rangel, Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Joe’s is the dream of the entrepreneur, the builder, the creator of wealth. Joe is the American Dream personified, right out of Senator Obama’s own mouth.

Ambition and dreams are fantasies that come true through hard work, the essence of being an entrepreneur. Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, David Packard and William Hewlett, and Bill Gates all started their fantasies in a garage, and look at what they achieved.

Senator Clinton told us in the primaries that the young Barack Obama once wrote a paper in the third grade in Indonesia, in which he said he wanted to become President of the United States. That’s quite a fantasy, and yet he most likely will be our next President. That is the American Dream.

Yes, we have a metaphor and a paradox: The American Dreamer versus the State.

Americans want change, and chump change is what they will get.

It’s time to dust off Atlas Shrugged.