Charles Krauthammer thinks President Obama’s endgame is “Leveling“:
Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission.
Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism. (Asked by Charlie Gibson during a campaign debate about his support for raising capital gains taxes — even if they caused a net revenue loss to the government — Obama stuck to the tax hike “for purposes of fairness.”) The elements are highly progressive taxation, federalized health care and higher education, and revenue-producing energy controls. But first he must deal with the sideshows. They could sink the economy and poison his public support before he gets to enact his real agenda.
The “side shows” are the credit crisis, which , and the collapse of the U.S. automakers. Tim Geithner now wears the credit crisis as an albatross around his neck while Obama may come to rue his despotic intervention into the car business. Krauthammer doubts that this intrusion will leave lasting effects on our nation saying only, “Some find in this “descent into large-scale industrial policy a whiff of 1930s-style fascist corporatism.”
Obama’s real agenda is another matter in Krauthammers view:
Bizarre and constitutionally suspect as these interventions may be, the transformation of the American system will come from elsewhere. The credit crisis will pass and the auto overcapacity will sort itself out one way or the other. The reordering of the American system will come not from these temporary interventions, into which Obama has reluctantly waded. It will come from Obama’s real agenda: his holy trinity of health care, education and energy. Out of these will come a radical extension of the welfare state; social and economic leveling in the name of fairness; and a massive increase in the size, scope and reach of government.
I mention Charles Krauthammer’s observation because I find it very troubling that as busy as constitutional scholars were during the Bill Clinton impeachment days, we hear little from them now. History should have taught us what times of national crisis especially collapse have wrought in a nation which has been otherwise civilized. For example, Richard J Evans who wrote of Hitler’s endgame in his just released The Third Reich at War states that in of a previous book of his trilogy, The Coming of the Third Reich :
“I’m trying to be comprehensive, to show Nazi Germany and Nazi society at war in every aspect. In addition to the much better known military aspects, I try to deal with culture, literature, the arts. And I have human experiences — diaries, letters, personal testimonies.
In “The Coming of the Third Reich,” I try to say that it was not inevitable while pointing out that the Weimar Republic did, in fact, bring Nazism. The crucial point to remember is that in the 1928 elections, Nazis scored less than 3% of the national vote. By 1932 they were by far the largest party, with one third of the vote. So it’s the Depression. More than one third of the work force is unemployed by the middle of 1932. Businesses have crashed; banks have bankruptcies; people are disoriented by terrible inflation. It’s a desperate situation. And in that situation, the sense of activism, dynamism, youth, vigor, and radicalism that Hitler and the Nazis conveyed, tapping into nationalist resentment about the Treaty of Versailles with vague but vehement promises to restore Germany to its greatness…. All that had an irresistible appeal.
In “Can it happen here” (read the comments too!) Bookworm writes:
“…it’s worth noting that, when Hitler came to power in 1933, he did so with just barely more than 50% of the popular vote. There was never a time when the majority of Germans were members of the Nazi party. For most Germans, right through the end of the War, their crime wasn’t active complicity with Nazi atrocities, it was passive complicity. From a mixture of fear and brain washing, they just went along.
The Anchoress writing of lost freedom and persecution, wonders how much American will tolerate before realizing that freedom “is lost in increments and inches.”
As the magic that unleashed a relatively unknown Barack Hussein Obama onto the political scene and now world scene, do we really know what we have unleashed. Changes has come so quickly and gone unchallenged by any in a position to slow them down or investigate them such as our Congress who should be the voice of balance for the Nation. As I asked before where are the voices of our constitutional gurus? For that matter, where is our Congress and its role of checks and balances. What will the out to lunch Congress cost us?
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