Commenting on President Barack Obama’s lack of grace in dissing his country on the world stage, Steven Forbes says that President Obama should take a day off. Go to Camp David. Watch some old tapes of Ronald Reagan, and learn what it’s like to be a real President.“
Tag Archives: Conservative
Obama Fixin’ the Constitution?
Why are we surprised by the changes? Back in 2001 in a Chicago Public Radion Interview President Obama said the U.S. Constitution “reflected fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”
Liberalism in a Nutshell
What’s wrong with Liberalism in a nutshell thanks to C.S. Lewis and the Anchoress:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” C.S. Lewis
Longer version from Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.’s in The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness.
Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history’s lessons on the evils of collectivism.
What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are “workers,” “minorities,” “the little guy,” “women,” and the “unemployed.” They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims’ plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the “root causes” of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: “Big Business,” “Big Corporations,” “greedy capitalists,” U.S. Imperialists,” “the oppressors,” “the rich,” “the wealthy,” “the powerful” and “the selfish.”
The liberal cure for this endless malaise is a very large authoritarian government that regulates and manages society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking. It is a government everywhere doing everything for everyone. The liberal motto is “In Government We Trust.” To rescue the people from their troubled lives, the agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone’s material welfare, provide for everyone’s healthcare, protect everyone’s self-esteem, correct everyone’s social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions. With liberal intellectuals sharing the glory, the liberal politician is the hero in this melodrama. He takes credit for providing his constituents with whatever they want or need even though he has not produced by his own effort any of the goods, services or status transferred to them but has instead taken them from others by force.”
Obama – What’s His Endgame?
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?
Power Hungry and Out of Balance
Ace of Spades calls it a good piece:
Charles Krauthammer can’t write fast enough to keep up with all the crap he can’t believe is happening. “We are now so deep into government intervention that constitutional objections are summarily swept aside.” Seizing every opportunity to seize, seize, seize power for the government from the people, Geithner “seeks yet broader powers.”
Obama’s goal, writes Krauthammer,
“is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation’s income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax.
Our President seems naive about the goodness and fairness of Big Government. Our founders were not so naive about the weakness of men and statesmen, hence checks and balances. The present disproportionate numbers in the Congress of Republicans to Democrats cripples that system. We are off kilter and in trouble.
While Capitalism needs corrective checks and balances, with a heavy dose of scrutiny, to cure it’s ills, Big Government isn’t the one to take over for the patient. Share holders are more invested and intuitive than this generation of gobbling government bureaucrats. We can’t trust our lawmakers to steer clear of side line profit-making or taking as the scandalous last years have shown. (You know the names.)
President Obama’s medicine is to level field by cutting the growth producers in this nation off at the knees. Good luck Mr. President a crippled America will not fill your coffers for the Big Dole.
Tax Day Tea Party Doings
InstaPundit directs tax day party-goers to google maps via FreedomWorks and more
Tea Party Protests gives you the video low down on the doings.
Be Holy! 