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| President Obama: The State of the Union is…Hey! Get Back in Line, You! Posted: 28 Jan 2012 11:55 AM PST
Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. (Applause.) Think about the America within our reach: A country that leads the world in educating its people. An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs. A future where we're in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren't so tied to unstable parts of the world. An economy built to last, where hard work pays off, and responsibility is rewarded. So, the President wants a nation where we act just like the military — everyone working together, with no personal ambitions, not disagreements of opinion, and nothing but a laser-like focus on the mission given to them by someone above them. Hmm…now what does that sound like to me? Nope, I can’t quite place it; it’s escaped me completely. I want to be clear (to borrow a Presidential phrase he’s used so often you can hear the frayed edges of the words). I don’t think Barack Obama is a fascist, even while he preaches the fascist ideals. Honestly, I don’t think he’s tough or energetic enough to make a good fascist. Fascist leaders get their hands dirty. They don’t outsource the dirty work to advisers, cabinet officials, and countless nameless bureaucrats. They give orders, to be sure, but they give orders, not vague suggestions wrapped in gauzy, deceptive platitudes that would get bounced out of a motivational poster caption contest. Take this alleged applause line, for example:
What doggerel. America isn’t great because our Founders built a great team. Heck, South Carolina was populated by those destined for debtor’s prison. Pennsylvania was founded by Quakers, not exactly known for their ability to fight in a pinch (and colonial America faced quite a few such pinches). The entire Civil War was a bloody four-year exercise in not getting each other’s backs, unless by “getting” you mean “shooting with a rifle”. American history is stuffed full of examples of how we didn’t work as a team, how individuals built great things for their own benefit and on their own volition. Take the Empire State Building, financed largely by a man named John Raskob an built, literally, as a giant “take that!” to Raskob’s business rival Walter Chrysler. See, Chrysler had begun building the largest building in the world and Raskob wanted to beat him. So, he built the Empire State Building. That was not a case of two men who “built it together” nor or people who “worked as a team”. Two great men decided they wanted to do something grand and so they did, without care for the national “mission” or getting “each other’s backs”. That is the story of America, not the pale smear of rainbows and united unicorns wafted by our Motivator-in-Chief. Here is the other thing. Our soldiers work together, but they do not pursue happiness together. They do a job, like we all do jobs. They go to work, put in the hours they need to put in, then they go home where they pursue the rest of their lives. To be sure, their jobs is incredibly dangerous and important, but in the end, a soldier is someone who draws a paycheck just like a mechanic, exterminator, or community organizer. Well, okay, maybe that last one’s not such a great example because community organizers don’t really draw paychecks so much as they siphon a bit off the top of whatever money they’ve managed to shake free from their targets. Still, the analogy works. What Barack Obama wants is an America where we spend all our time working toward the national “mission”. We will work for the greater good and accept what the President and Congress believe is “fair” for us to have. We will raise our families in accordance with the wishes of the government bureaucracy and our children will eat from Washington-approved menus. We will enjoy only as much freedom as doesn’t conflict with the “mission” as dictated by President Barack Obama. At least, that’s his daydream. I think it’s silly and if any normal person had told his friends he had a dream like that, they would have laughed at him and maybe smacked him in the back of the head. Of course, Barack Obama isn’t a normal person. He’s the Obamessiah, the Light Bringer, the man who lowered the seas and began a planet-wide time of healing, and the Causer of Leg Tingles. So he gets to pour out his bland treacly fantasies on the nation while the MSM coo and flirt back and tell us how wonderful America would be if we’d only shut up for a while and do what the nice President tells us to do. That is what makes me so very uneasy — the notion that the President, who claims to be a Constitutional scholar, can read that great document (and the Declaration of Independence!) and think “You know, that’s all about teamwork and mission”. And the solders President Obama used as the exemplars of his Dream America? Well, a whole bunch of them will be out of work very shortly and those who will get to keep their jobs will pay more for their government-run health insurance. So much for teamwork, huh?  |
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For 
By now, you know from listening to the show that I can get a little bit excitable, and that oftentimes that excitability comes out against those who would be my political allies. That happened again in 
and 
. I finished both of them in about a month, then spent a few days really thinking about what I had read. Then I got angry. See, what really happened to bring about both crises boiled down to basic, garden-variety greed and not some sinister government plot to advance socialism or Wall Street plan to screw the little guy. Just greed.