A.J. DiCintio
Obama's dream wrong, all, all wrong
By A.J. DiCintio
Biff: He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong.
Charley: He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine... A salesman's got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman.
Yes, like everyone else, a salesman's got to dream. But few will accept his dream simply because he couches it wearing a smile and sporting a shoeshine. Instead, as they do in all cases, the great majority will evaluate it through the hard eyes of reality and their principles.
Those thoughts come to mind because this past week a politician who is a master of employing vague, vacuous language to express his dream for the nation foolishly strayed from the reach of the trusty ventriloquist that is his teleprompter to get down, dirty, and very specific in lecturing every woman, man, and child in this country that "if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own."
In fact, President Barack Obama got down so dirty in his hectoring of "successful Americans" that, rapturously caught up in his pompous expression of a politically expedient half truth, he repeated "You didn't get there on your own" before blustering an illustration whose intellectual content is as infantile as its style:
"I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires."
Though it's tempting to say something about Obama's torrid love affair with the term "organize," it is important to get right to the fact that this ostensibly brilliant, transformative president discusses the notion of success in one embarrassingly simple dimension, his mindless thoughts fixated on images of "roads and bridges" and even the Internet, created, ultimately, not by the sweat and genius of individuals but "government research."
It's enough to make us think that whatever smatterings of ink might be laid before the man, he'd reply he sees something governmental.
And not, for example, a strictly constitutional executive, but an imperial Oval Office in which the president routinely rules by autocratic decrees euphemistically described as "executive orders."
Nor a cautious, frugal Congress, but an ironically "progressive" body that regards mountainous piles of reeking pork and suffocating debt as ingredients essential to conjuring up the nation's elixir of life.
Nor a forbearing judiciary devoted to the principle of federalism but one populated by "empathic" liberal activist judges whose job, as Justice Stephen Breyer has asserted, is to decide everything.
Nor a humble federal bureaucracy but one raging with power maddened zealots for whom doing the people's work means threatening a citizen with draconian fines for daring to build a home on land, a tiny portion of which is flooded an inch deep one day a year.
Nor politicians dedicated to the principles of the Constitution, the Declaration, and common sense traditions established over centuries but those of the ilk of Nancy "The Nanny" Pelosi or Michael "The Manny" Bloomberg who begin with federalizing healthcare and banning sodium, sucrose, and soda on their way to regulating or prohibiting . . . everything.
No wonder, then, that when Barack Obama discusses success, his vision is all about government with not a mention of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, individualism, personal responsibility, the development of God-given talents, American initiative, Einsteinian inspiration, Edisonian perspiration, and (because he claims the subject lies a trillion years beyond his pay grade) the power of faith.
Making matters infinitely worse, however, is that the discredited collectivism beloved by left-wingers keeps them from getting even half their story straight.
That is exactly the case with respect to this president, who, like Marx, is dogmatically fixed on external realities regarding achievement and success without bringing a passionate honesty to the most important one of all: the loving, caring, nurturing institution that is the family, the fundamental unit of human society.
That failure represents an error so egregious it threatens to boggle our minds, until we realize just how all-encompassing is a leftist's devotion to the ugly, statist elitism that mocks Jefferson and Thoreau as it pronounces, "That government is best which governs most."
It comes to us, too, that in addition to ideological rigidity, crass political expediency motivates Obama to keep silent about the crucial importance of family to success of all kinds.
Specifically, the card-carrying member of the Chicago Political Machine meticulously avoids the topic because he fears saying anything that might cause the public to focus on how liberalism's family-destroying policies represent the fundamental reason for the transformation of the former "Shoveling/Wrecking/Planning/ Building. . . City of the Big Shoulders" into a bloody hell where success means that only one or two children are murdered in a given week.
We should, however, be happy that in making his preposterous pronouncement, Barack Obama revealed the following to every American willing to keep ears, eyes, and mind wide open:
The hugely larger, dangerously more intrusive, madly more costly federal government he has larded into being by borrowing an astounding $5.2 trillion in three and a half years represents only a down payment toward achieving his dream of transforming America from a nation of We the People to one of We the Liberal Politicians, Judges, and Bureaucrats.
In pursuit of that transformation, he continues the tactic of speaking vague, vacuous words delivered with a smile and a shoeshine, a stratagem carefully devised to keep us from hearing the frightful but truthful voice of History, warning that his dream is false and unspeakably dangerous and therefore wrong, all, all wrong.
© A.J. DiCintio
July 22, 2012
Biff: He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong.
Charley: He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine... A salesman's got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman.
Yes, like everyone else, a salesman's got to dream. But few will accept his dream simply because he couches it wearing a smile and sporting a shoeshine. Instead, as they do in all cases, the great majority will evaluate it through the hard eyes of reality and their principles.
Those thoughts come to mind because this past week a politician who is a master of employing vague, vacuous language to express his dream for the nation foolishly strayed from the reach of the trusty ventriloquist that is his teleprompter to get down, dirty, and very specific in lecturing every woman, man, and child in this country that "if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own."
In fact, President Barack Obama got down so dirty in his hectoring of "successful Americans" that, rapturously caught up in his pompous expression of a politically expedient half truth, he repeated "You didn't get there on your own" before blustering an illustration whose intellectual content is as infantile as its style:
"I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires."
Though it's tempting to say something about Obama's torrid love affair with the term "organize," it is important to get right to the fact that this ostensibly brilliant, transformative president discusses the notion of success in one embarrassingly simple dimension, his mindless thoughts fixated on images of "roads and bridges" and even the Internet, created, ultimately, not by the sweat and genius of individuals but "government research."
It's enough to make us think that whatever smatterings of ink might be laid before the man, he'd reply he sees something governmental.
And not, for example, a strictly constitutional executive, but an imperial Oval Office in which the president routinely rules by autocratic decrees euphemistically described as "executive orders."
Nor a cautious, frugal Congress, but an ironically "progressive" body that regards mountainous piles of reeking pork and suffocating debt as ingredients essential to conjuring up the nation's elixir of life.
Nor a forbearing judiciary devoted to the principle of federalism but one populated by "empathic" liberal activist judges whose job, as Justice Stephen Breyer has asserted, is to decide everything.
Nor a humble federal bureaucracy but one raging with power maddened zealots for whom doing the people's work means threatening a citizen with draconian fines for daring to build a home on land, a tiny portion of which is flooded an inch deep one day a year.
Nor politicians dedicated to the principles of the Constitution, the Declaration, and common sense traditions established over centuries but those of the ilk of Nancy "The Nanny" Pelosi or Michael "The Manny" Bloomberg who begin with federalizing healthcare and banning sodium, sucrose, and soda on their way to regulating or prohibiting . . . everything.
No wonder, then, that when Barack Obama discusses success, his vision is all about government with not a mention of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, individualism, personal responsibility, the development of God-given talents, American initiative, Einsteinian inspiration, Edisonian perspiration, and (because he claims the subject lies a trillion years beyond his pay grade) the power of faith.
Making matters infinitely worse, however, is that the discredited collectivism beloved by left-wingers keeps them from getting even half their story straight.
That is exactly the case with respect to this president, who, like Marx, is dogmatically fixed on external realities regarding achievement and success without bringing a passionate honesty to the most important one of all: the loving, caring, nurturing institution that is the family, the fundamental unit of human society.
That failure represents an error so egregious it threatens to boggle our minds, until we realize just how all-encompassing is a leftist's devotion to the ugly, statist elitism that mocks Jefferson and Thoreau as it pronounces, "That government is best which governs most."
It comes to us, too, that in addition to ideological rigidity, crass political expediency motivates Obama to keep silent about the crucial importance of family to success of all kinds.
Specifically, the card-carrying member of the Chicago Political Machine meticulously avoids the topic because he fears saying anything that might cause the public to focus on how liberalism's family-destroying policies represent the fundamental reason for the transformation of the former "Shoveling/Wrecking/Planning/ Building. . . City of the Big Shoulders" into a bloody hell where success means that only one or two children are murdered in a given week.
We should, however, be happy that in making his preposterous pronouncement, Barack Obama revealed the following to every American willing to keep ears, eyes, and mind wide open:
The hugely larger, dangerously more intrusive, madly more costly federal government he has larded into being by borrowing an astounding $5.2 trillion in three and a half years represents only a down payment toward achieving his dream of transforming America from a nation of We the People to one of We the Liberal Politicians, Judges, and Bureaucrats.
In pursuit of that transformation, he continues the tactic of speaking vague, vacuous words delivered with a smile and a shoeshine, a stratagem carefully devised to keep us from hearing the frightful but truthful voice of History, warning that his dream is false and unspeakably dangerous and therefore wrong, all, all wrong.
© A.J. DiCintio
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