Six years ago Obama, was embraced by his party for his golden voice, his messianic message. Now Obama is persona non grata among those seeking re-election.
Rejection can have a very potent impact on someone with narcissistic tendencies.Stay tuned!
Then there's 'what difference does it make' Hillary ! (See 1and 1a below.)
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"Tongue in Cheek" ? Sounds like a good idea to me.
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Rev. Wright recently surfaced as the guest speaker at an MLK event sponsored by a Chicago Education Union. Rev. Wright was his usual vitriolic self.
You may recall, some 6 years ago, Obama bragged how he attended Rev Wright's church for twenty years, called him a surrogate father but then Rev. Wright's comments ,about America, made him toxic, ie. "G-- D--- America". Obama dropped him like a hot potato and denied he and his wife had been influenced by the Reverend's inflammatory sermons.
That said, it does seem to me that for the last five years Obama announced and has made every effort to change America because he, like his Rev friend, did not like America, what it stood for and had accomplished. Obama began his presidency by traveling around the world and apologizing for American arrogance.
Now, Obama has been confronted by a tough decision regarding government surveillance, snooping under the guise of protecting the very freedoms Obama has been hell bent on altering if not totally destroying.
Initially, Obama warned he had that famous Presidential pen and would use it but then a few days later he stated he would work with Congress to implement changes.
Is a paranoid America becoming like Russia in its legitimate concern to protect citizens from Islamic terrorism and, if not, how far should any president go in balancing the conflict between protection and freedom? Can we trust and or believe Obama to strike the right balance? You decide! (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
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Today we celebrate the life and accomplishments of Rev. Martin Luther King. Like all men, Dr. King was flawed but America is far better off because he lived and made a vast and lasting impact for undeniable betterment.
Were he alive today I suspect our nation would not be the same.
One of my more memorable memories is attending the dinner Atlanta gave honoring MLK after he received the Nobel Prize. Far too many of Atlanta's Big Mules and Leaders gave their tickets to lesser employees and this is how I was able to attend.
The dinner was held in the ball room of The Dinkler Hotel. Frankly, I do not remember the many laudatory speeches nor do I believe Dr. King said anything particularly memorable.
After his tragic death, I submit, members of his own family did not acquit themselves in a way that brought greatness or enhanced his memory. I am not a conspiratorialist by nature but I will always suspect the circumstances surrounding his death. Was Hoover's FBI, which tracked MLK's every move, involved? How did the crank who killed him obtain the rifle and know exactly where to be and when?
Snowden has blown the cover on government snooping and we are finding zealous bureaucrats, left to their own devices, can be as or more dangerous than the threats they are sworn to pursue.
The greater threat to our Republic is growing distrust of government and our elected officials. I can think of nothing more dangerous. This is why Obama's many lies and duplicitous acts, his appointment of questionable key executives, his abuse of agencies like the IRS and Justice Department are far greater threats to our nation's security because governments more often fall from within than without! USSR,Ukraine is perhaps the latest and Syria may not be far behind.
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1) Obama Can’t Help Dems Keep Senate
President Obama understands the stakes in the midterm elections all too well. If Republicans take back the Senate in November that will give them a stranglehold on both Houses of Congress and ensure that the president will get nothing passed in his final two years in office. If the talk about the president being a lame duck hasn’t already begun, such a result would ensure him being consigned to irrelevance for the remainder of his term. While the GOP missed chances to win seats in the last two election cycles, 2014 offers them a golden opportunity with the Democrats defending 21 seats (including five in states won by Mitt Romney in 2012) to only 14 for their opponents.
But rather than sit back and wait to see if vulnerable red-state Democrats up for reelection can survive, the administration has decided to send in the cavalry. As Politico reports, the White House is consciously seeking to promote initiatives designed to help Democrats win over wavering moderates as well as mobilize the liberal base. But this plan, which reportedly includes more consultations with embattled Democratic incumbents, is a mistake. While the Democrats understand that they must somehow divert attention from problems with ObamaCare and focus voters on their income inequality agenda that polls far better than the president’s disastrously unpopular health-care law, their instincts here run counter to the best interests of some of their candidates. The last thing Democrats in places like North Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota, or Alaska need is an attempt to nationalize an election. If they have any hope of holding onto their majority in the Senate it lies in keeping the president and his agenda out of their states.
The White House is right that even in red states Democrats often prosper by playing the populist card on big business and abuse of the poor. Obama’s proposals for increasing the minimum wage and lengthening unemployment benefits may be economic snake oil, but they poll well everywhere. But the last thing Senators like North Carolina’s Kay Hagan, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, or Arkansas’s Mark Prior need is for Obama or his agenda to become part of this year’s election narrative. To the contrary, their main hope rests on keeping the president out of their states and putting the focus on divisions within the Republican Party.
The only reason Harry Reid is still the Senate Majority Leader is that in 2010 and 2012, Republicans found themselves saddled with poor candidates in crucial races that turned almost certain victories into defeats. Democrats can’t count on the second coming of such godsends as Sharon Angle in Nevada (who let a vulnerable Reid off the hook), the wacky Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, or the unfortunate Todd Akin in Missouri (whose dreadful gaffe about abortion and rape tarnished every Republican in the country). But their goal has to be to keep the public’s attention on conflicts within the GOP and demonizing Tea Party activists who form a crucial part of the conservative base.
As Politico notes, the president is key to fundraising efforts for Democratic Senate candidates but some of those benefitting from his skill in bringing out liberal donors want to keep him at a distance. For instance, Hagan won’t be anywhere near Obama when he campaigns in North Carolina this week for his economic agenda. She understands, as do many other Democrats facing the voters this year, that sympathy for the working class and the poor doesn’t necessarily translate into affection for a president with negative poll ratings. As recent polls show, Hagen has her hands full in a race in which she currently trails every one of her possible Republican opponents.
With the president set to rally his troops behind his effort to revitalize a disastrous second term with a shift to the left, the temptation to try to nationalize the election this year may be irresistible to the White House’s political operation. But without a popular president on the ballot this year and with an off-year turnout likely to see many of his supporters staying home this November, they would be wise to avoid injecting Obama into the already difficult battles Democrats face in red states. Having largely ignored the needs of Democrats in both the House and the Senate during his first five years, the president may think more attention paid to their races will help keep him relevant in 2015 and 2016. But if he is to have any chance of holding onto the Senate, he should stay out of races where he is more of a burden to his party than an asset.
1a)Expanded map boosts GOP confidence
Republicans have a new spring in their step as an expanding electoral map has boosted their chances of recapturing the Senate.
In order to flip the six seats they need to win back control, Republicans now believe they have widened the map to nearly a dozen competitive contests — a marked jump from earlier this year.
The latest good news for the GOP came this past week when former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie announced he would run in Virginia against Sen. Mark Warner (D), a state previously thought to be off the table.
But while Republicans are feeling increasingly optimistic, they are stopping short of bold public predictions, remembering the dashed expectations of recent election cycles in which Tea Party candidates torpedoed their chances.
“After the last couple of cycles, confidence is hard to come by in our caucus, but we’re hopeful,” said a senior GOP senator. “Michigan, Iowa and Virginia are races where the outcome could exceed our expectations.”
Now, Republicans don’t necessarily have to run the table, putting Democrats on defense in more competitive contests with only two of their own — Kentucky and Georgia — to really defend.
“Before we were looking at having to win six out of seven races. Now it’s six out of 10 or 11,” the Republican senator added.
Their silver bullet is familiar — ObamaCare. Hardly a day goes by in the Senate without a Republican taking to the floor to triumphantly bash the Affordable Care Act, which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) warned would turn out to be a colossal policy mistake when it passed in 2010.
“We are optimistic because I think the American people realize the Democrats really have not led. We’ve had five straight years of really bad economics,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who is hoping to take over as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee before he retires in 2018.
“I’m encouraged, I think we have a good chance,” Hatch said of GOP hopes.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who would be poised to become the chairman of the Budget Committee if Republicans win the Senate, feels similarly sanguine.
“I’m more optimistic because I sense there’s a growing frustration with the Democratic Senate and the president’s political maneuverings and lack of candor,” said Sessions.
Republicans have pounced on Obama’s initial promise that under the new law people could keep their healthcare plans if they liked them. The president has apologized to people who have since lost their health insurance. But Republicans say it’s too little too late, and argue that fallacy has put even Democratic-leaning open states in play, such as Michigan and Iowa.
Both Democratic and GOP public polls have shown former Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land with a narrow lead over Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Carl Levin (D). Land raised an impressive $3.7 million through the end of the year.
In Iowa, a December poll by the Des Moines Register showed Obama’s disapproval rating at 61 percent, a record for his presidency. In that state, Republicans are hopeful they can capitalize on that discontent against Rep. Bruce Braley, Democrats’ likely nominee to succeed retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D). But first, they’ll have to wade through a messy primary and possible GOP convention.
Outside groups are already offering a hand in some of the seats once thought off the table. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group funded by the Koch brothers, this month launched a $1.8 million television and radio advertising campaign hitting the Democratic candidates in both Iowa and Michigan for supporting ObamaCare.
“Republicans are well positioned to win the majority in the Senate; we have strong candidates, have expanded the map into purple and blue states, and the national political environment is strongly in our favor,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Sen. Jerry Moran (Kan.).
Democrats argue that they are well-positioned to defend open seats and even take advantage of potential GOP bloodbaths. Justin Barasky, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee touted the recruitment of strong candidates in Montana and West Virginia and their ability to defend seats where Democrats are retiring in deep red states. Also, the party believes divisive GOP primaries in Kentucky and Georgia could help their candidates there.
"Democrats acknowledge the task at hand but we are out-raising, out-organzing and out-campaigning our opponents up and down the map and Republicans are still plagued with numerous Tea Party primaries that are going to render their candidates unelectable," he said.
For Republicans, putting more races up for grabs is still an asset, adding to their earlier ripe target list — open seats in South Dakota, West Virginia and Montana. Add that to strong changes against incumbents in GOP-leaning state: Sens. Mark Pryor (Ark.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Kay Hagan (N.C.) and Mary Landrieu (La.), and Democrats could find themselves even further hamstrung come November.
“The importance of having a bigger map to compete in is that on Election Day you have that many more races on the table,” said Mike McSherry, a former NRSC deputy political director. “You have a better chance of winning. It’s a percentages game.”
Political handicappers agree the battleground map is looking rosier for Republicans, but warn it’s too early to pick a favorite to control the upper chamber next year.
“Yes, I do think it looks better [for Republicans,]” said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor at The Cook Political Report. “Am I at the Senate is a 50-50 proposition? I’m not quite there yet.”
Duffy said she will become more convinced of the Republicans’ chances once their candidates are settled in states such as Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky. Democrats see their best chances of pickups in the seats held by retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and McConnell.
She said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s (D) re-election bid in New Hampshire could become a toss up if former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), who recently moved to the Granite State, jumps in the race.
Four Republicans are polling in double digits in the Georgia primary and McConnell faces a challenger backed by the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Madison Project.
“Iowa could be the biggest train wreck of all if they end up in a convention,” Duffy warned.
If no Republican candidate in the Hawkeye State gets 35 percent in the June primary, a party convention will pick the nominee. Duffy and other experts say there’s a high chance a far-right Tea Party candidate could emerge.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, also cautioned that Republicans should not count the Old Dominion contest in their column just yet.
“I think Virginia gets a lot of hype because it’s so close to Washington and it’s a new swing state,” he said. “I still think Warner’s a pretty solid favorite.”
Even if Democrats hold their seats in Michigan, Iowa and Virginia, the money and resources they spend defending them could help Republicans in more conservative states such as Arkansas and Alaska. If Democrats are forced to spend to defend more solidly blue states, they could shift their resources away from races in red states.
“That takes away from the most competitive races where the Democrats are running uphill and need to win,” said Steven S. Smith, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who specializes in studying the Senate.
1b) Hillary? Really?
By William Kristol
This week’s Time magazine splashes the question on its cover: “Can Anyone Stop Hillary?” The Weekly Standard is happy to provide our friends at Time with an answer to their query: Yes. Hillary Clinton can be stopped. How? Let us count the ways.
The easiest way Hillary can be stopped is if she stops herself. She can choose not to run. Indeed, Time reports “on good authority” that “Hillary Clinton has not decided whether to run for president again.” There is a reasonable chance she’ll decide not to. She’s an intelligent woman. She remembers that her last experience of running for president wasn’t fun and didn’t end well. She knows that winning the Democratic nomination won’t be as easy as the media now pretend and that the general election will be, at best, a 50-50 proposition. Time points out that Hillary is now “able to dominate discussion of 2016 even as she sails above it.” Of course, the moment she announces, Hillary will no longer be “sailing above it.” It will be all downhill from the announcement. Why bother?
Because there’s so much she wants to accomplish as president, and only she can accomplish those things? No. Hillary has no agenda different from that of other generic Democratic candidates, or for that matter from Barack Obama, the man she would succeed. Hillary’s first term would in reality be Obama’s third. She’d be tinkering with his successes and trying to cope with his failures. Becoming president in 2009 after eight years of dastardly Republican rule, with a chance to make things anew, was an exciting prospect for a liberal. Succeeding the modern liberal president after two terms? Hillary may well decide it’s not worth the candle.
There’s also the matter of winning the nomination. Hillary is very likely to be out of step with the Democratic primary electorate in 2016—too close to Wall Street, too establishment, a prominent part of an administration that employed drone strikes and used the NSA in all sorts of dastardly ways. For Democrats in 2016, Hillary Clinton might be too much of a . . . Clinton Democrat. She’ll have a tougher nomination fight than everyone now expects.
And then there’s the general election. The only time since 1952 a party has held the White House for a third successive term was in 1988, when George H. W. Bush won, in effect, Ronald Reagan’s third term. Will the country be in as good shape in 2016 as it was in 1988, ready to vote for a continuation of the same party in office? Will Hillary’s opponent be as hapless as Michael Dukakis? It’s possible.
It’s more likely that Hillary goes down in the general election, a representative of the old order losing to a younger, fresher Republican face. Time claims, “One widespread forecast holds that Clinton is poised for a cakewalk of historic proportions.” One would like to see what analysis that forecast is based on, and whether it’s “widespread” among anyone other than Clinton loyalists.
Wait, wait, wait . . . We’ve forgotten something: Hillary would be the FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT! That might be enough to get her to run and conceivably to get her elected. But Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher hadn’t been first lady before taking power. Hillary will be the second Clinton president. That fact overwhelms her claim to first-ness. As a feminist, Hillary surely knows that when your husband’s been president, you’re not really breaking any glass ceilings on behalf of womankind. And lots of other women understand this as well.
Speaking of Bill, one gathers that he does very much want Hillary to run. It will be a liberating moment for Hillary—and perhaps an inspiring one for other women—when she decides that she doesn’t have to do what her husband wants.
Hillary likely won’t run. If she does, she likely won’t win.
We think.
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2)Another Military Dismissal
Another Military Dismissal
Lt. Col Matthew Dooley, a West Point graduate and highly decorated combat veteran, was an instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College at the National Defense University. He had 19 years of service and experience, and was considered one of the most highly qualified military instructors on Radical Islam & Terrorism. He taught military students about the situations they would encounter, how to react, about Islamic culture, traditions, and explained the mindset of Islamic extremists. Passing down first hand knowledge and experience, and teaching courses that were suggested (and approved) by the Joint Forces Staff College.The course, "Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism", which was suggested and approved by the Joint Forces Staff College, caught the attention of several Islamic Groups, and they wanted to make an example of him. They collectively wrote a letter expressing their outrage, and the Pro-Islamic Obama Administration was all too happy to assist.The letter was passed to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey. Dempsey publicly degraded and reprimanded Dooley, and Dooley received a negative Officer Evaluation Report almost immediately (which he had aced for the past 5 years). He was relieved of teaching duties, and his career has been red-flagged “He had a brilliant career ahead of him. Now, he has been flagged.”Richard Thompson, Thomas More Law Center "All US military Combatant Commands, Services, the National Guard Bureau, and Joint Chiefs are under Dempsey's Muslim Brotherhood-dictated order to ensure that henceforth, no US military course will ever again teach truth about Islam that the jihadist enemy finds offensive, or just too informative."Former CIA agent Claire M. Lopez (about Lt. Col. Dooley)..." The Obama Administration has demonstrated lightning speed to dismiss military brass that does not conform to it's agenda, and not surprisingly, nobody is speaking up for Lt. Col. Dooley.
Col. Dooley has now been added to the 9 generals the Obama administration has summarily dismissed for no other reason than they are great American military citizens."
2a) How to create a social state by Saul Alinsky Saul David Alinsky (January 30,
1909 - June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer. He is
generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing. He is
often noted for his book Rules for Radicals.
There are 8 levels of control that must be obtained before you are able to
create a social state.
create a social state.
The first is the most important.
1) Healthcare - Control healthcare and you control the people
2) Poverty - Increase the Poverty
level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not
fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not
fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
3) Debt - Increase the debt to an
unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will
produce more poverty.
unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will
produce more poverty.
4) Gun Control - Remove the ability
to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a
police state.
to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a
police state.
5) Welfare - Take control of every
aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, andIncome)
aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, andIncome)
6) Education - Take control of what
people read and listen to - take control of what children learn in school.
people read and listen to - take control of what children learn in school.
7) Religion - Remove the belief in
the God from the Government and
schools
the God from the Government and
schools
8) Class Warfare - Divide the people
into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will
be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.
into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will
be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.
2b)The Idol of Equality
To put equality ahead of liberty is to war against human nature.
By Victor Davis Hanson
“There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville
In his famous admonition about the tyranny of the majority, Tocqueville went on to warn that “Liberty is not the chief and constant object of their desires; equality is their idol: they make rapid and sudden efforts to obtain liberty, and if they miss their aim resign themselves to their disappointment; but nothing can satisfy them except equality, and rather than lose it they resolve to perish.”
If we keep Tocqueville’s advice in mind, we can appreciate why and how the present war against personal liberty in service to mandated equality may become the greatest danger of the 21st century. The theaters of battle already extend to every segment of American life; and every weapon is employed, from government coercion to the progressive media to the Orwellian effort to change the meaning of language itself.
Millions of Americans have lost the liberty to select their own type of health insurance, purchased on their own volition to best match their own assessments of their particular needs. Obamacare — the federal government’s redistributive effort to equalize health care for all — sought to destroy the liberty of many millions in order to ensure a state-directed sameness in care for all. Note also how a redistributive plan that spiked costs, reduced care, and so far has taken away more health coverage than it has provided is named the “Affordable Care Act.” Better to call it the the “Unaffordable Uncaring Edict.”
Most initiatives that Obama has embraced are characterized by going after a suspect group or tradition — targeting particular businesses deemed not sufficiently socially sensitive to workers, focusing on legal gun owners, eroding the military tradition in infantry service of restricting women to non-combat roles, coercing schools that would discipline trouble-makers in class, promoting the suppression of interest rates by the Federal Reserve to reward the many who owe money and punish the fewer who saved some — all on the notion of helping the proverbial “people.” Such a thoroughgoing effort at enforcing ideas of fairness covers both the important and the trivial: The government renames terrorism “man-caused disasters”; the fight against it is merely “overseas contingency operations.” The Muslim Brotherhood is “largely secular.” If need be, we can jail an obscure video maker on trumped-up charges of parole violation to serve the larger need not to show bias against anyone.
The universities are probably society’s worst offenders. Under the guise of seeking race, class, and gender equity, they have denied free expression through “speech codes.” They have undermined traditional liberal-arts curricula on the grounds that they were not sufficiently sensitive to these same gender, race, and class issues. And they have placed their institutions — from the selection of graduation speakers, to the hiring and promotion of administrators and faculty, to the criteria for admitting students and the scale on which they are graded — in service not to academic excellence or even civil liberties, but to a perceived equality of result.
The effort to take away freedom, both violent and insidious, in order to ensure equality of result has a sad history, from the degeneration of Athenian democracy in the late fourth century b.c. to the French Revolution to, in the postwar era, the Sovietization of Eastern Europe, the destruction of civil societies in Africa and Latin America, the implosion of the European Union, the current mess in François Hollande’s France, and chaos in American cities like Detroit.
As the ancient poet Hesiod noted, there are two sorts of human jealousies: the positive one of a free society in which citizens are impressed by the singular works of some and thus redouble their efforts to match or exceed them (“She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plow and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbor vies with his neighbor as he hurries after wealth”), and a destructive envy (“foul-mouthed, delighting in evil, with scowling face”) in which the many resent that the few have something they do not, and thus redouble their efforts to either destroy them or take away what they have acquired.
The problem with destroying liberty in service to mandated sameness is obvious, driven by Hesiod’s second, destructive envy: It has never worked, because it is contrary to human nature — both man’s acquisitive habits and the fact that we are not all born into the world equal in every respect. Instead, forced equality erodes personal initiative, undermines the rule of law, ruins the honesty of language, and requires a degree of coercion antithetical to a free society.
Gun-control laws and the use of the bully pulpit and government protocols to prevent law-abiding citizens from obtaining traditional firearms did not curb the murder rate in Chicago or Detroit. It only drove up the price of bullets, created panic buying, and ultimately will result in more, not fewer, guns in the hands of citizens who are now angry that their government slanders them as quasi-criminals.
Inflating the money supply, ending passbook interest as we knew it, and taking on enormous government debt did not lead to a robust recovery after the 2008–2009 recession; rather, it led to a permanent recessionary cycle in which over 90 million Americans are simply not looking for work. Most of them are now dependent on their legislators’ populist efforts to force government to take on more debt for their support.
Universities, after the radical changes in grading, admissions, hiring, administration, and curricula of the 1970s and 1980s, did not graduate superior students, offer more affordable tuition, increase diversity of thought, and guarantee a more competitive curriculum of excellence. Just the opposite occurred: more student debt, less trust in the sanctity of grades, more orthodoxy and restrictive speech codes, a far less instructive curriculum, more oppression of part-time and adjunct instructors in order to subsidize more race, class, and gender overseers, and a general diminution in the value of a college degree.
To ensure that the masses could be protected from perceived climate change, the president went after energy companies — to the degree that he could by restricting new leases of gas and oil on federal lands, and subsidizing companies deemed friends of the people because of their bumper-sticker allegiance to green wind and solar power. Chaos resulted, both through the bankruptcies of subsidized crony capitalist green firms and through less energy produced on federal lands.
Worse still, the elites who lead the war against liberty in favor of progressive notions of mandated equality are themselves usually exempt from the implications of their own ideology — a long American tradition, from FDR to the Kennedys to Al Gore.
Barack Obama brags about the increase in oil and gas production on his watch, as if he thought it a good thing and as if the public won’t notice that such increases came on private lands, and only because they were beyond his reach. Sidwell Friends, for all its liberal patina, would never allow disruptive students in its Advanced Placement classes, or predicate discipline decisions on notions of race — as the Obama administration is currently attempting to force the public schools to do. When California’s transgender law goes into full effect in the public schools, I doubt that the wealthy will wish to follow suit in their private academies and thus put their eight-year-old daughters in facilities shared with 14-year-old boys who deem themselves gender-ambiguous.
When Barack Obama swears that inequality is the greatest threat to American life, we do not expect him to yank his girls out Sidwell Friends to share the D.C. public-educational experience. We do not expect him in gestures of solidarity to cease playing at exclusive golf courses with crony capitalists, any more than we expect him to refuse huge campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs, or to pass on hiring revolving-door capitalists like Jack Lew or Peter Orszag. We do not assume he will decry the wildly disparate salaries in the NBA and NFL, much less sermonize to his Malibu supporters that their gardeners and nannies need union protection.
Obamacare is as likely to exempt favorite companies and unions as it is determined to cancel plans of those without influence. The pattern of the French Revolution’s grandees, the Soviet nomenklatura, and the EU elite has always been to force equality down the throats of free people while enjoying quite unequal lifestyles. Al Gore, after all, did not refuse to sell his near-bankrupt company to a fossil-fuel-producing Gulf sheikhdom on the grounds that its old energy was bad for the people. Instead he desperately sought to unload the money-losing concern guided by principles that were elite to the core: rush the sale through before higher capital-gains tax rates kicked in; ignore the illiberal traditions of Sunni authoritarian monarchies; worry not about the anti-American propaganda of Al Jazeera in reporting on American soldiers at war; and postpone talk of a post-petroleum world until the sale had cleared escrow and the petrodollars were safely in the Gore account.
Finally, the war to subordinate liberty is contrary to the idea of human freedom and thus always demands ever more coercion. The longer Obama remains well below a 50 percent approval rating, the more we will witness mandates by executive fiat, the selective enforcement of settled law, and controversial appointees selected on the basis of progressive ideology rather than proven competence and administrative expertise.
Historically the reaction to state-mandated equality is usually either flight — from the Soviet Union and the captive nations of Eastern Europe, from present-day France, from Detroit, from California — or a sort of psychological cocooning, in which citizens fearful that they are in the crosshairs of progressive government drop out, keep quiet, and hope their success can survive the taxman, the regulator, the popular press, and the fury of the mob.
The irony is that free people usually create far more wealth than the coerced, which makes the lower echelons better off, a fact that reminds “equality” is usually about empowering progressive elites rather than materially helping the poor. Moreover, in a free society, there are all sorts of forces — religion, constantly improving and ever cheaper technology, family pressures, honor, shame, philanthropy — that redistribute wealth either naturally or through the consent of the giver, and far more effectively than creating a huge government equalocracy that seeks power to bully others and exempt itself.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals.
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