Posted on 10/09/2012 8:18:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
While Obama remains a great curiosity outside of the U.S., it’s largely his American-ness that draws the crowds, rather than some innate ability of his own.
A man comes from low beginnings and ascends to the White House.
That tale quintessentially remains the American strive-and-succeed story since Washington was first born poor and lowly in a kind-of log cabin.
While Washington is represented as a rich, privileged, white guy, the success Washington enjoyed and the wealth he built -- yes, built -- he earned by working hard on the dangerous and brutal, American frontier, going places often were few men traveled.
Obama was not quite born in a log cabin, but a straw hut or a condo in Hawaii will do as well.
The Obama story also is another measurement of how far a free society-- through its own efforts-- can go toward healing centuries-old wrongs, without resorting to interminable blood-lettings that still feature so large in ethnic conflicts around the world.
That is not to say that ethic blood wasn’t spilled in America as atonement for much sin, but at least we learn.
In this, Obama is also a measure of the eagerness with which Americans are anxious to redress old wrongs.
But there are two things that Obama’s story certainly are not.
And it is here that tale differs from the Washington story: It’s not a measure of the capacity of Barack Hussein Obama, nor yet his devotion to liberty.
First, forget Jimmy Carter as the mean of failure for Democrat presidents.
You’d have to hearken back to James Buchanan to graph the order of magnitude of the disaster Obama has left, not just for the United States, but for the world.
Buchanan, like Obama, was more interested in theoretical freedom than he was in freedom that might apply to any actual, living persons.
Buchanan’s presidency, it will be recalled, helped lead America to its great civil war, as Mr. Lincoln said, testing whether our nation, or any nation, conceived in liberty, can long endure.
Today we are still met on a battlefield of that war.
The Obama presidency is testing new concepts of “liberty.” There’s a new type of freedom, Democrats promise, but really, it is just slavery in disguise.
If Obama’s presidency has one unifying theme, it’s that freedom is represented as slavery and slavery is represented as freedom.
Slavery now comes with a free cell phone and texting. What’s more freedom-loving than a free cell phone with unlimited texting?
And while the most prominent feature Obama’s thematic presidency is the general growth of government control here in the United States, Obama has also exported this theory overseas.
In the Middle East, Obama has fostered, nurtured and enabled an Arab Spring as a kind of freedom rally for the old Ottoman Empire. But it really is just the first steps in starting country-specific dictatorships of the Caliphate-- again, in the name of freedom.
And because these would-be dictators in North Africa get elected with turnout of only 15 percent of the electorate, it doesn’t mean that they represent freedom and democracy, any more than when dictators get 99.9 percent of the vote with 100 percent turnout.
It’s still a swindle. That it’s being sold as liberty in the Middle East by the administration is as much of an indictment upon Obama as his concept that debt makes you free.
The Fire Eaters in the pre-civil war era South-- allies of Buchanan-- argued for slavery as a positive good, because the slave was never in want.
So, too, today the Democrats argue that keeping everyone on the government plantation is the great freedom that we have all been waiting for, because someday soon the government will be so powerful that no one individual will ever be burdened by having to make decisions for themselves.
We are the ones, they argue, that we have been waiting for.
Of course, the “we” they mention doesn’t include “you” or “me.”
And they care not a whit about liberty.
But they have a great texting plan and they come in a variety of colors.
That's the myth. The actuality is that he came from privileged beginnings, never studied or did a day's work in his life, and was affirmative actioned into the White House, with the help of Arab Sheikhs, Black Muslims, the Chicago Mafia, and bomb-making terrorists.
His "American-ness?
Obama is as American as stretched ear lobes, mud huts and a bracing lunch of freshly drawn cattle blood.
Note to readers: If you have read the following on another thread, please ignore!
Reprinted with permission from "Our Ageless Constitution." See
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
America's Constitution did not mention freedom of enterprise per se, but it did set up a system of laws to secure individual liberty and freedom of choice in keeping with Creator-endowed natural rights. Out of these, free enterprise flourished naturally. Even though the words "free enterprise' are not in the Constitution, the concept was uppermost in the minds of the Founders, typified by the remarks of Jefferson and Madison as quoted above. Already, in 1787, Americans were enjoying the rewards of individual enterprise and free markets. Their dedication was to securing that freedom for posterity.
The learned men drafting America's Constitution understood history - mankind's struggle against poverty and government oppression. And they had studied the ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers. They were familiar with the near starvation of the early Jamestown settlers under a communal production and distribution system and Governor Bradford's diary account of how all benefited after agreement that each family could do as it wished with the fruits of its own labors. Later, in 1776, Adam Smith's INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Say's POLITICAL ECONOMY had come at just the right time and were perfectly compatible with the Founders' own passion for individual liberty. Jefferson said these were the best books to be had for forming governments based on principles of freedom. They saw a free market economy as the natural result of their ideal of liberty. They feared concentrations of power and the coercion that planners can use in planning other peoples lives; and they valued freedom of choice and acceptance of responsibility of the consequences of such choice as being the very essence of liberty. They envisioned a large and prosperous republic of free people, unhampered by government interference.
The Founders believed the American people, possessors of deeply rooted character and values, could prosper if left free to:
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Such a free market economy was, to them, the natural result of liberty, carried out in the economic dimension of life. Their philosophy tended to enlarge individual freedom - not to restrict or diminish the individual's right to make choices and to succeed or fail based on those choices. The economic role of their Constitutional government was simply to secure rights and encourage commerce. Through the Constitution, they granted their government some very limited powers to:
Adam Smith called it "the system of natural liberty." James Madison referred to it as "the benign influence of a responsible government." Others have called it the free enterprise system. By whatever name it is called, the economic system envisioned by the Founders and encouraged by the Constitution allowed individual enterprise to flourish and triggered the greatest explosion of economic progress in all of history. Americans became the first people truly to realize the economic dimension of liberty.
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
Lowly beginnings?
His mother was a Phd, his grandmother a bank vice president (head of the Trust Dept no less), and his father went to Harvard. If that's lowly, I'm afraid to ask what's at the "highly" end of the continuum.
On an old episode of “Fresh Prince of Bel Air”, Will`s uncle
says “ I worked very hard to give my family a good life and now I have to pay a penalty for success?”
I guess the writer never heard of Wakefield Plantation.
Good column!
BUMP
Surely you understand that John Ransom was being sarcastic.
If you’ve read Corsi’s articles on WND this month, maybe the reference was that he comes from the “low down” and ascended to the White House.
Low my @SS, funny how these guys just lie through their teeth, what if sports fans and reporters just lied through their teeth about teams they favored, how would the public react?
My disgust for Obama is so great that I have a knee jerk negative reaction whenever I hear his name.
So, too, today the Democrats argue that keeping everyone on the government plantation is the great freedom that we have all been waiting for, because someday soon the government will be so powerful that no one individual will ever be burdened by having to make decisions for themselves.
We are the ones, they argue, that we have been waiting for.
Of course, the “we” they mention doesn’t include “you” or “me.”
And they care not a whit about liberty.
But they have a great texting plan and they come in a variety of colors.
SUPERB. Absolutely superb.
“Washington enjoyed and the wealth he built — yes, built — he earned by working hard on the dangerous and brutal, American frontier, going places often were few men traveled. “
Come now, aren’t we already forgetting the One’s famous Columbus Day proclamation where he said:
“When the explorers laid anchor in the Bahamas, they met Indigenous Peoples who had inhabited the Western hemisphere for millennia. As we reflect on the tragic burdens tribal communities bore in the years that followed - - “
If we were to take the first quote and put it into obama’s words, it would be: “Washington enjoyed the wealth he stole with brutal harshness from indigenous peoples.”
Conservative Freedom = Freedom to live your life how you see fit.
Liberal Freedom = Freedom from the responsibilities inherent in life.
If only I had such poor beginnings such as a penthouse apt. in Hawaii, a private school education and jetting around the world.
Spoke to some German friends who say Germany thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips.
equals freedom from having to be productive and being self-reliant and responsible for one's own life and well being.
It would be nice to imagine that the citizens of this country could / or would react to SOMETHING !! I shouldn’t paint all with such a broad brush.....
I hope everyone goes and votes...that’s such a precious freedom that is too often taken for granted.....and it’s something we just might really miss, if the head of an administration took it upon him self to sign an executive order.......of course I can only imagine one who would do that would probably have to have a “little dictator in waiting “ complex??
After the financial meltdown, for how long do the socialists plan to provide food, housing, medical care and other freebies to the ‘poor’?
With no tax revenue do the socialists plan to begin forcing the unskilled ‘poor’ to do manual labor, place their children in re-education centers, limit their food choices, choose their clothing, house them in converted warehouses and take away their phones, TVs and computers?
How soon will we all be ‘poor’?
Islam has a similar idea of freedom.
After all the non-Muslims are killed, and everyone is Muslim, everyone will be free.
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