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The incredible shrinking President Hour by hour he gets smaller and smaller
NY Daily News ^ | June 7, 2014 | Walter Russell Mead

Posted on 06/08/2014 8:12:08 PM PDT by neverdem

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To: eyedigress
Thank you for your comments.

Writing at the commencement of the first Obama administration, I was concerned to address not just conservatives but to preach to a wider world and, in effect, lay down a marker about this individual who was to inhabit the area sanctum of the White House and possess ultimate power. The idea was not to push buttons but to write an analysis of Barack Obama which could be reviewed years later and tested. That meant that all reasonable hypotheses should be explored and one of those was to consider that Barack Obama would govern as a conventional liberal. To avoid mentioning that possibility, which was the characterization with which he won the White House, would be to lose credibility with independents who fancy themselves fair-minded.

That option was firmly dismissed later in the piece when I conclude, "Obama's biography betrays at every turn that he is a Manchurian Marxist."

I fully agree with your assessment that the government is the problem, according to the Ronald Reagan formulation. When you say, "the children today are constantly reminded of problems" it strikes a chord with me. In fact the whole thrust of leftism to subjectivize reactions and encode them as a standard to which we must adhere (another form of relativism) is a way of extending government power infinitely because the subjective standard is a way of moving the goalposts.

Do you want to inject government into the workplace? Pass a law about sexual harassment in which you codify the subjective reaction of people to sexual advances as might currently be in favor in the editorial offices of Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Do you want the government to control the language? Exalt the subjective feelings of African-Americans about words like, Negro, colored, niggardly etc. and you have started off toward your goal of mind control.

Do you want to insert the government into the college campus? Codify subjective reactions about sexual encounters into law as is being attempted now in California.

The list could be endless because there is no end to the ambitions of the left and no shortage of tools like that technique to subjectivize "problems." The list, of course, is by no means limited to social issues but extends easily to economic issues until you create a $17 trillion national debt.


101 posted on 06/09/2014 10:40:57 PM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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