American Thinker, iowahawk, and Charles Krauthammer have great pieces in response to President Barack (he must be insane) Obama’s recent off teleprompter statement revealing his utter incomprehension of the free market system associated with his Marxist worldview. All three are must reads.
First Obama’s trite tautology leading up to a fallacious conclusion which Obama uses to justify unlimited government:
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen . . .”
From Clarice Feldman’s article at American Thinker (which also quotes others) we have pulled a few nuggets. There are more. Read the entire article here.
Regarding Obama’s defenders trying to downplay the responses to his statement from various quarters as “out of context” Feldman quotes blogger Don Surber: ”
Context is not simply reading the whole speech but placing the speaker in context.
Other items of trenchant note:
” . . . When he tells the audience not to take credit for their successes, he is perhaps rationalizing his own trajectory from a pampered private school in Hawaii to the presidency.”
” . . . The President in this ill-considered Elizabeth Warren-like claptrap revealed he is utterly divorced from the majority of Americans. We do not belittle success or those who achieve it. We do believe that with great effort and some luck we all have the chance to be successful, and we don’t think the provision of infrastructure, which we all pay for (but especially the well to do) takes away from the pride in our accomplishments. Even unsuccessful businesses depend on roads and bridges, police and firemen, after all.”
No one does satire better than iowahawk. From within Readings from the Book of Barack
we excerpt these fundamental “biblical” quotes:
“1 In the beginning Govt created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the economy was formless and void, darkness was over the surface of the ATMs, and the Spirit of Govt was hovering over the land.”
” . . . 14 On the fourth day Govt said, “Let Us make the economy in Our image, according to Our likeness; let it have dominion over the cars of the road, over the appliances of the supercenters, and over the pet groomers of the strip malls, over all the clickthroughs of Amazon and over every creepy thing of the Dollar Stores.” 15 So Govt created the economy in His own image; services and wholesale and retail He created them.”
” . . . Then the retailer said to Govt, “And who created you?”
35 In righteous anger did the Lord Govt again rise up and said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Tri-Delts and the Dekes, I am and have always been! I am the great cosmic turtle on which you and the entire economy rest.”
36 “And on whom do you rest, turtle?” said the retailer in blasheme.
37 “Do not mock me with your knowledge trickery, harlot!” said the Lord Govt. “I am turtles all the way down.”
Charles Krauthammer delivers a succinct statement about conservationism which he contrasts to the Obama mindset as revealed by his “you didn’t build it” statement about wealth achievement. Excerpts:
“Since forever, infrastructure has been consensually understood to be a core function of government.”
“We don’t credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik. Everyone drives the roads, goes to school, uses the mails.”
“The argument between Left and Right is about what you do beyond infrastructure. It’s about transfer payments and redistributionist taxation; about geometrically expanding entitlements; about tax breaks and subsidies to induce actions pleasing to central planners. It’s about free contraceptives for privileged students and welfare without work — the latest Obama entitlement-by-decree that would fatally undermine the great bipartisan welfare reform of 1996. It’s about endless government handouts that, ironically, are crowding out necessary spending on, yes, infrastructure.”
Beyond infrastructure, the conservative sees the proper role of government as providing not European-style universal entitlements but a firm safety net, . . . (for) those who really cannot make it on their own — those too young or too old, too mentally or physically impaired, to provide for themselves.
“Limited government . . . encourages and celebrates character, independence, energy, and hard work as the foundations of a free society and a thriving economy — precisely the virtues Obama discounts and devalues in his accounting of the wealth of nations.”
All good food for the soul this fine Sunday.
