Posted by
The Hermit Crab on Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:15:36 PM
Lessons of Year One of the Obama Error
In many ways, the Scott Brown election victory in Massachusetts was the perfect last day for the first year of the BO administration. Many writers will be writing their evaluations of year 1 of the new error, in which we tried turning over the White House to a “narcissistic neophyte Marxist” (thank you Thomas Sowell). Much of it will be bosh, much will be slanted and distorted, and a fair amount will be both. Some of the following may be, too, but at least I admit the possibility. The following is entirely personal, but I’ll make it as honest and as accurate as I can.
(Keep in mind that this is a scrapbook. These items will of necessity be short. I may write a book someday, but this isn’t it.)
Affirmative Action is a Lousy Way to Choose a President
Over a year ago I wrote a post declaring why I would not be celebrating the ascension of “America’s first black president”. Re-reading it now, it still holds up pretty well. I remain convinced that many of the voters who voted for BO in 2008 did not actually vote for Barack Obama, they voted for “a black man for President”. I have always found the assertion that America had to elect a first-term Senator of no particular distinction President to do penance for “White Guilt” ridiculous. I have no white guilt, historical or otherwise. I’m not even white, anyway. My grandfather, Young Han Choo, was the South Korean Consul General to the United States. I live in the historic “Burned-Over District” in western New York, which was a hotbed of abolition fervor in the years before and during the Civil War. The famous Jerry Rescue happened not far from where I’m typing this, in Syracuse, NY. None of this is truly relevant, anyway. I was not alive during slavery, and I was a child when the Jim Crow Laws finally met their deserved demise. To say that someone like me bears guilt for the misdeeds by those who have gone before is getting frighteningly close to the reasoning that Adolf Hitler used to justify his shocking crimes against the Jewish people.
Too few people bothered looking behind the symbolic nature of the campaign and looked at the man behind it. If they had, they would have seen the radical nature of the man running for the highest office in the land. Of course, we couldn’t have predicted everything. The hoards of czars would have been a surprise, although perhaps not so stunning as they were. However, there were warning signs abounding, if the voters had looked for them, and if they had demanded thorough reporting from the traditional (in the worst meaning of the word) media. “Radical” scarcely describes the man who spoke and voted against a ban on Live-Birth Abortion, a hideous practice brought to the attention of the public by a courageous nurse in Illinois named Jill Stanek, in which infants who survived a botched abortion would simply be set aside to die, with no life-saving aid offered despite the fact that they had in fact been
born. In fact, the only state senator who spoke against the ban on the practice in 2001 was Illinois State Senator Barack Obama. Can anyone possibly argue that this information is insignificant, and that the public didn’t need to know this before Election Day? In fact, it is a window into what increasingly seems to be the icy emptiness of the Obama soul.
Purity of Principle is a Luxury a Patriot can Seldom Afford
Approaching Election Day in 2008, it was very clear that some conservative Republicans were going to refuse to vote for John McCain because he was insufficiently conservative. These proud righties chose to “punish” the Republican Party by withholding their support, even if it meant that the Democratic Party candidates would “sweep the board” -- taking the Presidency and both houses of Congress. One of my best friends numbered himself among them, to my distress. I tried with increasing desperation to talk him out of his determination, and won the concession that he would not let his opposition to Senator McCain keep him home on Election Day, if he could find other candidates running for other offices that were worth voting for. (I believe he did.)
Of course, when you stay home on Election Day, you can’t vote for any of the candidates, not just the one you’re avoiding voting for. As a result, you do more damage than you intend, and you punish the innocent, a number that eventually includes yourself and your country. One of those who may have been defeated by recalcitrant conservatives’ anger at John McCain was Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, who was a reliably conservative vote. Not 100%, but as we all learned, but some of us forgot, “nobody’s perfect”. I mentioned this in a post in December. Republicans (and many others) are rightly celebrating the victory of Scott Brown on Tuesday, giving the Republicans the vital 41st vote they need to derail the health care hostile takeover (barring procedural tricks by the Dems, so don’t stop watching). If more conservatives had gone to the polls in November 2008, perhaps Norm Coleman could have held onto the seat which was stolen from him by the Democrats’ election-stealing machine. If Norm had reached the closing of the polls with a larger lead than he had, it would have been much harder for the election thieves to steal enough votes to turn the result, perhaps impossibly so. I wonder how many of the recalcitrant conservatives in Minnesota realize to this day that they helped inflict Senator Al Franken on the whole country. Thanks, you sanctimonious stiff-necks.
The Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines Patriot as "one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests." Is it really in your beloved country’s best interest to have socialist majorities in both houses of Congress, with a Marxist egomaniac in the White House? Is it in your country’s interest to have reduced the Republican representation to such a splinter that they cannot help the country or please you, even if they absorb the “lesson” you tried to “teach” them? All virtues become either vices or weaknesses when exaggerated. Are you sure that you have not sinned against your country, in your zeal to punish a political party? If the economy dies, are you sure that some of its blood will not be on your hands?
The Imposture of the Democrats as the “Party of the People” took a Beating This Year
I wish I could remember which conservative pundit said that the greatest advantage the Republicans have when fighting to regain power is the way Democrats conduct themselves when they’re in power. We often speak of the arrogance of power, but seldom in American history has it been so flamboyant as it has been in the last year. To my memory, every major initiative passed by the Democrat majorities in Congress this year was passed against the will of the majority of the American people. From the “Stimulus”, to Cap-and-Trade, to the deficit-drenched budget, to the pork-stuffed appropriation bills, to the socialistic health-care takeover bills, the Democrats have shown contempt for the desires of the people that has been a marvel to behold.
Think back to the town hall meetings of August. Thousands of plain American citizens turned out for meetings held by senators and representatives (those who had the courage to actually face their constituents), and let them know in no uncertain terms that they were fiercely opposed to the agenda being pushed in Washington. How did the Democrats respond (with some honorable exceptions)? With insults, with pomposity, and with transparently false accusations. On a few occasions, they even tried to say that the thousands opposing them publicly (like an iceberg, the majority of the millions of Americans opposing the socialistic and tyrannical agenda being pushed in Washington lies under the surface) were being paid to protest by such special interests as the insurance companies. They called them "teabaggers" (Don’t follow this link if you’re easily offended). The Tea Party Movement is a genuine movement of angry American citizens who are fed up with the high-handed dictatorial actions of the professional politicos in Washington, and in their state governments as well. They do not deserve to be slandered, but the Democrats see the voters as subjects, not employers.
The Democrat line recently is that the public has been deceived by “misinformation” distributed by the Tea Partiers, the Republicans, and the “special interest groups”. Presumably, they mean the “misinformation” we’re getting from
the precisely quoted text of the bills. Anyway, there’s something incredibly rich about being accused of misleading people by serial liars like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, … and
Barack Obama.
I have more, much more, but thinking back over the past year has given me a headache. I’ll be back when the Excedrin start working.