How Obama Portends an End to Self-Determinism
By no means the sole purview of any one party, platitudes are an inherent part of politics.
Adlai Stevenson quipped that the Republicans of his day were stroking platitudes until they purred like epigrams. In the hands of this nation’s current Democratic president, never before have platitudes purred so epigrammatically. Whether it is being announced that “change has come to America,” or we are being made aware for the very first time that “we are the change we have been waiting for,” what is required for such phrases to have any genuine significance is either a total lack of reflection or the fatuous excess of it.
When Chauncey Gardiner observed, “In the garden, growth has it seasons: First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter; and then we get spring and summer again,” no one could contend the haphazard horticulturist was wrong. But only the fool found him astute.
What is so galling about Obama’s platitudes is not that they are hollow and made to sound sententious, but that they are flagrantly duplicitous. When he proclaimed in his inaugural address that “the question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works,” one could dismiss it as nothing more than empty rhetoric. But when every day thereafter is spent not addressing the question of whether it works but rather how government can be further and further aggrandized, the president’s platitudes can not be taken so lightly. The question of whether it works has yet to be answered, but still the government grows at an alarming rate.
This should be especially alarming for a people who once possessed the inestimable virtue of having little need for government.
When America’s most perspicuous observer toured this country, he was struck by the ostensible absence of any central administration. Tocqueville understood that the seat of government was found in Washington and that each state had its capital, but as he traveled the fledgling nation, the presence of a central authority remained wholly impalpable. To be affected by it one had to solicit it, and as the Frenchman observed, the Americans were not the least solicitous in that regard. When an individual conceived some social improvement (e.g., establishing a school or hospital), it never occurred to him to petition the government for aid. Even if these projects often were carried out less efficiently than if the government had been involved, a nation composed of such individuals could achieve far more than any central administration ever could. Moreover, the moral benefits accrued by a people that learned the value of responsibility and autonomy by taking charge of their own fate could not be underestimated.
The young French aristocrat was struck by this phenomenon and noted how extraordinarily rare it was for a people to be able to get on without government. So rare, in fact, that Tocqueville maintained there were but two types of people who could do so, and these existed at “the two extremities of civilization. … Savage man, having only physical needs to satisfy … counts only on himself; for a civilized man to do as much, he must have reached that social state where his intelligence permits him to perceive clearly what is useful, and where his passions do not prevent his executing it.”
Tocqueville may have found America’s men unrefined, its women unattractive, and the lot of them horrid musicians, but he had no misgivings about which extremity of civilization they belonged to.
thanks for this, David. A great piece.
People who only want to be coddled are easily lulled into complacency and apathy even when the flames of destruction are licking at their feet.
The wave of the Nanny State we have been riding began in earnest with FDR. LBJ was the one that made it a tsunami.
LBJ did three things that mattered in his presidency.
1) Mismanaged the Vietnam War and made it the morass it became.
2) He got Civil Rights acts passed that were absolutely, morally a great thing.
3) He got Welfare reform passed which destroyed the good he did with the Civil Rights reforms and further cursed this country with people who now can not survive without charity being handed to them. It wasn’t until they added work to the mix that the government could get people to take its money. The welfare laws make LBJ the worst president in US history to date.
When FDR started handing out money the program was failing miserably. Compare that to now and one can see how far American has fallen.
President Obama is trying to nail the coffin lid closed on American self reliance and self sufficiency. President Obama is where he is today by standing on the shoulders of midgets.
Oops, sorry about the repitition in point three.
Really excellent analysis – thank you!
David there is a prologue within these two pages for a book or a script. The polemic is a protagonist Democrat erosion of American vitality through championing victimhood and the inevitable peripeteia resulting from the incessant pressure of penalizing productive members of society to embrace and entitle an ever increasing nonproductive or minimally productive class. The prosperity to ruin syndrome, fueled by the Progressive Socialist’s march toward a nebulous Marxism that only thrives from a resource rich economy that has a free market to sell to or a state of abject poverty and slavery to support elites in opulence and wealth, is the protasis.
It is true that hybrid vigor and vitality were once America’s greatest assets, now that ingenuity and productivity is frowned upon by the all encompassing Democrat party and their increasingly quasi-militaristic groups of Labor and Acorn, except in the areas of Green Energy where the technology is vacuous, dubious and circumspect; the Democrat Party creates itself as the antithesis of the once great American vitality and vigor.
The Progressive Socialist inadvertently reinforces the premise of an inverse equation, As the Democrat Party increases its sphere and influence, productivity and wealth decrease; at least for the middle class.
Excuse my periphrasis, that was a nice essay David, it is worthy of a more detailed analysis. I need to go to work, please take time from your studies to enlighten us occassionally.
Thank you for a timely reminder about what it means to be an American.
A somnolent republic can be overtaken by a subversive mob. Will the American spirit wake up before it’s too late? I hope and pray it does.
“How Obama Portends an End to Self-Determinism”
No, no, almost-Dr. Eisenberg (your mother must be kvelling!); Obama portends The End of Civilization As We Know It.
Btw, I LOVE your command of academic lingo, e.g., “The prosperity to ruin syndrome, fueled by the Progressive Socialist’s march toward a nebulous Marxism that only thrives from a resource rich economy that has a free market to sell to or a state of abject poverty and slavery to support elites in opulence and wealth, is the protasis.” Whew! Keep up the good work. By the time you get your doctorate, you should be COMPLETELY unintelligible.
Precision!
The Democrat Party has been chipping away at the American Peoples’ freedoms for years; Their institution of “social programs” are straight out of the Communist Playbook.
And this Congress, media, czars, and president can’t goose step fast enough!
So unintelligible, bibio44, that you’ve misattributed the quote.
David, an excellent article! I await your next one.
Right you are, Burn! My apologies to Dr. Sampson.
Mr.Eisenberg;
Please read chapter 3 of F. A. Hatek’s “The Road to Serfdom”. It sounds as if you may have read this already; A striking resemblance to “individualism and collectivism”.
Sorry for the typo; F. A. Hayek.
David:
“Society is infinitely more complex now than it was when Tocqueville and Beaumont visited America and such complexity necessitates a stronger central government.”
Complexity is one of the fundamental problems with a socialist economic model. Economic complexity is not effectively addressed when power is socialized because government forces individuals to adapt to the government’s abstraction of the economy and complexity, rather than the individuals adapting to economic realities and thus dealing with and comprehending the complexity more effectively.
If individuals are confused and think that their economic system is too complex and fragile, then politicians have an opportunity to attempt to centralize power in government, e.g. via socialism, communism, totalitarianism. Fear is frequently used throughout history to justify sacrificing individual power and freedom to government.
Obama has publicly claimed that individuals cannot deal with the economic complexity of the current economic crisis. He clearly stated that “only government” would be able to bring us out of the recession. I hope there is a majority in this country who do not accept that statement as fact, and see that this idealogy necessarily leads towards socialism, not away from it.
Here’s the definition of nanny state . . . “Go shopping.”
Bravo, Mike in CO:
As Hayek pointed out, central planning ultimately is impossible, because the information required for intelligent decision-making is diffused throughout the economy and beyond the reach of the central planners (even assuming that they have the capacity to process it all, which they don’t).
Free markets are economic distributed processing: the Collectivists are still chained to dinosaur mainframes.
Free markets are economic distributed processing: the Collectivists are still chained to dinosaur mainframes.
Yes, which is why it is so important for the Collectivists to control “the narrative” and steer it toward their own preferred “solutions”. Over the years, I’ve seen survey after survey indicating a huge disconnect between how people perceive their own lives and how they think the country overall is faring. Typically, upwards of 70% of people rate their own lives as “good” or “excellent” or whatever the equivalent term on that particular survey is, but rarely do the numbers on the country’s overall health top 50% rating it so highly.
Similar numbers in the latest health care narrative also exist, where among the insured, a strong majority are satisfied with their access to health care (yes, everyone complains about cost, but that is a standard human complaint and the financial statements of health care providers and insurers tell the story and that story is, it’s not a very high margin market), yet a majority also think the overall system is in crisis. Which is not surprising, when you have fools like Obama saying that doctors get $50K for amputating a foot, which is a number that fits “the narrative” on health care, when the actual amount is closer to $1K.
As for Collectivists overall, I like what Nietzsche had to say, which is that they are a bunch of zeros who get together and think they add up to something. Screw ‘em all sideways.
The word twisting and use of euphemisms is a left wing Socialist/ NAZI thing. Just think back to the 1930 when we were introduced by the NAZI’s to
Resettlement…………….DEPORTATION to death camps.
Final Solution……………Mass genocide for Jews , Homosexuals, Gypsy’s and undesirable Political opponents
Mercy killing…………….Euthanasia for the old and infirm and mentally retarded
And who can forget the most cruel lie of all written above the Concentration Camp gates ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ Work Gives Freedom.
The Obamanation is leading you down this path America wake up before its too late.
The nation seems to be filling up with Chauncey Gardiners.
Economic justice: Newspeak for punitive wealth confiscation. In short, theft.
Social justice: Newspeak for grievance group tyranny. In short, oppression.
venividivici: Great names think alike
20. Pragmatist:
I’d like to add “social engineering” of the Nazi type.
Obama’s worldview, social concepts, fiscal policies, ability to select quality associates, and understanding of what it means to be President of the United States are all on the level of a college sophomore.
What’s needed is an IMPEACH OBAMA NOW movement.
bibio44:
No, no, almost-Dr. Eisenberg (your mother must be kvelling!); Obama portends The End of Civilization As We Know It.
Whatchu talkin bout? His momma be sayin that her boy be bout it bout it.
Or is it only permissible to stereotype Jews?
Its still important to remember that our national defense (both foreign and domestic) and our borders and our national health care (still to come) to include the national social safety net is our national responsibility. To compromise on these is to admit failure. Let the locals handle the rest.