I arrived home yesterday afternoon… well, part way; we’re stopping in New York on the way to LA to spend a day at the US Open… and was immediately struck with the obvious – how different the energy of this country is from Europe. Of course, it’s New York – the world’s capital of the go-getter, with the possible exception of such redoubts as Tokyo, Hong Kong and Seoul – but still this is a country on Red Bull. Europe is a continent on red wine. The red wine is great, for sure, especially in Paris, the last city we visited, the most extraordinary example of urban planning ever, heartbreakingly beautiful, as we all know. And the food – the next time you are there, do not miss l’Ami Jean, the Basque place near the Tour Eiffel. Not cheap, but worth every penny.
America, however, is not about the food or even about the tall buildings or great vistas, purple mountains, etc. It’s about the people, the unbelievably energetic citizens of this country, the ones who built all this. Many of them came from Old Europe, a self-selection of the best and bravest of their DNA, the risk-takers bent on starting a new life. And yet, tragically, Old Europe appears to be steaming ahead of us now, moving out of the recession sooner than we are. Merkel and Sarkozy were smart enough not to opt for the seductions of Obama’s “stimulus,” as if Barack were the hidebound European and they the Americans eager to let their people get on with it. And, as we also know, it is the people, and only the people, who can achieve greatness and create progress. Yet, the Americans are still here. You can see them all on the streets of New York rearing to go. President Obama, let my people go. If you do, we will forgive you everything else and watch your poll numbers rise again.
But that would mean letting go, and we all know how conservative leftists tend to be.
[Outraged response in 1, 2, 3...]
The Left WANTS TO ENSLAVE, not let the People stand for themselves, does it get any clearer? It’s the Law of the Mafia, and there is no difference from the Oligarchy in Russia to the dictatorships of Chavez and Castro and Qaddafi…and these are OBAMA’S HEROES.
So, the U.S. could totally lead the world again, as it has, but not with Reid and Pelosi and Frank and most importantly Obama leading us into enslavement. Call it anything else, but that is what it is.
That’s why I’m not concerned for the long term prospects of this country. We occasionally make a dumb mistake at the ballot box (or the parties become so decayed and decrepit that any choice is a mistake), but we will bounce back and, in the long run, will be fine.
I agree wholeheartedly with Tom Wolfe–the American Century will last for half a millennium. It’s been declared over several times already in my life and the gloom and doomers were wrong every time.
Welcome back. It looks like it will be an interesting fall (in the polls that is).
Well, let my people go, that’s the whole point. The American awakening has not caught up with the systematic destruction of all that made America great by a bunch of self-enthralled zealots, yet. What do you call subversion from the top? Superversion? That’s going to be hard to counter. Nobody has written the book on countersuperversion doctrine, yet. It may be “People, let your energy come out”, rather than “Obama, let my people go!”.
Standing athwart history, yelling “Stop!”, may not be enough anymore. We need to set up power brakes this time! Get busy on turning 2010 into a replay of 1994, on steroids!
In the meantime, it’s good to see the tea parties gathering momentum and the attemps to paint them as mobs not taking hold.
I am convinced America will fall out of love with the One. And we will then attempt to reverse the damage he has started through his lack of understanding of reality.
But I cannot share the optimism that everything will then be fine. The country is insolvent – much much more than ever before. And with looming much higher energy prices (fact) and the aging of the boomers (fact) we are facing a combination of crisis’ that neither Repubs nor Dems have a clue on how to deal with. Am I a doomer – no, not in my book. I intend to get me and my family through the sustained recession/depression that will result. America will survive, but will have to learn how to live in a long slow decline of economic activity – and a lower standard of living.
The boom is over.
I am glad my children are grown. Tell any ten year old now what I told my children growing up:
you will have to work twice as hard as we did, even to have a family, make a home.
Somewhere I saw the following quote, which I believe is an expansion on something said by Lao Tse:
–When the bad leader gets something done, the people say “he made us do it”
–when the mediocre leader gets something done, the people say “he did it”
–when the superior leader gets something done, the people say “he helped us do it”
–when the great leader gets something done, the people say “we did it for ourselves”
Obama, a man with no executive experience, doesn’t understand the above, and hence he will never “let our people go.: