This article appeared originally in the American Thinker at
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/a_fundamental_disconnect.html
Hollywood and the
media routinely offer up two standard portrayals of government
officials -- inept and comical idiots or sinister characters. The
latter is especially true of media depictions of NSA, CIA, and FBI
employees, but both are quite typical of the reigning liberal elite's
opinion of all government agencies and their employees: bureaucrats are
either hilarious nincompoops or dangerous evil-doers, and amazingly
enough, sometimes both at once. Hollywood seems to think that the
government is either screwing up the country because it doesn't know
what it is doing or it is destroying the country because it is
trampling on the rights of its citizens.
However,
the people who hold these convictions are the exact same people who
want to turn over the operation of all the key components of the
country to the government to manage. Health care, energy, education,
the economy itself -- these and dozens of other critical features of
American society should be directed, according to the Left, from the
hallowed halls in which the bumblers and betrayers work.
These
liberal elites, who are now in positions of great power in the nation,
seem to believe that the politicians and bureaucrats who populate the
federal government, are on the one hand part fumbling meatheads who
can't tie their shoes and part evil plotters who want to screw John Q.
Public. At the same time the left believes that those who run the
bureaucracy should be entrusted with the management of virtually every
aspect of American society. Is there not a fundamental disconnect here?
What could possibly explain this self-contradictory faith in the power
of the government to successfully solve the nation's problems? I will
offer three explanations and then speculate as to which applies to the
celebrity who now occupies the White House.
The first explanation is ignorance.
The people of our nation have been subjected to an intense liberal
indoctrination for so long that there are a huge number of them for
whom the tenets of liberalism are so deeply ingrained that they accept
without question the proposition that the government must address any
problem that arises anywhere in America. Under a relentless assault
from the liberal dominated media, educational establishment, legal
profession, arts community, foundations, and even segments of the
business and religious communities, many have succumbed to the
brainwashing.
Consequently, they believe:
- FDR's New Deal saved us from the Depression rather than prolonged it;
- the Great Society helped to lift minorities out of poverty, rather than institutionalizing it;
- capitalism
creates unjust, inequitable outcomes in the US, ignoring the fact that
it has powered our economy to unimagined and unequaled heights of
prosperity;
- government creates jobs by spending the tax payer's money, rather than preventing their
creation because of the tax dollars pilfered from entrepreneurs;
- government regulations improve the functioning of our economy, revealing obliviousness to the enormous drag they impose;
- the rich don't pay their fair share,
whereas in fact the "rich" pay the overwhelming majority of the income
tax that Uncle Sam extracts, while the lowest 40% of income earners pay
virtually nothing;
- the
Constitution is a malleable document that serves as a guide to the
making of law -- in fact, it is a binding document that can be changed
only by a demanding Amendment process and the American republic has
survived and prospered precisely because continuing generations have
agreed to abide by the deal struck by our founders with the people;
- radical change not adherence to tradition, is the American way.
I
venture that a large proportion, perhaps a substantial majority of the
folks who voted for Obama fit into this category -- especially young
people.
It
is legitimate to ask how such hoodwinked people can accept the
portrayal of the government as bumbling or sinister or both -- laugh at
it if it is the former, be mortified by it if the latter -- and why
does it not occur to them that it is lunacy to entrust their welfare to
the bumblers and evil-doers?
I
think the answer is to be found in the attitude teenagers exhibit
toward their parents and teachers. The kids often see their elders as
at best hopelessly square, out of it and even stupid and at worst as
manipulating, tyrannical, and unfair. Most -- not all -- do not
question the fundamental authority of their parents and teachers. The
kids expect the adults to remove the obstacles that the youngsters
encounter and the kids are willing to put up with the rules laid down
by the adults because it is expected of them, because it is the natural
order of things, and besides there is no choice. So too does the
juvenile mass of brainwashed citizens view the authority of the federal
government. They deride and lambaste it for its incompetence; they fear
it for its omnipotence; but they accept unquestioningly its
"legitimate" authority to control their lives.
The next explanation might be characterized as arrogance.
Its practitioners understand that the government doesn't have a
particularly good track record of solving the nation's problems. They
recognize that previous government forays into health care,
agriculture, housing, etc. have resulted in mismanagement, excessive
waste, deleterious effects on the economy, fraud, and corruption.
Nevertheless, they believe that the federal government is the correct
mechanism to address the nation's problems and under their
tutelage one (or both) of two things will happen. First, they will do
it better. They will bring better design, planning, execution, and
supervision. Or, it won't work any better, but they will profit
personally from the results. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party is
chock full, from top to bottom, with these types -- the naive ones who
think they will execute the liberal agenda more perfectly and the
corrupt ones who intend to profit from the agenda, however it is
implemented.
The third explanation is malevolence.
This characterization applies to the hard core leftists who believe the
classic American political, economic and cultural systems are rotten
and must be overthrown. I am thinking of revolutionaries like Saul
Alinsky, George Soros, Michael Moore, and, yes, the Reverend Jeremiah
Wright. They don't care that the government to which they wish to
assign more and more responsibility is a combination of ineptness and
corruption. So much the better; it will bring the system down more
quickly. Radicals like these thrive on a crisis atmosphere (as admitted
by Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel). They seek to create a
perpetual crisis, which leaves the people panic-stricken and easily
manipulated by those who, under the guise of addressing the dangerous
ills they have identified, will divert more power to the government,
and who are in fact at work destroying the system under the false cover
of crises like climate change and health care. If they can enact
universal, federally-controlled health care and the business-crippling
cap and trade bill, their malevolent objective might be attained -- America could be
so fundamentally changed that there will be no hope of returning to
republican principles.
I
believe the vast majority of Americans on the left fit into category 1,
a substantial number fall under 2 and a small, but dedicated cadre
occupies the third position. Into which category does the guy in the
White House fit?
Like
most of America, my acquaintance with President Obama is recent and
superficial. That he occupies the White House is a testament to the
uncharacteristic recklessness of the American people, who have
installed therein a person they know precious little about. Is he the
leftist radical his voting record suggests or the relatively moderate
politician he seemed to be during the campaign? Everyone who interacts
with him insists he is very smart. If so, it is impossible that the
rationale for his leftist mentality lies in the first explanation:
ignorance.
Throughout
the campaign, my impression was that he was a number 2: arrogant. Yes,
there was no denying his far-left voting record -- but he tacked right
during the election and then he appointed a number of relatively
moderate cabinet officials (to go along with the hard core leftists he
selected as advisors and czars, to be sure).
But
since the inauguration, the gloves are off and the trend is clear.
President Obama is a leader of the malevolent, revolutionary forces in
America who want to overthrow the system and replace it with a
Euro-socialist, nanny State that repudiates much of American history,
including the Constitution.
What is the evidence? Many of his opponents would cite: his promotion of cap and trade,
which surely would cripple our economy; his drive for universal,
government-controlled health insurance, which would make virtually all
of us wards of the State; his foreign policy of appeasement and
repeated apologies for American behavior; or his reckless spending,
borrowing and taxing that will bankrupt our children and grandchildren.
For
me it is as simple as this. I see no evidence that he loves America,
that he (or his wife) takes any pride in the achievements of our
country, that he subscribes to the idea that America, unlike any other
nation, is founded on a political idea and is called to be a beacon of
freedom to mankind. That is not Barack Obama's America. His new America
will be a bizarre combination of France, the Soviet Union and Canada.