This speech by Michelle Obama is chilling.
I know that Michelle is not Barack. Neither are Barack's radical preacher, his terrorist friends and his communist father. Barack himself prefers to speak in vapid generalities that make young Democrats swoon and send a tingle up Chris Matthews's leg. Still, this is his wife, and marrying her says something about Obama's judgment.
Her statement of altruism is forthright:
We have lost the understanding that in a democracy we have a mutual obligation to one another. That we cannot measure our greatness in this society by the strongest and richest of us. But we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done.
All done at the direction of the state, of course. Which Michelle goes on to admit:
...Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your division. That you come out of your isolation. That you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual; uninvolved, uninformed.
Do you see how this follows logically from Michelle Obama's altruist premise? If we all must sacrifice to the least among us, then we need a leader to direct our sacrifice. It would be irresponsible and immoral for a President to do otherwise. You will not be allowed to remain in your comfort zones.
No one gets a free ride in a fascist state. No one is allowed to opt out, to live for his own sake; that would be selfish. We have a mutual obligation to one another.
Your life belongs to the state.
Barack Obama will require you to work. Arbeit macht frei.
UPDATE: Revision.
14 comments:
The only thing is, Obama has to be a bit more careful about what is said to whom. Telling people that they have to work - well, those are scary sounding words to certain elements of the Democratic Party's core constituencies.
Dismuke,
Have you ever experienced someone with low self-esteem try to assert himself? I have, and it's not a pleasant experience. Generally, what happens is that they seize upon some minor error in someone else's thinking and they run wild with it for a few minutes in a way that is so clearly an act of desperation that it would be funny if is were just an act.
Do you think that people with low self-esteem enjoy their lack of it, and those episodes are a celebration of their lack? I don't. I think that it's an indication of just how scared and weak they are because they don't have it. They want desperately to have it and because they're not honest enough to gain it, they spend most of their time denouncing it as "selfish" or "shallow" or something along those lines. Those rare episode are the exception; a vulgar explosion of a betrayed self releasing momentarily the pressure it has been forcing upon it's host carcass.
Certainly, the Democratic Party's core constituents are extremely anti-productivity in their philosophy. They regard it as bourgeois or counter-productive to the soul or environmentally devestating. But I think that these are just rationalizations covering up a deeply held self-estimation that they simply aren't good enough to work and achieve and be happy.
Once Barack Obama shows them that they are, regardless of what horrorific "acheivements" their hard work brings about, you will see an orgy of santimonious, I'm just as good as all you damn capitalists "productivity". If Obama can really sell this idea, it will be truly aunprecedented phenomenon. An army of Catherine Halsey's running amok.
But I know your comment was somewhat tounge in cheek so I'm sorry for picking on you. I was just eager to make my point. Thanks for sparking it. :)
Dismuke, the Democrats might accept forcing welfare bums to work if it also meant enchaining the middle and upper classes. Yes, they would risk angering their constituents, but they would achieve their ideal of total state control.
Grant -
I think you and I are talking about two different groups of people. I was, as you say, in a tongue and cheek sort of way, referring primarily to the recipients of welfare state entitlement programs. And, even then, I was only referring to people who are recipients on a long term basis as a matter of lifestyle choice - as opposed to better sorts of otherwise productive people who access welfare state programs to get though a temporary desperate situation or people who have a legitimate handicap and have no alternative given the fact that we do live in a welfare state.
The sort of people you describe tend to be well educated and live comfortable lives once they get out of college.
It is true that a lack of self-esteem plays a crucial role in the mindsets of both groups. But I think their motivations are very different.
The welfare mooch operates on much more of a "what's in it for me" type mentality. Such a person is not an altruist because he is the special person, the "victim," that altruists are supposed to sacrifice for. To the mooch, altruism is the moral ideal that other suckers are supposed to live up to - because he is entitled to it.
The people you describe are altruists. But unlike many whose altruism is motivated by guilt, as you point out, altruism for them is their substitute for self-esteem. I don't think such people are so much afraid of work as they are resentful of other people's success and self-esteem. So perhaps you are correct - maybe Obama will inspire a crop of college students to essentially become Catherine Halseys.
The mooch, on the other hand is afraid of work because of the implications of everything that happens on a job might have on his pretense at self-esteem. Thus he convinces himself that, despite his poverty, he has somehow "beat the system" that owes him due to all of the injustices that others have thrown his way.
"Dismuke, the Democrats might accept forcing welfare bums to work if it also meant enchaining the middle and upper classes. Yes, they would risk angering their constituents, but they would achieve their ideal of total state control."
The Democrats will abandon the welfare bums the very minute a combination of two things happen: 1) they stop bringing in sufficient numbers of votes and 2) their victimhood no longer tugs at the heart strings of those Democrats who would never be caught dead drinking the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations.
Point number one has certainly been a weak spot in recent decades as such people usually never bother to vote. Plus the economic growth of recent decades has made such people harder and harder to find. But they still manage to dominate enough Congressional districts to reliably fill a certain number of Democratic seats in Congress so they can't be totally abandoned.
But I do think that the Democrats are trying to move away from such groups in hopes of sucking the middle class into various welfare state entitlement programs. Since middle class people tend to look down on welfare bums, being on entitlement programs does have an "image problem" among middle class people. The Democrat's challenge is to make accepting government handouts socially acceptable to middle class people - and HillaryHealthCare is but a first step in that direction. If dumping "the poor" results in making it more likely that middle class people will clamor for entitlement programs and thus become a reliable source of Democratic votes - they will do it in a heartbeat. As you say, the name of the game is state control and power.
Speaking of Obama - have you heard about the latest trouble his campaign is in?
Speaking to a fund raiser in San Francisco when he apparently did not think there were cameras or tape recorders present he said:
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Translation: working class people in Pennsylvania and people from small towns are a bunch of backward, racist and bigoted flyover country bumpkins who drink the coffee served in truck stops and gas stations. Under ideal circumstances, these ungrateful peasants would appreciate all that we do for them in the spirit of nobless oblige and just shut up and take orders for the sake of the common good. But they don't. And even though they are on our side of the partisan aisle, they are as bad as Republicans in their obsession over their own petty selfish economic circumstances. Rather than just accepting their place in this world they instead complain and become bitter. Unfortunately, I have to appeal to people from such places in order to get their votes. So I am going to regard them as "useful idiots" and pander to them. Please don't hold it against me. You may see images of me on television drinking coffee at a truck stop - but rest assured that as soon as the cameras stop rolling, I immediately spit the dreadful stuff out. I am really one of you - not one of them.
The irony is that it is NOT the working class types Obama looks down his nose at who are bitter but rather the hard Left soy milk and latte crowd that Obama was talking to who are the living embodiments of what it means to be "bitter." Pretty much everything the moveon.org hard Left elite does is motivated by a deep and metaphysical bitterness against the universe at large.
When it comes to Democrats, the type that he looks down on and that Hillary is trying desperately to win over are MUCH cleaner both morally and philosophically.
Of course, it might have occurred to a few people in the audience that Obama also regards them as useful idiots and that he was pandering to them just as much as he panders to people in rural Pennsylvania. But even if a few in the audience did manage to momentarily grasp this, there is little danger of any negative consequences following as, with that crowd, such a line of thinking would be instantly evaded.
Frankly, I think Obama will be wiped out in November. He's a leftist. Democrats know an outright leftist cannot win the Presidency, but they think they can pull a fast one on the American people if Obama continues speaking in gaseous generalities and the MSM help him hide his true nature. It will not work. People can tell. When a liberal in San Francisco, surrounded by effete upper class liberals, sneers at guns, it's obvious who he really is. And with the internet, it's impossible for the truth to remain unknown.
The biggest question is: have the American people been so corrupted by the welfare state and so dumbed down by public education that they will vote for a leftist?
Another question might be: do the Dems have enough money and enough support from the MSM to obscure the truth enough that Obama can squeak into a narrow victory?
I am just hoping that Hillary somehow manages to steal her party's nomination.
Then I hope that something comes up that causes Republicans to have great disgust for John McCain. One would hope that it would be for the reasons that McCain deserves to be regarded with disgust - but I will admit that is a lot to ask for these days. So I would happily settle for a video to surface on YouTube of McCain having hot steamy sex with - heck, I don't know, perhaps Madeline Albright or Eliot Spitzer or the Bronx Zoo gorilla....anything that would cause a huge scandal.
My hope would be that disgusted Democrats and Republicans both stay home in droves but that more Republicans turn out to vote for Hillary and that would be enough to give the Congress to the Republicans and the White House to Hillary - with Hillary going into office on day one being the most hated president in American history, a presumed lame duck from day one. Her own party in Congress would hate her and so would the Republicans, including those who voted for her. Sure, I have no doubt in my mind the woman is a Stalinist and will walk over corpses in order to get more power. But in this context, she would be utterly castrated and one of the most powerless presidents in history. We would have four years of utter gridlock - which, in today's world, is about the best we can hope for.
Pretty sad that, short of McCain unexpectedly dropping out, my wild and far fetched scenario is about the best hope we have of preventing an utter DISASTER - which is what it will be if either McCain or Obama win.
I agree entirely. Hillary Clinton would be almost a lame duck from day one, so reviled is she. If her presidency would be Bill Clinton II, then Obama's would be Jimmy Carter II.
"Pretty much everything the moveon.org hard Left elite does is motivated by a deep and metaphysical bitterness against the universe at large."
Well said dismuke. Ever since I encountered Rand I have always thought that people on the Left are upset and bitter that reality dictates that humans must be productive to survive.
But unlike many whose altruism is motivated by guilt, as you point out, altruism for them is their substitute for self-esteem. I don't think such people are so much afraid of work as they are resentful of other people's success and self-esteem.
Dismuke,
That is one of the most intelligent comments I've read in a blog comment box ever.
If her presidency would be Bill Clinton II, then Obama's would be Jimmy Carter II.
Myrhaf,
We can only hope that Obama would be that ineffective. Frankly, I worry that he might be more like FDR II.
In a great crisis an FDR II is possible. What a disaster that would be!
Myrhaf,
Picture an Obama presidency starting in the middle of recession. Now picture how he'd go about solving it.
Now go get a bottle of whiskey and try not to think about it anymore. ;)
You have given me an excuse to buy some SKYY Vodka.
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