Obligatory reading: the permanent bureaucracy
This.
Excerpt:
Barack Obama is the first president of the democracy that John Adams warned us about.
Democracy never lasts long,” Adams famously said. “It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself…”
…[T]he United States is not going to fall for a strongman government. Instead of delegating power to a would-be president-for-life, we delegate it to a bureaucracy-without-death. You do not need to install a dictator when you’ve already had a politically supercharged permanent bureaucracy in place for 40 years or more…Barack Obama isn’t the leader of the free world; he’s the front man for the permanent bureaucracy, the smiley-face mask hiding the pitiless yawning maw of total politics…
Congress’s supine ceding of its powers, and the Obama administration’s usurpation of both legal and extralegal powers, is worrisome. But what is particularly disturbing is the quiet, polite, workaday manner with which the administration goes about its business ”” and with which the American public accepts it. As Christopher Hitchens once put it, “The essence of tyranny is not iron law; it is capricious law.”
And please pay particular attention to this last paragraph:
Barack Obama’s administration is unmoored from the institutions that have long kept the imperial tendencies of the American presidency in check. That is partly the fault of Congress, which has punted too many of its legislative responsibilities to the president’s army of faceless regulators, but it is in no small part the result of an intentional strategy on the part of the administration. He has spent the past five years methodically testing the limits of what he can get away with, like one of those crafty velociraptors testing the electric fence in Jurassic Park. Barack Obama is a Harvard Law graduate, and he knows that he cannot make recess appointments when Congress is not in recess. He knows that his HHS is promulgating regulations that conflict with federal statutes. He knows that he is not constitutionally empowered to pick and choose which laws will be enforced. This is a might-makes-right presidency, and if Barack Obama has been from time to time muddled and contradictory, he has been clear on the point that he has no intention of being limited by something so trivial as the law.
There is a fascination with what Obama has done because it is so strangely audacious and yet it seems to evaporate almost as soon as it occurs, at least in the mind of the majority of the American public. His genius is to do outrageous things so disarmingly they seem to have put the public to sleep. Or maybe the public was already lulled to sleep by a combination of mass media, education unworthy of the name, and the distraction of vapid and often offensive entertainment.
I’ve described it, thousands of other pundits and bloggers and commenters on the right have described it, and yet description will not rescue this country, although description/understanding is a necessary first step. And the IRS abuses were a dramatic wakeup call in the power of the “liberal” bureaucracy to stifle actual liberty. “Phony” scandal, indeed.
Interesting coincidence: I just read the first couple of paragraphs, thought “Wow, this may be one of the most important things that have been written about Obama,” realized I needed to get back to work and would have to read it later, but stopped in here for a quick look before doing so.
“There is a fascination with what Obama has done because it is so strangely audacious and yet it seems to evaporate almost as soon as it occurs, at least in the mind of the majority of the American public.”
File under “death of democracy”, perhaps alongside the Williamson piece.
Back to work…
I meant the first couple of paragraphs of “The Front Man.”
It’s not only Obama’s audacity, it’s that he’s doing it so much, in ways that can’t always be detected, that one loses track of all the times he’s crossed the line. That, and the press has not only not reported on these moves, but actively provide cover with their numerous distraction stories.
Quick: How many scandals have recently been associated with his administration? Could you name all 24 that Keith Koffler compiled: http://tinyurl.com/ldwdhw8
Mac: Same here.
Neo:
I remember one of my professors in law school — and this was during the late 1970’s!– warning us of the dangers inherent in the increasing power of the federal bureaucracies. He made some of these same points over 30 years ago.
God what a mess we’ve made of things! It hurts to have to say this, but I’m afraid that at this point we’re way past the point of no return.
I do not think Gramsci included beaurocracy in his recipe for incremental Leftist takeover. But the Federal beaurocrats are protected by Civil Service law to an extent that would make the tenure-loving AAUP envious. They are predominantly leftist Dems, have been since FDR’s day. They hire people just like themselves, so it is a perpetual machine of governance by regulation.
And they run the country. Which is a reason why I despair the rotting USA can ever be fixed.
You wonder why DOS has screwy policy? Look no further than the tenured beaurocrats.
Something like 7 of the 10 most prosperous counties are those that surround DC. That’s where the Federal regulators all live.
Sorry for the spelling error!
“Long before she declared her infamous state of emergency, Indira Gandhi had been centralizing power in the prime minister’s office, and India was spared a permanent dictatorship only by her political miscalculation and her dynasty-minded son’s having gotten himself killed in a plane wreck. ”
Errors right out of the box!
This is a reference to Sanjay Gandhi. He died in a plane crash 6-23-1980.
Then what of Rajiv Gandhi: Prime Minister who took that office upon the assassination of his mother. In office 10-31-1984 through 12-2-1989. (Assassinated)
Where I come from that’s dynastic — to the limit.
“[T]he great globalist does not even speak a foreign language.”
He speaks fluent Arabic. He picked that up as a kid. It’s NOT a hard language to learn — as a SPOKEN language. Reading and writing Arabic is another matter entirely.
(I’m reminded of all the Japanese in the Islands who were fluent in oral Japanese (again, not hard to pick up) but who never mastered reading and writing it. (It quickly becomes brutally challenging.) They’d describe themselves as NOT fluent while leading tour groups — in Japanese — day in and day out. (orally) (Name tags and whatnot being in Hiragana — a totally phonetic alphabet so simple even I could figure it out in one day.)
He’s on to something. But, his exposition needs an editor.
His crack about Kenyan-Muslims should’ve been deleted. It’s chaff — and destined to be embarrassing.
What a shame.
Don Carlos: they’ve created a machine that CAN’T be financed.
The SOLE reason that this cancer has grown so large is because America, by way of her reserve currency status, has been able to EXPORT TAXATION.
It’s too much for the average Joe, but America exports her defense budget as a service and product. (Peace + manly toys)
This is achieved by way of compelling ALL other nations to run surpluses with America. Said trade surpluses are balanced by electronic chits printed at zero expense by the Fedsury.
Netted out: America gets real goods in trade for electronic ciphers — and in magnum style.
Without this mechanism, America could not afford to sustain her immense defense complex.
Of note, as America cuts back on defense outlays, her dependent allies cut back on US Treasury purchases.
Meaning: the national economy can’t save one thin dime by trimming defense expenditures. We weren’t paying for it in the first place.
Peace: it’s our primary export.
We haul in $ 650,000,000,000 per year via currency exports/ peace ‘rents.’
Absolutely no-one will buy your currency exports if you’re a declining military power.
This was seen last when Britain had to roll up the Royal Navy to satisfy the idiots in Whitehall — 1945 through 1954. The British Pound almost entirely lost its reserve currency status — and gilt holders world wide cashed out.
You can be certain that the above is w-a-a-a-y above the brainiacs in the Pink House.
“Or maybe the public was already lulled to sleep by a combination of mass media, education unworthy of the name, and the distraction of vapid and often offensive entertainment”.
That is a bigger factor than Obama’s cleverness. Mass apathy, ignorance, and indifference.
That combined with a republican minority that has every intention of clinging to what little power it has by causing as little trouble for the tyrant as possible. Boner and McCain, McConnell and the rest are so self absorbed with their own skins they can justify anything he does as excusable so they can live to wimp out another day.
I’m no psychologist, but I’ve watched Boner blubbering with emotion he cannot control every time he’s re-elected– what does he talk about? He relates his personal journey of achievement and getting elected to the congress after working long hours with 2 jobs, making sacrifices and running his business, etc etc. You realize that no principle or duty to service has a greater personal meaning to him than the office itself. This is the pinnacle of his personal life, and he can no longer let go of that than a loved a dearly loved spouse. That’s the problem.
Losing his office as congressman is too
In reality, there is NO hill that Boner, McCain, McConnell, and the rest of the RINOs will die on. No issue is worth losing your seat over – it’s better to be in office doing the capitulating.
Boner’s House motto: “If we’re going to lose, I want to be the one losing, because it pays better than never getting to lose at all”.
PS
please excuse the broken sentences. ranting is a sloppy way to express one’s self.
“Unless explicitly repudiated by the next president and prohibited by law, the precedents of the Bush presidency will stand. The expanded powers of one president typically are carefully guarded by their successors . . . Republican or Democrat.”
– David Orr, Oberlin College professor (“Refitting the Presidency to the Constitution”)
It’s a trend! The House is supine for want of a backbone. The Senate is purely collusive. And the demos is content as long as the FED keeps pumping pixie dust.
@ blert
its not his audacity…
that would be so if he was reagan and made it happen despite the opposition…
its the collusion and other things that he has
but as to your point on indira
same fear nearly allowed the soviets to take over indonesia, but the chinese jumped in to steal their work…
and
and
The Mitrokhin disclosures are particularly disturbing for them as they remind us once more, among other ”well known” facts, of how they and their fellow-travelers, unable to work their Revolution, worked at securing the same goal by infiltration – of the Congress; a sort of ”Revolution-by-stealth”. This was the famous ”Kumarmangalam thesis” that, as Mitrokhin reports, got such enthusiastic assistance from the KGB. But surely that is not just a reminder of what is past. The Communists have never been closer to attaining that goal as they are today – what with a supine Congress so completely at their mercy.
they are referring to
Communists in Congress:
Kumaramangalam’s Thesis
and since you realize this is dynastic
Corporate Governance and Strategic
Leadership in Family Based Multinational
Entrepreneurial Firms of India
http://edissertations.nottingham.ac.uk/469/1/06MAlixnmaa.pdf
also read
KGB: The World Was Going Our Way
http://www.nicaliving.com/node/18372
Indira Gandhi, code name “Vanoy
Salvador Allende, codename “Leader”
Carlos Fonseca, codename “Hydrologist”
As a proud Indian National and former intelligence officer Raman takes personally the claims and accusations Andrews and Mitrokhin make regarding his country and Indira Gandhi, and while he questions the veracity of the entire Mitrokhin affair, amazingly, he fails to prove incorrect (in fact, he doesn’t even try) a single thing he has said across nearly 30,000 pages of transcribed documents, nor anywhere in the first 1400 pages of published summaries .
more books coming out than just the two
…maybe the public was already lulled to sleep by a combination of mass media, education unworthy of the name, and the distraction of vapid and often offensive entertainment”.
I’d add two more things — the complexity and hustle-bustle of modern life, although neither lulls folks to sleep.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reportedly gave its approval last week to an Obama administration plan to provide weapons to moderate rebels in Syria, but how individual members of the committee stood on the subject remains unknown.
There was no public debate and no public vote when one of the most contentious topics in American foreign policy was decided — outside of the view of constituents, who oppose the president’s plan to aid the rebels by 54 percent to 37 percent, according to a Gallup Poll last month.
In fact, ask individual members of the committee, who represent 117 million people in 14 states, how they stood on the plan to use the CIA to funnel weapons to the rebels and they are likely to respond with the current equivalent of “none of your business:” It’s classified.
The complexity and hustle-bustle of modern life are to some extent due to the regulatory forces at work complicating everyone’s life.
That’s true. Also, a good percentage of the “hustle-bustle” is for paying taxes.
Where are the lawyers in all this? Oh yeah, the legal realist school, and I’m too busy just trying to survive, and you’re all exaggerating, and it isn’t my specialty.
But why don’t the legal professionals (apart from a few cases) refer to the cat? It’s well out of the bag. Maybe they figure they had better not, because if worse comes to worst, they’ll at least have a chance of becoming one of the camp guards … assuming they don’t piss off the predestined winners too much.
But we all know what’s really been going on with the law, and for years now. I for example remember sitting stupefied in one particular of my numerous undergrad Constitutional History and law classes more than two decades ago.
The other like-offerings made through the hist or phil departments were about what you would expect from them.
The poly-sci department’s pre-law constitutional law courses were another: neither a mere factual recounting nor an airy theoretical analysis of principles. There you learned, or were told quite bluntly, that the law as we assumed it existed is not the law at all.
Law is a process. It is what the certified practitioners of law do. Law, and your rights then, are whatever the system post-judicial revolution, ‘Blessings be upon Its Name’, can be jiggered to say they are. Rights are and have been for a long while now, taken to be what the “mob is willing to fight for”, or what the courts say they are, or what the mob is willing to fight the courts over.
And, if the middle class “mob” is more behaviorally or morally inhibited by the precepts they have naively imbibed as children, whether in the home or in the pews, than are some other mobs, then so much the worse for the inhibited ones; those famously described as clinging desperately to their religion and their guns.
This blithe cynicism, nihilism actually, on the part of the knowing in-crowd as they initiated us with a wink and a nod into the reality of what was left to us in the way of intrinsic rights, made it clear that you as the acolyte were ultimately to choose to be either one of the manipulators or one of the manipulated.
This then, is where, or one of the places where, the moral sensibility breaks I keep harping on, and which you acknowledged with a link-back just recently, shout out so loudly we can’t ignore the fundamental differences.
Of course I didn’t walk to the front of the room and punch the smirking professor, short and bald and weak though he was, in the face for his complicity in undermining my country. No, like most others I tried to make enough compromises so as to approach the whole subject as a “technical matter”, a Constitutional Talmudism, or Talmudic Constitutionalism in which I had to some degree acquiesce and master in order to manage a real grade. Which I received only grudgingly .. as to someone who wasn’t really getting with the program emotionally, so to speak.
Well, we’re not kids in college any more. So …
So, maybe the Taxed Enough Already folks have that civil courage which it takes to face the scorn of the social manager class.
And why not? There’s no longer any pretending we don’t know what’s going on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vpYTK1FvJa0&t=46
What have they, The T.E.A. party folks, or any of us, got to lose by acting, which they or we won’t lose anyway in doing nothing?
And so the opponents, including a Supreme Court when it still was American, of FDR’s alphabet soup of agencies are proved correct. RIP
There IS a way back. Ours is a government of three separate but co-equal branches. It falls on the legislative branch to rein in the executive. And they will when the people en masse demand it by electing a plurality in congress to do it. And the public will do that when they realize the gravy train jumped the track and went over the cliff. We’re not quite there yet.
But, hey, I’m an optimist.
The majority are not yet ready to fight a war. Much akin to the wannabe neutrals and loyalists in America vs Britain. Until such a time as they are, millions of Americans will be shipped off somewhere and they won’t be seen again. By the time people realize what is happening and acquire “intent” from it, victory will be much harder than they can imagine.
As people found out in the US Revolutionary war, there are no “neutrals”. Your neutrality will not be accepted… by either side. Canada’s the place for draft dodgers (Clinton) and those seeking neutrality.
A few people, like Grim Beorn (of B5) once told me that Republicans did much the same thing as Democrats, people like Ayers can’t create any new terrorists to carry things on so aren’t a threat, and Obama is just a politician.
Now a days, I might say that Democrats, as a member of the Leftist alliance (+Islamic members) isn’t just a political party like Republicans. That Ayers did indeed create one disciple that people might want to worry about instead of shuffling off to the side as they have their All American Barbeque parties: Obama of course, is that disciple and terrorist.
War is going to happen whether you like it or not. Those who are too worried about casualties in war and spend a lot of time with introspection, should consider how many more people would die from just such hesitations in the past, present, and future.
Death by 1000 cuts of the bureaucracy. As Hillary says “what difference does it make?”.
Tyranny by any person or group is still unacceptable and must be stopped by revolutionary defunding.
“revolutionary defunding.”
There you go.
“This is achieved by way of compelling ALL other nations to run surpluses with America. Said trade surpluses are balanced by electronic chits printed at zero expense by the Fedsury.”
I’m just a layman blert but many countries do NOT run a trade surplus with the US. In fact, a 3 minute search on Google revealed that China, Japan, Germany, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Canada, India, Ireland, South Korea and Italy are the top ten nations that have a trade deficit with the US.
According to the same US Census Bureau figures, the top ten countries that run a trade surplus with the US are Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Brazil, Australia, Panama, Singapore and Argentina.
I’m not sure what to read into that but perhaps you need to reexamine your assertion that America “exports her defense budget as a service and product” because the data does not appear to support your contention.
Regarding Williamson’s article, I found myself with a curious sense of dissatisfaction both while reading it and now, a few hours later that sense remains. It’s curious because the astuteness of his analysis is, to me, obvious. After reflecting upon it, I’ve concluded that it’s an incomplete analysis. Certainly true as far as it goes and insightful but lacking cohesiveness. It ignores Obama’s foreign policy, his inordinate accommodation of Muslims, his animosity towards conservatives, republicans, the middle class and whites. His willingness to play the race card and Obama’s narcissistic sociopathy, etc, etc.
Obama’s actions through the EPA and other federal regulatory agencies certainly confirms his willingness to use those agencies to construct a permanent leftist American bureaucracy.
I simply think it is but one of the poison arrows in Obama’s quiver. Obama’s motivations are far more complex than simply a modern version of a Woodrow Wilson style Presidential bureaucrat.
I agree about Obama’s motivations being more complex than that article indicates.
In line with this thought, I often get the feeling that Obama, much like Mohammed Ali and Eldridge Cleaver, is playing with us, just to see how far he can go in his outrageousness without being called on it. “Us” being the guilt-ridden white population of the U.S.
Passing the blame to an amorphous Bureaucracy is also false. It is a bureaucracy, but the structure is not the evil. The Liberals who make it up are the evil.
The bureaucracy is not tyrannical and despotic because it is a bureaucracy. It is despotic because it is Liberal. Liberals are BY NATURE despotic and hateful people who destroy for sport and power. They hate others because they hate themselves. They hate freedom because they are slaves to diabolos and therefore despise all good and free and natural and normal things.
If the bureaucracy were made up of the typical American from 1776 to, say, 1950….it would be good.
Since it is not made up of those people but is made up of the devil, it does what devils do.
Non one will exorcise that demon but good people. And where are they? “Sheltering in place” I think is the term of the day.
Defunding. It’s the only way.
5,000 people not paying taxes have a problem.
5,000,000 people not paying taxes, and the government has a problem.
It’s time.
Ann: “In line with this thought, I often get the feeling that Obama, much like Mohammed Ali and Eldridge Cleaver, is playing with us, just to see how far he can go in his outrageousness without being called on it. “Us” being the guilt-ridden white population of the U.S.”
Bingo! When a person has learned to use any opposition as prima facie evidence of raaaacism, and has gotten away with it over time, it becomes the preferred modus operandi. Obama’s in your face arrogance is a learned habit. Many arrogant narcissistic men/women have some accomplishments they can point to. Obama’s only accomplishment is his ability to talk. In that he is reminiscent of Oprah Winfrey, who freely admits that she succeeded by being exceedingly good at talking.
Kevin Williamson’s analysis is a good one. Here we have several things coming together. A non-law abiding President, an MSM that preaches his policy as inerrant truth, and a bureaucracy that agrees with and carries out his policy. It is a watershed. Impeachment for dereliction of duty or malfeasance in office would be the proper course. But he is insulated by his 50% blackness and the MSM. I am comforted, but only minimally, by the fact that Obamacare is a train wreck and that his policies will not revive the economy. Things must begin to deteriorate to the point where even LIVs will begin to take notice.
The Republicans must run against those policy failures as democrat failures not Obama failures. Trying to make him responsible for anything is a fool’s errand. As Rush Limbaugh has pointed out, Obama has framed himself as an outsider who is working against the awful Republican forces in Washington D.C. who are preventing him from making things better. Which is, of course, a strawman because the democrats hold the Senate and Whitehouse. They really hold the power and are setting the agenda, but Obama seems to be above it all and not responsible for the poor economy, the train wreck of Obamacare., our failing foreign policy, the renegade IRS, and so much more. It’s political ju-jitsu that is hard to attack. IMO, the way forward is to attack the policy failures, not the man.
Remember how little coverage there was in the media a few years ago when the feds made the libraries throw out the old childrens books because they might have lead? Or how little coverage there has been of the federal policy that you are supposed to have a costly federal liscence as a contractor to paint a house built before 1977-or even to remove a window? yet the illegals can paint houses no problem-no liscense….
Obama reminds me of King James II leading up to the English Revolution of 1688.
John Stossel a while back was talking about some guy who was sent to federal prison for years because his imported seafood was in the wrong container-plastic or paper or box- some sort of crazy thing- supposedly violated the country of origins laws-perhaps this was a violation of some congressional law- but the punishment did not fit the crime…and then we hear about Amish country raids by the Feds over unpasturized milk-these things ought to be front and center of the news!
maybe it ws one raid by the feds in amish country…
Maybe I am just in a soft mood but this made me cry. The death of democracy indeed. My heart bleeds for my grandchildren who have to live with what has been done to them.
Carl in Atlanta and the lawyers who post here – I wonder sometimes if a society that hasn’t got a common respect for the law can be made to adhere to it, no matter how good the system might be.
Case in point being the president, who may know what the constitution says, but he has no regard for it’s importance historically or culturally. To him and many Americans,it’s a useless document. But underneath it all I have the sense that many more Americans don’t value the same things they once did. A law isn’t respected simply because its a law. That sort of thing was instilled in me as a kid from a young age- you don’t have to like a law, but it’s something you respect and honor until its changed. That kind of discipline seems to be missing not just with politicians. It’s probably just my perception, but it seems we’re a lot looser as a society when it comes to observing laws than we once were. The moral authority of the constitution isnt shared among all of us. Unless our culture believes that our constitution has a purpose, it’s just a useless document subject to popular opinion.
We seem to be the last generation that holds it up as a the guidelines that defines us as a society.
The Ancient Chinese Imperial courts for bureacrats and other representatives of the state, had to pass certain meritocracy tests. This was designed as a way so that regardless of someone’s caste, the most talented members would be selected for a job that required a lot of literate and intellectual abilities.
In this fashion, extremely large cities in geographically huge areas were administered to. In an age where there were no cars or radios.
Now that we have tech and money, are we somehow better than the Ancients?
“Liberals are BY NATURE despotic and hateful people who destroy for sport and power.” Mike
Personal experience and plain common sense demonstrates that to be untrue. Both neo and I have tried, repeatedly, to demonstrate why that is not so and that, that characterization fails to distinguish between Marxist/leftists and their dupes, well meaning liberals. But we might as well have been taking to a wall. Oh, well.
“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” Winston Churchill
Generally speaking, once the people notice it’s time to fight (British WWII, Cuban middle class, Iranian protesters), it’s wayyy too late to do much of anything productive.
It becomes a stalling game for time. For some “miracle” that’ll appear. For the British, that miracle was the US.
Miracles don’t come often though. Eventually the US will use its divinely granted stock of miracles.
Love that British wit Geoff.
It’s cool how it says nothing and still makes you seem smart!
Add Churchill and stir – instant argument!
GB…
Red China NOT running a trade surplus with America?
Surely you jest.
Whence their staggering pile of US Treasury securities?
Ditto for Taiwan, Japan, etc.
Sorry about your tragic Google expedition.
Not fair of the
Bureaucracy
to claim there’s love,
subject and free.
Geoffrey Britain Says:
…But we might as well have been taking to a wall. Oh, well.
In 1988 Reagan left this a conservative country.
It is willful, intransigent conservative incompetence that enables abominations like the Obama administration.
Something might come out of the blue and save the USA from itself, but it won’t be the “conservative” base. Maybe Ted Cruz can shape this clown show back into an electable governing coalition, but things might be too far gone even for someone of his talents.
But saaaay, if people get mad enough at Obama, we can ban abortion and gay marriage and flag desecration and pornography and… (/sarc)
The permanent bureaucracy
is hyper and autocracy.
You, the common lower shysters,
Are not invited, fucking bastards.
Remember, New fucking Orleans
We taught you don’t fuck our means.
We’ll give you air, water and food
As long as it’s understood:
Grateful, we demand you admit
The power we give and the shit.
Ref Mike @ 8:39 pm
“Passing the blame to an amorphous Bureaucracy is also false. It is a bureaucracy, but the structure is not the evil. The Liberals who make it up are the evil.
The bureaucracy is not tyrannical and despotic because it is a bureaucracy. It is despotic because it is Liberal.”
= = = = =
Check out Jerry Pournelle’s take:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
“Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.”
Food for thought.
I know that when you guys talk about “bureaucracy” and “big government” you’re not talking about the massive militarization of the US-Mexican border, the resulting deaths of thousands of border crossers in the desert, the gulags holding tens of thousands immigration detainees or the mass deportation of 1.5 immigrants. You certainly aren’t talking about Obama sentencing Muslims abroad to death with cluster bombs and drones or of the force feeding of innocent men being illegally held in Guantanamo. Neither are you referring to the prison-industrial complex that locks away hundreds of thousands of low-income and minority citizens for decades for relatively minor crimes.
No, you’re talking about a few meager regulations that mainly effect the wealthy and the powerful (oh, I’m sorry the almighty job creators I mean). It’s true that Obama is an authoritarian, but the jackboot is largely directed at the heads of the poor and dark-skinned, not the Galtian overlords for whom your hearts bleed.
Pingback:strangely audacious | the link brief
My goodness, Andrew, what an active imagination you have.
“His genius is to do outrageous things so disarmingly they seem to have put the public to sleep.”
And while he does this, he travels around delivering school-marmish lectures pretending he’s some sort of victimized, powerless outsider with no power to fix anything.
Obama said this on Leno last night…
“The odds of dying in a terrorist attack are a lot lower than they are of dying in a car accident, unfortunately,” Obama said. ”The general rule is just show some common sense and some caution.”
How about the general rule is: you are the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces and it’s your job, to the best of your ability (with the most powerful and expensive military in history, not to mention Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, NSA etc) to prevent terror attacks on U.S. citizens.
He’s a freak.
Lizzy,
I’m sure there are more Owebama scandals than 24. One I thought of and checked to see if it was listed (it was not) was the auto union bailout, where the auto companies’ bond holders were sacrificed first in the bankruptcy proceedings, when they should have been paid first. Owebama completely overturned bankruptcy law on his whim with that slick maneuver.
Oh, and don’t forget the closing of Republican/conservative GM dealerships in another example of crony socialism, many more successful than those which were not shuttered (they grew thanks to getting rid of the competition). Owebama looked at the 2008 voting map and closed dealerships based upon that map, you know, punishing one’s enemies.
24 scandals? Owebama has that many a day before breakfast (because he probably sleeps well past noon due to his partying, including with illegal drugs).
God, I am tired of Obama the genius. While his contemporaries in China and Russia are running circles around him, the admiration for his cleverness just never ends.
Take energy and the EPA for instance – The rest of the socialist nations are developing their oil and gas industries at a breakneck pace to imitate our hydraulic fracturing, and replicate our natural gas boom, all the while talking about global warming and lecturing us on environmental responsibility. And I mean ALL of them, even the Europeans. My company is selling this equipment to internationally, all the while our domestic industry is fighting in courts with the genius.
The difference between his socialist contemporaries and our “genius” is they know the difference between rhetoric and reality. Obama is an adolescent who swallowed his parents and mentor’s socialism BS hook, line, and sinker, and actively promotes it to the obvious detriment of his own country. Those are the actions of an idealistic moron, not a genius.
You can insert a number of other policies where the world’s smartest president has applied his genius, and compare it to what other countries say, as opposed to what they actually do.
Among his contemporaries, he’s the only one who believes the socialist, pacifist, environmentalist ,citizen-of-the-world idealistic horseshit he professes. Everyone else is laughing up their sleeves at him, all the while we sit here marveling his brilliance for ruining an economy, a health care system, and a military. Sheer genius. Bravo. What’s the encore?
Andrew, we’ll be happy to talk of the ones you cite and have frequently on this blog.
There would be no need for a militarization of the border if millions of Mexican’s weren’t entering ILLEGALLY.
We are not responsible for the deaths in the desert. The coyote’s and the illegal immigrants are responsible.
The tens of thousands of immigration detainees are being held in far better facilities than ‘gulags’ and are being treated far better than Mexico treats its criminals. And by breaking the law, they are ALL criminals.
There would be no mass deportation of 1.5 ILLEGAL immigrants, if they hadn’t broken the LAW.
Obama sentencing Muslims abroad to death with cluster bombs and drones would not be happening if those societies weren’t engaged in TERRORISM.
The forced feeding of guilty TERRORISTS are being legally held in Guantanamo TO PREVENT THEM FROM KILLING YOU. Personally, I’d let them starve themselves to death.
The hundreds of thousands of low-income and minority citizens have been locked up because THEY BROKE THE LAW.
The ‘dark-skinned’ are not poor because of their race or because of societal racial prejudices. They are poor because they refuse to embrace three basic cultural values; education, a strong work ethic and familial loyalty.
While obviously there are individual exceptions, in the aggregate a culture’s embrace of the three factors above, exactly parallels that group’s success in America.
Asian Americans from Japanese, Chinese and most Southeast Asian cultures embrace all three.
Asian cultures are also ‘shame’ cultures and place tremendous pressure upon their children to excel, which is why Asians exceed whites, both in school and professionally. Even when not excessive, parental expectations are high.
Asian Americans prove that ‘white privilege’ is a leftist myth and, that minority success in America depends upon these three simple cultural factors.
Pacific Islanders and Native Americans including Hawaiians do embrace familial loyalty and Hispanics embrace familial loyalty and a strong work ethic but none of those cultures embrace education.
Black American culture embraces none of the three and, that is why blacks reside at the bottom of the ‘totem pole’.
Again, while there are individual exceptions, as a group these stereotypes hold true.
When cultures also value and practice traditional virtues like respect for the rule of law, self-control, persistence, delayed gratification, honesty, thrift, and sobriety… they create abundance.
When a culture embraces the unalienable right of the individual to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” the full flowering of human genius is harnessed in service of that culture.
All of the above is also why the left is so anxious to make of minorities a ‘threatened’ group. It’s to protect their myth, that ‘white privilege’ condemns America to permanent racism.
You’re not helping poor, dark skinned people, you’re entrenching their dependence.
“Geoffrey Britain Says:
August 7th, 2013 at 1:25 pm
Andrew, we’ll be happy to talk of the ones you cite and have frequently on this blog.
There would be no need …”
Time will tell, but my guess is that you are attempting to reason with a rhetoric machine.
The Left is responsible for most of the ills of the world.
Doesn’t matter what it is. The Left, and their Democrat founding members, are responsible for.
Obama is just the latest scion of the aristocracy here. There’ll be plenty more people, like the Caligulas and the Neros, that the Left will make into an “autocrat” and people like A here will swallow it up whole being the storm troopers that they are.
These are the “people of good intent” that reside on the Left, as we can see. What’s the difference between a human shield and a terrorist, from a US drone’s point of view?
Geoffrey Britain at 1:25pm:
Tell it like it is, brother!
Amen.
With respect to the statement that bureaucracies are not evil; it is the people in the bureaucracy who are evil, I do not agree.
Perhaps evil is too strong of a word, but I would argue that virtually any bureaucracy contains the seeds of corruption, and will inevitably morph into an authoritarian, bullying entity over time–if not controlled. And control is exceptionally difficult.
That’s fundamentally what bureaucrats of the Left consider Americans, Old.
In some ways, it’s merely a difference in philosophy.
This idea that the fate of any entity is predetermined, has certain real life consequences and ramifications.
You said it, Andrew! Just look at that poor Ariel Castro: sentenced to life plus 1,000 years just for kidnapping 3 girls and holding them for 10 years, raping and beating them every day. I mean, really — those are just “relatively minor crimes,” right, Andrew? He’s just being picked on because he’s a minority — probably votes Democrat, too! And all those black and Hispanic young men in prison for murdering, raping, robbing, and assaulting other black and Hispanic people, why, that shouldn’t count as serious crime — after all, the victims are only black and Hispanic, and who cares about them? You certainly don’t, do you, Andrew?
And those poor innocent fellows in Guantanamo. Really, what could be more innocent than bombing a market, planting an IED, burning down a girls’ school, or beheading the entire family of a village headman because he wouldn’t knuckle under? They’re just trying to get into Paradise so they can screw 72 virgins. We just don’t appreciate their culture. Who are we to say one culture is better than another?
I am so glad, Andrew, you took the time to show us how awful America is. Can I make a suggestion? Why don’t you go live in North Korea? I’m sure it’s just the kind of place you’d love!