Thursday, May 22, 2008

What did you have for dinner last night? Barack Obama wants to know.

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."

"That's not leadership. That's not going to happen." - Barack Obama


Give a liberal enough time to pontificate off-script and he will always show his true colors. Barack Obama indicated last week that, if elected president, he will consider it his business to regulate what type of car you drive, what you eat, and at what temperature you set your thermostat. Oh, he might check with the European Union first to get their okay, but that's called leadership.

The cradle-to-grave nanny-statism of the left is virtually complete. They would, if they could, turn us all into dependent wards of the state, regulating our lives from the time we throw off the layers of blankets each morning in our government-controlled sixty-six degree homes, until we turn off our environmentalist-approved fluorescent light bulbs each night as we climb into bed. If some new drug is discovered that can regulate dreams they will no doubt encroach on our non-waking hours too. My fear is that many Americans are so used to the state stepping in and taking control of their lives they just assume it's the government's job; they've already been seduced into dependency and simply shrug off any further violations of their freedom. If Obama is elected he will have pretty solid majorities in both houses of Congress. In such a case, given the mind-set of the Democrats, and given that a weak and craven Republican party is all that would stand between them and the implementation of their agenda, you can be pretty sure that another large chunk of the salami we call freedom will be lopped off. For instance, the ability to choose your own doctors and level of health care. The glories of state-run health care are on the horizon, which will move us one step closer to liberal paradise. Unfortunately, the right to state-run health care, given the examples in Canada and England, is the right to be put on a waiting list; to be refused that extra test, the one that might alleviate your worst fears; to be treated in filthy, run-down hospitals and clinics; and by doctors not of your choosing.

There is another aspect of Obama's comment above that interests me (scares me?) "[A]nd then just expect that other countries are going to say OK." Here we have once again the liberal fear that other countries might not approve of how we live. Its the product of academia in this country, the one that considers most Americans to be unsophisticated rubes, unlike those with-it Europeans, who are the be-all and end-all in the academic's eye. Obama thinks like these insulated people. His "cling to guns and religion" comment a few weeks back in San Francisco, comments he thought were private, is more evidence of this attitude. Obama doesn't really have contempt for the rest of us - it's just the way we are, we couldn't help it, just as, according to him, his own white grandmother is a product of her environment and the Reverend Wright a product of his. It's all very understandable to Obama and his crowd. But not to worry! We are not lost. We are redeemable, in Obama's eyes. All we need is his shining example to see the light. Obama-mania, with its tendency towards the Führerprinzip, its impulse to regulate behavior for the good of the state, puts me in mind of nothing so much as this book. Read it, and ponder its message, before November.

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