06 Nov 2008

An Opportunity, Not a Disaster

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David Smithee” is rejoicing over Obama’s election, taking the view that the democrats have overreached and we’ve got them where we want them. They’ve got their leftist president and a Congressional majority. Now they can try governing from the left, and just watch what happens to them.

As ancient Israel whined to have monarchs rule over them to be like their pagan neighbours, so too are American leftists smitten with the illusory sophistication of the crumbling European economic and social models. They salivate for the esteem of tyrants, socialists, and every manner of grandiose failure; the more extravagant, the better so long as the mission statement is sufficiently lofty. It’s said that liberals are like any other people; only moreso. In this case, it’s their turn to perpetuate the ancient cycle of rejecting what works, turning their backs with disdain on America’s incomparable blessings and crying “Give us what they have!”

Well, we’ve gotten it.

In a receding economy and aided by a political monopoly, President Obama is going to prove unable to resist his fetish for increased taxation and eco-regulatory strangulation. In a dangerous time, his vanity will lead him to grant legitimacy to nations that wish America ill. When an Obama presidency with majorities in the House and Senate ends in economic calamity, emboldened international foes, or both — as history wearily tells us it must — then the healing can begin.

This is a true changing of the guard in more ways than one, as it also signals the end of the Moderate. Trashing his own party only served McCain for so long. The Maverick was devoured by his Media base the moment he became inconvenient, and timorous pseudo-conservatives have jumped ship to ensure they remained on the right side of the DC sophistication line. Classical conservatives would be well served to let them flounder.

Yet I admit my own relief, despite the costs we will bear in the short term, that Obama was the victor.

For the Democrats, it was an act of sublime short-term calculation to trot out Obama. A man whose easy, telegenic charm was able to narcotize into irrelevance all the facts that would have rendered him unelectable in anyone else’s skin. The sewage of slum lords, communist sympathizers and domestic terrorists swirl about his ankles. And yet a flash of smile and a few words in his soothing baritone captured the American imagination and soothed a majority of the electorate. But now the work is going to start. Results are going to matter, and if there’s one fact about Barry that the media was unable to obscure, it’s that he is a candidate truly uncluttered by moderation.

He is the proto-Democrat; liberalism’s gleaming new flagship. And that’s going to be a long-term problem for Democrats in ways they can scarcely now imagine. …

Obama is not just a Democrat, or a liberal. Obama is liberalism. He is liberalism stripped of all of its false fronts of civic mindedness. Shorn of all its bogus declarations of interest in the public good, or lip service to free markets or property rights. He is liberalism as it exists only in the psyche of the petty tyrant, rarely glimpsed emerging in public. Shrieking, demanding as a newborn, nakedly ravenous for power. Worshipping expedience, debasing of life, and viewing everyone else’s wealth as his own, with which he may conduct his vast social experiments on the subdued human landscape.

But as an ideological flagship surrounded by hysterically unrealistic expectations, if he fails, Obama is going to drag the Democrat ship down to truly crushing depths. And when he does, the redemption of the Democrats will not be swift in coming. With Obama, they have bet the ideological farm, and several surrounding properties too. They have damned the torpedoes and abandoned the strategy of advancing themselves in managed increments. By pushing Obama into the spotlight, they’re tipping their entire ideological hand a good twenty years ahead of schedule.

Good piece. Read the whole thing.

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Scott D

The reality that President Obama will face is that government – even a government staffed by fervent believers – cannot actually create anything. Yes, it can redistribute resources – as when it sends out “stimulus” checks, diverts crops from food to fuel, guarantees mortgages the market would otherwise not fund, or invests money to keep failing businesses alive – but it cannot actually create wealth. That can only be accomplished by people with vision and capital. Unfortunately, people with vision (aka current or future high earners) and capital are precisely the ones in Obama’s crosshairs. That understanding is at least one of the reasons for yesterday’s largest ever post-election market decline. Obama is a smart man, both politically and intellectually. It is uncertain-to-doubtful whether he is economically astute as well. Will he understand that we must actually allow the millers to make more porridge, or will he follow through on his campaign rhetoric that all we really need to do is stir it clockwise and pour it into different bowls? Even the Lord Obama will find himself constrained by having only five loaves of bread and two fish.



a rolling stone

This country is in the worst possible condition. We’ve managed to combine Vietnam with Black Monday, we’ve made an enemy of the entire world, and we are wallowing in poverty and misery. What jewels can be admired in the crown of the republican’s reign? George W. Bush and his administration set this country afire. Why else would the majority of the country now plead for his polar opposite? I thank god Obama will soon take over, and I’m a republican. I don’t believe this country was ready for a minority leader, until the previous administration crashed and burned. Now color, creed, and race don’t seem so important anymore, do they? Change, strength, and intelligence are NOW respected, if only because we’ve lived without it for so long.



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