BEYOND DISRESPECT

After nearly a year of the Vichy regime there is really no point in recounting just how bad things are. The country is beaten and occupied by a foreign power. Bad people are in positions of power and are doing bad things. Most things that are done are simply for the benefit of the ruling cell itself. The so-called health care reform is an exemplar. It succeeds at increasing the size and scope of the state immensely and pleases the regime's core supporters enough to aid in its regime self-perpetuation. Nothing else is accomplished; certainly not improved medical service. But a recent generic Christmas greeting did recall one of the few illuminating, if not exceedingly bright, spots of the year: Congressman Joe Wilson’s succinctly heartfelt spontaneous declaration at the Wizard, “You lie!”

Well, yes, yes he does. And regardless of the forum, that was really worth enunciating. Contained in those two monosyllabic words was possibly the most profound political statement since, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The reason is that what Mr. O and his minions lie about is not the typical lies of politics. Never mind the promises that bills will be posted in advance for the public to read on the internet, adn health care debates broadcast on CSPAN. Never mind that no lobbyists will be hired in the White House, that you can keep the insurance you have, health care reform will be deficit neutral—even positive for the debt, illegals won’t be covered, nor abortions funded by your money-- all are of the unremarkable species of lies that, while despicable, politicians tell hourly, and that the public stupidly buys wholesale. But the Obamians lie about who they are. They lie about their motives, their goals, their very reasons for being on the premises. It is not the lying means they employ for their ends you need fret about, but the lies about the ends themselves.

Failure to realize this emphasizes the recurrent and overarching theme-- the fatuousness of treating the Obamanation as if it were just another presidency. Administration #44. Again, it is not. If America is a country—the only country, in fact-- that was founded upon an idea, then it follows that there are ideas that are identifiably American ones and, thereby, ones that most definitely are not. There is plenty of room within the parameters of American ideology to argue over policies and preferences. Hamilton and Jefferson, Lincoln and Calhoun, Clay and Jackson, have produced sparks within the national tent since its erection. But the fights in the houses of power today are not over differing views of Americanism, but between ideals that are American and those that are something else. Ideologies and outlooks that are as foreign as divine kingship and as alien as bat worship are now being pursued as within the mainstream of the political spectrum.

Nationalizing one-sixth of the economy is not simply another take on American political philosophy any more than Islam is a different interpretation of Christianity. It is part of an entirely different tradition, that of socialism and communism, that was nowhere to be found in the minds or intentions of the most radicalized Framers. Criminalizing the failure to purchase a commercial product is even more bizarre, no better a fit than restating just one of the Decalogue as, “Thou shalt place all other gods before me”. Tweak that one little phrase and you have altered all altars into something radiating beyond the spectrum of visible light as seen by Western culture for a darn long time. Those writing the Constitution did not forget to include a whole second act regarding government responsibilities— as the Obama-voiced Theory Constitutional Asymmetry would have it. Neither did Adam Smith simply neglect a second volume in which he championed the command economy for the sake of completeness and balance. Any expanded role for government in everyday life does not complement or complete the ideal of America, but directly contradicts it. It really is that simple. What is frightening is that people can graduate from America’s most elite law schools—then teach constitutional law of all things— either without realizing this (many are, after all, just plain thick) or with an active contempt for what they have examined.

So the Constitution is a classically liberal document whose exegesis has been completed pirated by Marxists. Imagine seminaries run by a clergy of activist atheists. And the likes of the Little Nikitas of the current autocracy, the “red diaper” babies, the offspring of the Obamas, the Emanuels, the Podestas, and other fellow travelers of the Cold War fifth column, know exactly what they are about. So, we all pay the price for the shortcomings of an education and socialization system that fails to teach citizens to recognize wolves from big-toothed grandmas. A lot of otherwise reasonable Americans voted for this anti-Christ. Well, the obervation may have been out of place and short of the proper decorum, but its significance transcends politeness. Barack Hussein Obama is delivering the State of the Union address, and THAT…that is an insult to the presidency more grave than any tortured outcry of Mr Wilson’s.