July 17, 2009

Ten Things He Hates About Us

Hatched by Dafydd

Here the Ten Uniquements [thirteen no, wait -- fourteen!] that Barack H. Obama hates about the America he inherited -- and how he plans to change all that. Obviously not every person in the United States will fit every instance of American exceptionalism on this list; in fact, some folks will see the entire list as alien and frightening. (We have a name for such people; we call them "liberals.")

But for the most part, this list defines the character of America. And even with the staggering pressure that modern life puts upon these eternal verities, America still exhibits these character traits more strongly than any other country on God's green earth. Collectively, they are what make us unique on the globe: uniquely moral, uniquely powerful, uniquely rich, and uniquely free.

So here they are, The Ten Uniquements:

  1. Americans are self-reliant: They want work, not welfare; their own insurance, not government-controlled health care; and an open choice where to send their kids for school (or to educate them at home).

    Obama wants to change America so that everybody must rely upon the government for every aspect of life, from womb to tomb.

  2. Americans are personally generous: We prefer our aid to be voluntary, not coerced, enforced, or expropriated by some government bureaucrat sitting in D.C. (or the Hague).

    Obama wants to institutionalize and nationalize all acts of emergency aid, foreign and domestic... and make them into entitlements.

  3. Americans are individually empowered: If attacked by criminals or terrorists, they would rather rely on their own weapons to defend themselves and theirs than comply with their attackers' demands and hope the police finally arrive. (Viz., from women shooting attempted rapists to what the passengers of Flight 93 did)

    The One We Have Been Waiting For With Bated Breath has made it plain that, were it up to him, Americans would be disarmed, forcing them to depend upon overwhelmed and underfunded police forces. Except for rich Hollywood liberals -- and of course politicians -- who would have heavily armed bodyguards at beck and call.

  4. Americans are antiracists, antisexists, and anticreedists: We really don't judge people by the color of their skins; worse, we actually do insist upon judging them by the content of their characters!

    "Justice" Sonia Sotomayor.

  5. For those tasks that require government, Americans prefer that government be as small and close to them as possible: city before county, county instead of state, state in preference to national; and for goodness' sake, national always ahead of international!

    No comment necessary.

  6. Americans would rather limp along under a government that is too weak than be crushed by a government that is too strong: They demand lower taxes, even if that means fewer programs.

    The Obamacle and his faction in Congress now openly talk about hiking taxes back up to where they were under Jimmy Carter. But realistically, that's nowhere near enough to pay for their rapacity; that would require an average of 60%-70% for everyone.

  7. Similarly, Americans prefer smaller companies: We encourage individuals to start up small businesses, rather than longing for the entire workforce to be tied to a handful of giant, multinational conglomerates.

    Taxing "the rich" inevitably means especially heavy taxes on small business; taxing medical-insurance payments kills small business; high interest rates -- guaranteed, once government runs the economy -- means the utter destruction of small business; and extending the power of unions into every company, no matter how small, will bring about the consolidation of all labor into one big glob of corporatism... which is, of course, the goal of the "liberal fascism" that Jonah Goldberg describes.

  8. Americans are not envious: Each of us sees himself (or his children) as perhaps being rich one day, so we don't punish success.

    The B.O. administration is brazen in its contempt for a flat or even semi-flat tax system; they want a sharply "progressive" tax rate, where "the rich" are socked with higher and higher surtaxes, windfall profit taxes, inheritance taxes, and a gargantuan capital-gains tax. (Of course, they also intend to define "rich" downward until it includes everybody who isn't on welfare... and they also favor a highly regressive national sales tax in addition to a progressive income tax. Perhaps they're just happy taxers and loopy looters.)

    But they also support regulations to enforce, not just equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome, no matter what life choices someone makes; they long for a Harrison Bergeron world, where everyone is truly equal -- even if that means a "Handicapper General" to ensure that all are equally poor and equally miserable.

  9. Americans are evangelists: We believe in spreading the faith of "ethical monotheism" everywhere, even to places that have never known anything but religious oppression and "holy" warfare. (Even many of us non-religious Americans support that goal!)

    Obama sees religion as the handmaiden of radical politics, as his twenty-year association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright demonstrates. His liberal goodfellas in Congress side with the ACLU on most of its attacks on public religious displays. (But on one occasion, Obama himself went against form, nominating the evangelical Christian Francis Collins to head up the NIH.)

  10. Americans are evangelists: We believe in spreading the government of individualism, Capitalism, and deregulated democratic republicanism everywhere, even to places that have never known anything but despotism and crony-cannibalism.

    Barack "Lucky Lefty" Obama prefers instead to import into America all the evils of foreign welfare states and tyrannies -- from the government health care of Britain, Canada, and Japan, to the corporate nationalizations of Oogo Chavez's Venezuela, to the rule-by-decree of banana republics from South America to the South Pacific, to the torpid fatalism and dhimmitude of much of the Middle East.

Oh, heck -- let's make it a baker's dozen:

  1. Americans are adamantly participatory: We cannot be silenced, disenfranchised, shut up, sent home, pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered... our lives (and thoughts and votes) are our own. We are cardinals, not ordinals.

    Obama prefers that Congress simply enact his proposals without regard for the people; if the people get unruly enough, he will dissolve them and appoint a new people (subject to Senate confirmation).

    Bills are shoved through committees on swift, party-line votes; and he instructs the full House and Senate have it on his desk in a couple of weeks... preferably without representatives and senators confusing matters by trying actually to read the bills before passing them.

    For the rest of us, we should stand quietly in line and wait for instructions.

  2. Americans are bold, brave, and grand: Our plans are expansive, not cramped; our crusades are universal, not limited; our expectations are sky-high; and our demands are impossible... yet we regularly meet them.

    The B.O. administration tells us we must slash our expectations of future medical cures, "spend money to keep from going bankrupt," bow to the wishes of Putin, Kim, and Ahmadinejad, close Guantanamo Bay, get out of the Middle East, stop making waves, don't expect prosperity anytime soon -- and stop using energy. Or else. I fear a terrible malaise is creeping out of la Casa Blanca.

  3. Americans are stubborn, obstinant, querulous, gritty, cantankerous, peevish, grudge-nursing, quick to anger, and often violently intemperate... and those are our best qualities! That's why we're still around, the oldest government in the world still functioning by and large according to its foundational documents, with no sign of dying -- or allowing Lucky Lefty from Chicago to turn America into New Amsterdam.

    Obama wants America to be liked. To be liked, we must be nice. To be nice is to be accomodating -- to everyone else. We've had our turn; in all fairness, it's now time to hand the reins to other countries -- say, Iran, North Korea, China, Venezuela, and Russia. Let them drive for a few decades.

Oh, all right... and "one to grow on":

  1. Americans are brutally honest: We despise corruption -- of the soul or of the public purse.

    Obama prefers Chicago Rules -- vote buying, suing his opponents off the ballot, suppressing his opponents' vote count, elections run by union thugs, back-room deals, White House threats against reluctant congressmen, and pals and gals making a killing off of sweetheart stimulous deals. It's no shock -- from little ACORNs, mighty orcs grow.

There you go -- some indeterminate number of things he hates about us, about America as it is -- and what he wants to overthrow and create in its place... America as he thinks it should be. Now, what are we going to do about it?

Cross-posted on Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 17, 2009, at the time of 7:17 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: dref

I agree wholeheartedly with most of this expect for Item VII.

I disagree strongly with VII. I think Americans prefer the companies or companies that are the most efficient, provide the best services to the most people and treat them best, whether they are big or small. It's true that many Americans have been indoctrinated by the anti-big business "small average guys are always saints, big powerful guys are always evil" mentality that is in so much of our liberal dominated pop culture and taught in our lefty schools and universities and thus mistrust and hate large conglomerates.

But I think that most Americans respect those large corporations that became big through industry, ambition, efficiency and doing things better and smarter than anybody else and thus attracting the most customers and growing as a result. They don't have a knee-jerk hatred to businesses just because they happen to be huge. They obviously don't like those large institutions that came into being through government benevolence and subsidies of course, but small business are not immune to doing the same thing either. For instance, many small manufacturers and owners of windmill farms only exist because of taxpayer driven government subsidies. But don't confuse the anger directed toward large business that are alive and or thrive only because of federal and/or state benevolence with a blanked hatred of "bigness" in general, especially to those conglomerates who achieved and maintain their bigness through their own initiative, labor and brainpower. Remember, even the largest conglomerates can only exist in a free market if the masses find them worthy enough to work for and spend their money on their products and/or services rather than a smaller business or even an equally large competitor.

I wouldn't necessarily feel bad if the workforce was "tied" into a few large conglomerates if those conglomerates provide the best for their customers and workers (and of course that they are the result of and operate under the free market rather than government favors) just because they are big, anymore than I would feel good that people are "tied" to a billion different inefficient, badly run, unimaginative, low-paying small business just because they are small. Many taxes (especially when they are raised) such as windfall, capital gains and payroll taxes hurt large businesses much worse than smaller ones. Tax increases hurt ALL businesses, large and small.

P.S. Corporatism is nothing more than a form of communism, there is no true corporation(s) at work under such a system, just state owned and run bureaucracies that are very nominally constructed along corporate lines. The term corporatism is a misnomer, albeit one perpetuated by its supporters (i.e. Mussolini who was inspired by communism ideals to create his brand of fascism) to convince people that massive state involvement is not at work under such a scheme. Once a business large (including giant corporations) or small is nationalized it's no longer a business or a corporation but a glorified branch of the government.

Also, Item XIII contradicts VII.

The values enumerated in XIII such as boldness, ambition, being expansive, and having high expectations are what led to America having such large businesses. Those ideals (which I agree are noble and very American) lead to growth and growth leads to large corporations. You can't admire boldness, expansiveness and such and condemn large corporations which are the result of, are fed by, and exist through those ideals. McDonalds, Disney, Wal-Mart and other such conglomerates exist and became so huge in the first place because their founders believed in being bold, universal, expansive and ambitious and their successors at those companies (for the MOST part) continue in that tradition. Small business is not bold, universal, ambitious, or expansive. Hence, they is why they are small! If you are content with being 5 feet 7, you can never be 7 feet tall. If you are content with bread and water, you will never enjoy the benefits of a large banquet. Small businesses are charming and highly individualized and often serve niche, specialized needs in their community which is noble and necessary too. But their owners and runners are not very interested in growth or putting in the massive effort needed to carry out large plans, ideas or concepts. Despite the liberal propaganda both concepts and type of businesses CAN exist at the same time. But one should not be denigrated in favor of the other.

That criticism aside, good article.

The above hissed in response by: dref [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 17, 2009 9:45 PM

The following hissed in response by: Robin S.

XIII reminds me of a quote by Robert Heinlein (in the form of Lazarus Long):

"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort."

I actually disagree with the "lacking in altruism" bit, but the rest is spot-on. I'd much rather have a cantankerous, suspicious, surly neighbor who mostly kept to himself (except for when he was shooting at goblins in our midst) than a nosy busybody who just wanted every one to get along (or, worse, wanted everything to be "fair").

The above hissed in response by: Robin S. [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 18, 2009 6:37 AM

The following hissed in response by: k2aggie07

Beautiful article. It could be a party platform in and of itself. Wanted to note one thing:

Americans are personally generous: We prefer our aid to be voluntary, not coerced, enforced, or expropriated by some government bureaucrat sitting in D.C. (or the Hague).
I think this is extremely important to understand. Further, I think this thought should be explored a little more.

If giving (or any good action) is no longer voluntary, if good is forced or coerced, there is no morality or virtue in it. It is simply the action of an animal, doing what it must do.

We applaud the virtuous, but that title is always reserved for those who choose to put their body between themselves and war's desolation, or to give of their time and money. There is no virtue in the "volunteerism" of a chain gang.

The above hissed in response by: k2aggie07 [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 18, 2009 1:50 PM

The following hissed in response by: Necromancer

Big Lizard I hope you don't mind but I copied this and am sending it to a few email recipients that need to read things like this.If this is a problem let me know.

The above hissed in response by: Necromancer [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 19, 2009 6:49 AM

The following hissed in response by: AMR

"Now, what are we going to do about it?" Well sitting on our butts and complaining to the TV does little. Going to TEA Parties is better, but isn't making too much of a dent. But routinely picketing their regional offices, as I and a few others are doing, while following the tactics of MLK may just scare our congresspeople a bit. If necessary, taking over their offices with sit-ins since our "employees" are not following our directions could follow. Now that might get their and the media's attention.

The above hissed in response by: AMR [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 19, 2009 10:09 PM

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