By Barry Rubin
The Obama-Romney debate has been analyzed from many angles, especially
about who won. Yet in the course of the event, Obama said what might be the
most revealing slip he has ever made. This one phrase tells more about Obama
and the ideology of his left-wing supporters than every other word they have
spoken in the last four years.
It came near
the end of the debate when
Obama was summarizing his policies. He was clearly on comfortable ground, going
through all of his cliches. But then, lulled into carelessness by rote
repetition of his basic slogans, Obama got lost for a second--as demonstrated
by his trademark stutter when he becomes unglued--and dropped in an amazing
admission. Obama said:
"All those things are designed
to make sure that the American people, their genius, their grit, their
determination, is -- is channeled and [emphasis added] -- and
they have an opportunity to succeed. And everybody’s getting a fair shot. And
everybody’s getting a fair share -- everybody’s doing a fair share, and
everybody’s playing by the same rules."
Obama was flattering the American
people (genius, grit, determination) and promising that everyone will get a fair
share (redistribution of wealth?) and fair shot--terms he has never actually defined. As for everybody
playing by the same rules, Obama and his supporters favor different rules for
each race, gender, and ethnic group, not to mention crony capitalists.
Yet it is that word
"channeled" that gives the game away. Channeled by whom? The
government, of course, and the great geniuses whose ideology and book-learning
seeks to dominate the economy and culture, forcing people to do things for
their "own good." Who has ever proposed that some power should
override the liberty of the American people to channel them, to tell them what
to do?
The problem is that in a free enterprise (with reasonable regulation) country under the Constitution, Americans decide for themselves what to do. Nobody channels them, a phrase which sounds like a rancher driving his cattle to market.
The problem is that in a free enterprise (with reasonable regulation) country under the Constitution, Americans decide for themselves what to do. Nobody channels them, a phrase which sounds like a rancher driving his cattle to market.
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We are not speaking here of laws against, say, murder or robbery or littering. These are clear and explicit, accepted by a consensus. This is something far more hidden, in which the implications of laws--for example, how Obamacare is intended to produce nationalized medicine--lead to something that the public opposes or certainly doesn't want. And it is far wider and more systematic than under any previous government, too.
Thus, Americans will be told what they can do
in pursuit of good health, what they can eat, how they can do business, what
they are supposed to think and know about, what their religious institutions
can do, and so on. Can one imagine any of the great American presidents
talking about how he was going to "channel" the people with an
increasingly large government that soaked up all the capital; determined the
investment; set the rules to direct the health system, energy production, the
auto industry, and just about everything else? Clearly, Obama wasn't channeling
George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.
In that moment he revealed himself
totally. And, as far as I'm aware, nobody even noticed it.
PS: Another typical Obama moment came after the debate when he ridiculed Romney for saying that there were no laws that rewarded companies with tax breaks for exporting American jobs. Any real intellectual or serious leader would simply have cited the specific laws to which he was referring, but Obama merely kept saying how silly--or dishonest--Romney had been without giving any evidence. And any other president would have been pressed to provide evidence. A small incident but quite revealing of how fantasy-based administration policy has become.
PS: Another typical Obama moment came after the debate when he ridiculed Romney for saying that there were no laws that rewarded companies with tax breaks for exporting American jobs. Any real intellectual or serious leader would simply have cited the specific laws to which he was referring, but Obama merely kept saying how silly--or dishonest--Romney had been without giving any evidence. And any other president would have been pressed to provide evidence. A small incident but quite revealing of how fantasy-based administration policy has become.
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