Shockingly, despite all the warning signs of misadventure--from staggering joblessness, cratered budgets, perpetual trillion-dollar deficits, shrinking military, and government program downsizes, Obama still believes he's captaining America's ship to unsurpassed achievement. Instead, Barack has America sailing full-speed into an economic tsunami, as unconcerned as a blind man stumbling across a minefield, drunk and barefoot.
This essay plumbs the remarkable obduracy of Liberals who condescendingly mistake their elitist attitude for competence to lead.
I. What is Liberalism?
Question: Is it not a fundamental assumption of leftism that modern liberalism is transparently true by definition; whereas Conservative ideas are embarrassingly stupid and utterly false? Further, don't liberals naturally assume that the elite class--aka Ivy League grads and leftist politicical Brahmans--are simply smarter and more efficient
by light years than the average person? Were this self-satisfied assumption correct would we be in the desperate straights we find ourselves today? Currently, mendacious politicians savagely battle to waste borrowed money like bubonic rats tearing each other limb-from-limb over government cheese.
Liberalism, as the term is used today, is shorthand for socialism. This must be differentiated from the worldview of the Founders, who used the same word for their ideas. But the colonist's theories must now be referred to as "Classical Liberalism," to contrast. So when speaking between the two ideologies, leftism of today should be called "Modern Liberalism"; and that of the American Revolutionaries as "Classical Liberalism."
Classical Liberalism is by far the most influential and successful political theory in world history. It consists of these elements, according to
American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia:
"Classical liberalism" designates the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and press, and international peace based on free trade. Until 1900, this ideology was simply known as liberalism. The qualifying "classical" is now necessary because liberalism has become associated with socialism--interference with private property and the market on behalf of egalitarian goals.
But at the core of our political struggles we are still battling over the vision of left versus right regarding theories of the nature of mankind.
II. The Elite Vision: Are Politicians Really Masters of the Universe?
One of the fascinating developments in political history is the advent of socialist and Marxist ideology which made politicians default geniuses of the world. One does not have to look far to find how Marxist leaders inevitably mistook ruthless rule for competence. Consider
Mao's agrarian debacle the Great Leap Forward, murdering 40 million Chinese by sheer stupidity and ignorance. Each Marxist master has similar dumb, uneducated and murderous mistakes which prove dispositively that Marxism and socialism are horribly false and misbegotten belief systems. Consider
Lenin's claim, "Any cook should be able to run the country" when pondering how leftism combines the very worst of illiterate, simplistic thinking combined with arrogant overconfidence.
And yet, America is currently trapped in the miasma of Obama's reign of unlettered incompetence. We stand at the edge of the precipice of economic Armageddon while the Con Artist in Chief beams his happy, dysfunctional smile across a land laid waste. Every single major decision by Obama has either been a precipitous failure or a hypocritical, hornswoggling continuation of his officially damned predecessor's policies.
So what drives such relentless failure, done with such remarkable hubris?
A. Conflict of Visions: Liberalism as a Condescending, Simplistic Ideology
Thomas Sowell has written extensively upon the conceits and failures of modern liberalism, and leftist political hacks like Barack Obama. He calls progressive ideology "Vision" politics, and describes how the enthusiasts of this theory lord over others their high-minded, but impotent ideals. He describes the tragic results of the Liberal tendency to see themselves as a special elite force, who are the only persons fit to tackle humanity's challenges and crises--just as Barack so condescendingly claimed about the budget debate.
In
A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, Sowell maps out the essential difference between progressive and conservative ideas. Beliefs and policies of the left and the right hinge upon their respective views of human nature. In general, Leftists believe individuals are no more than the sum of their influences, such as family, neighborhood or society. He calls this the "Unconstrained Vision," and such progressives are the "self anointed" people--being those with a liberal, or socialist political view. This group relieves individuals of their responsibility when they fall short, because they believe when one person fails we all fail, and the society is responsible for raising them up again.
But the Conservative vision is one of individual responsibility, where people make it or fail upon their own initiative, willpower, and character. He calls this the "Constrained Vision," which is opposed to utopian systems, and socialist schemes meant to perfect all people. The constrained vision relies on a modified belief in the goodness of human nature, allowing the free market, rule of law, and constitutional government to help remind people the differences between good and bad behavior.
Sowell writes,
The constrained (Conservative) vision puts little faith in deliberately designed social processes, since it has little faith that decision-makers could effectively cope with the enormous complexities of designing a blueprint for an economic system, a legal system, or a system of morality or politics. The constrained vision relies, instead, on historically derived traditions.
B. Vision of the Anointed: Liberalism as a Holy Caste of Enlightened Saviors
Sowell then maps out a further point in
Vision of the Anointed. Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. Modern liberals are elitist who have a very strong, almost religious vision about themselves and their purpose on earth. Liberals believe they are a sacred and holy order, a group "anointed" to help the poor, weak, ignorant--the social, legal, and moral misfits. He writes of those verbally talented, but intellectually bankrupt liberals, like Barack:
This vision so permeates the media and academia, and has made such major inroads into the religious community, that many grow into adulthood unaware that there is any other way of looking at things. Many of these "thinking people" could more accurately be characterized as articulate people, as people whose verbal nimbleness can elude both evidence and logic. This can be a fatal talent, when it supplies the crucial insulation from reality behind many historic catastrophes.
These anointed, like Obama, are convinced they exist in an ethereal state, above all mankind whom they must help with their great genius. Writes Sowell:
The anointed make much of their "compassion" for the less fortunate, their "concern" for the environment, and being "anti-war," etc. One reason for the preservation and insulation of a vision is that it becomes inextricably intertwined with the egos of those who believe it. Despite Hamlet's warning against self-flattery, the vision of the anointed is not simply a vision of the world but is also a vision of themselves and their moral role in that world. It is not a vision of the tragedy of the human condition: Problems exist because others are not as wise or as virtuous as the anointed.
III. Apocalypse Now?
We stand at the precipice of utter world currency instability and collapse. Some even talk about a return to the Gold Standard because of the failure of fiat "paper" money. Currently, Europe teeters on the edge of the abyss as Italy and Spain join Ireland and Greece on the way to insolvency. Meanwhile, Obama is pouring
trillions of dollars down the drain on pie-in-the-sky "stimulus" projects; and "quantitative easing," while the dollar plummets and hyperinflation crouches in the shadows, waiting to destroy.
Directing the collapsing global fiscal order, Barack sits like
Major King Kong in Dr Strangelove, riding the "recovery" down to doomsday like a bull-rider clinging to a plummeting atom bomb. But does it have to end this way--with the blind leading the blind into an economic abyss?
Conclusion
Thomas Sowell
also wrote,
Whether Barack Obama is simply incompetent as president or has some hidden agenda to undermine this country, at home and abroad, he has nearly everything he needs to ruin America, including a fool for a vice president.
Barack's arrogant claim that "only the politicians can solve our crisis" was simply a reconfirmation of what we already knew: He is a leftist blinded by ideology into thinking his anointing will save us all. But the fact Barack is utterly unaware of his own epic failure, seeing spectacular success where others only detect decay, carnage, bones and fresh graves of the economy means he either must be stripped of power or permanently removed from office before America enters permanent decline.
