Travis Rowley: Obama’s Failed Vision of Government
Saturday, May 18, 2013
It was only several weeks ago when President Obama spoke to the newest graduates of Ohio State University, cautioning them, “Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems…They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”
It should be said that, incidentally, the best way to get people to stop paying attention to what the government is doing is to get them to trust it.
Oh, and what’s the worst that could happen if an electorate begins to look the other way, right?
Faith in the government is what primarily separates modern liberalism from modern conservatism – Democrats from Republicans. Obama’s Ohio State commencement address wasn’t the first time the leader of the Democratic Party mocked the concept of limited government. Speaking at the University of Michigan in 2010, Obama said, “What troubles me is when I hear people say that all government is inherently bad…When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us.”
I wonder if President Obama considered the government “us” when the government was sanctioning slavery, segregation, the Tuskegee Experiment, or the internment of Japanese-Americans.
How about the War in Iraq, or the decreasing of income tax rates for top income-earners? Mr. Obama, was that “us?”
It should be noted that liberals only speak this way about the government when the policies they prefer are being implemented.
In addition to the stupidity and insincerity of Obama’s point, what is truly discouraging and frightening is to witness government actors express just how much they trust themselves with power – something that is wholly inconsistent with traditional American philosophy.
As Thomas Jefferson once warned, “If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves.”
The Founders didn’t trust themselves.
Two hundred years later, a man carrying the torch of limited government would express just how much he believed power should remain outside of government hands in this way: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I'm from the government and I'm here to help.’” (Reagan)
Simply put, modern liberals are naïve and un-American elitists who lack the governmental discipline to be American legislators.
Liberalism Is Wrong
Shortly after Obama’s commencement speech in Ohio, the country learned of an IRS plot aimed at targeting conservative civic groups, that the Justice Department had “secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press,” and that efforts had been made by members of the Administration, State Department, and Intelligence community to mislead the American people in regards to the true nature of the attacks in Benghazi last election season.
Scandals fraught with deception and cover-ups, on the surface they all seem to be politically motivated – fueled by a craving for power and a willingness to do anything to retain it.
Of course, this is something unsurprising to conservatives, who are not only aware of the nature of government but also rightfully concerned with the character of their political rivals – Leftists, people who worship government, enjoy government, and desire to dwell within its bureaucratic community.
Even without vicious and ambitious progressives tending to populate state agencies, government is unavoidably inefficient and clumsy before such corruption exists.
When President Obama claims to know nothing about all three Washington scandals currently in question, isn’t he admitting to the inferiority of his own big-government philosophy – that is, that an ever-expanding state cannot be controlled to the point where it remains accountable to taxpayers?
The Independent Journal Review reports that “in an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, the embattled Attorney General [Eric Holder] said ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I’m not sure’ so many times it was absurd.”
Even the reliable Obama sycophant Chris Matthews had this to say about the Obama Administration’s obliviousness that it is currently using to defend itself: "For anybody to run around in Washington and say, 'We don't run the IRS,' or, 'We can't control the Justice Department and I'm recusing myself,' ... the steering wheel doesn't control the car anymore."
Even Matthews must be perplexed by the fact that Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS official who oversaw the agency’s tax-exempt organizations when Tea Party groups were being harassed, “now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation” – and still hasn’t been fired.
I thought Obama was “angry” over the IRS scandal? Why is this woman still enjoying her promotion?
Everything conservatives say about government is true. This isn’t just about how corrupt leftists and government intrinsically are. This isn’t just another thing liberals have gotten wrong. This time, the thing they’ve gotten wrong is their entire ideology.
The contrast between Obama’s speech at Ohio State and the realities on the political ground are merely the latest illustration of the fact that liberals are inferior by philosophy.
Travis Rowley (TravisRowley.com) is the author of The RI Republican: An Indictment of the Rhode Island Left.
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