Obama Under Appreciation Syndrome

Democracy and Power 101:  Government is power

 The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
James Madison, Speech in the Virginia State Convention of 1829-1830

 

Obama Under Appreciation Syndrome

Michael Oakeshott , a British political philosopher, over twenty years ago wrote a couple of paragraphs on the political philosophy and policies of Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their minions. That is:  the vast monopolistic power of government is to be used by the intellectual elite to impose a superior society on all Americans.  Oakeshott wrote:

…. use it (the coercive power of government) for imposing their favorite projects upon their fellows is what they understand as the adventure of governing men. They are, thus, disposed to recognize government as an instrument of passion; the art of politics is to inflame and direct desire.

 According to Oakeshott’s modus operandi the intellectual elites provide the superior policies.  Then using their superior intelligence, the must inflame and direct the desires of the public.

 Today, Obama, Pelosi and Reid are befuddled that the public does not appreciate the enlightened policies they have bestowed on America.  Cognizant that their policies are splendid, they blame the public’s inability to appreciate good policy.  Charles Krauthammer in Real Clear Politics playfully calls this the “Obama Under Appreciation Syndrome.” 

 The electorate apparently is deranged by its anxieties and fears to the point where it can’t think straight. Part of the reason “facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time,” he (Obama) explained to a Massachusetts audience, “is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.”

 On the contrary, the American public is frightened and alarmed by the debt, taxes and loss of economic vitality and personal freedom that is being imposed.  Krauthammer concludes:

… Even as we speak, the social-democratic model Obama is openly and boldly trying to move America toward is unraveling in Europe. It’s not just the real prospect of financial collapse in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, with even the relatively more stable major countries in severe distress. It is the visible moral collapse of a system that, after two generations of increasing cradle-to-grave infantilization, turns millions of citizens into the streets of France in furious and often violent protest over what? Over raising the retirement age from 60 to 62!

Having seen this display of what can only be called decadence, Obama’s perfectly wired electorate says no, not us, not here. The peasants have seen the future — Greece and France — and concluded that it does not work. Hence their opposition to Obama’s proudly transformational New Foundation agenda. Their logic is impeccable: Only the most blinkered intellectual could be attempting to introduce social democracy to America precisely when the world’s foremost exemplar of that model — Europe — is in chaotic meltdown.

 Oakeshott, who probably never knew of Obama, Pelosi and Reid, poignantly predicted today’s public revolution:  …often a politician of this sort misjudges the situation; and then, briefly, even in democratic politics, we become aware of what the camel thinks of the camel driver.