Our pragmatist President dampened his deep-seated ideology for as long as necessary, or possibly as long as he could stand it. Today President Obama’s ideology trumps his pragmatism and is completely unfettered. The President’s proposed Fiscal Year 2010 budget reveals the Marxist initiatives that he reasonably believes the predominantly free-lunch Congress will readily accept. Now there is freedom for Hollywood socialists to celebrate, the Reverend Wright to smile again, and Black Liberation Theology believers to feel vindicated. The rest of us now get to learn just how large the free-lunch fraction of our electorate is.
We have elected an intelligent, charismatic and well-educated man to lead the United States of America. But it does not appear that he took any hard science courses, like physics or calculus, where the correct answers are not determined by opinion polls, ambiguous semantics or legal interpretations.
President Obama apparently believes that wealth just exists, like matter. He must remember from grade-school science that matter can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed between phases. Therefore, because wealth just exists and cannot be created, the President is poised to transform wealth from places he believes it should not exist, to places where he prefers for it to be. We will not be surprised to hear the President tell us, “It’s just a simple matter of physics”.
As many predicted, the President’s idea of “Health Care Reform” turns out not to be any meaningful reform that would result in more effective health care delivery, more efficient use of health care resources, or result in more healthy Americans. In Obama semantics, “Health Care Reform” means only government-subsidized, government-regulated health care. There is no hint of actually defining the current health care system and its problems, no suggestion of any healthy living initiatives, and no mention of health maintenance and disease prevention.
One hyper-expensive initiative, an education entitlement from birth through university (and law school?), does offer an intriguing bit of hope. Much credible evidence indicates that our educational deficiencies are not caused so much by lack of affordability as by lack of believability. A large percentage of parents, and consequently most of their children, simply do not believe in the value of education. Over the last five decades very little progress has been made in opening the minds of these parents and students to the potential value or necessity of education in our world today. Assuming there is some way to pay for the education entitlement, it might have a beneficial effect of taking away the financial excuse commonly touted as the reason for our widespread ignorance. Perhaps then the opinion leaders of the various communities within the U. S. might feel some obligation to encourage their constituents to believe that education is now not only politically correct, but also necessary and valuable to them.
That tiny bit of hope buried in the education area of the FY 2010 budget may also lead our president to perform a personal education initiative for all of us. There is precedent for a leader of millions to compile the rules for his subjects in a small book, preferably with red binding. Although it might commonly be called “Chairman Barak’s Little Red Book,” with today’s technology it would likely be available online as well as in print.
The vast majority of us have never seen such a book, much less been able to read one. But we might imagine the tone of its contents:
- “A spirit of cooperation is necessary; dissent will not be tolerated”.
- “You have a right to everything your government wants to give you”.
- “Read budgets line-by-line and expunge all waste and frivolous spending not favored by your Leader”.
- “Remember that those who have more than you are your enemy”.
- And so forth. . .
In the spirit of cooperation, all thinking Americans should send President Obama their favorite aphorisms as idea stimulaters for “Chairman Barak’s Little Red Book”.
Tags: Barak Obama, Education, health care, Mao Tse Tung, Physics, President Obama, U. S. Budget, Wealth
