Obama vs. Madison

This began as a comment at Ace of Spades, but it got a little unmanageable.

Taking one last shot at redemption from pandering to the billionaire bobbleheads in San Francisco, Barak Obama tried to explain himself. The Washington Post quotes;

As Obama acknowledged this morning, his mistake was to suggest that many small-town values are formed by cynicism. “You know the truth. It is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That’s what sustains us,” he told the Muncie audience.

But he added, “what is absolutely true is that people don’t feel like they are being listened to. And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream.”

James Madison saw Obama coming when he wrote Federalist #10 and wrote about the propensity of government and tyrants to use factions to end a republican government.

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations.

Simply by saying “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” Obama was reinforcing stereotypes and reinforcing the factions – some might say he’s driving a wedge with a “specious declamation”.

The truth is that the jobs that have been leaving the northeast that Obama claims has made Pennsylvanians bitter, left because of government – as State taxes were levied ever higher against businesses, business moved South to escape the cost of taxation. State governments hadn’t reined in spending, so when business left, revenues fell so taxes went up, more business left – the cycle of unrestrained government.

When Federal taxes rose in the nineties, businesses cut labor costs by sending jobs overseas. Obama claims that people are bitter because government isn’t taking care of them – government is what made them bitter. Pandering, populist politicians who make promises of taking from one faction to give to another made people bitter.

In Federalist #51 Madison illustrates the reason for government and the difficulty of balancing the surrender of the people’s power against securing their liberty;

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government….

The government Obama wants doesn’t control itself – many would argue that government hasn’t controlled itself for about seventy years now, mainly because the people let it go off on autopilot because of populism and empty promises.

Pennsylvanians, nay Americans, don’t “cling” to guns and religion – those are our choices to make. Guns and religion built this country and some of us keep those traditions alive to keep the memories of our antecedents and our shared national heritage alive.

But those choices of that faction are outside of Obama’s faction – and because he’s an Ivy League-educated prissy boy, he feels a need to explain it to himself and the other prissy-boys. However, being an Ivy League prissy boy, he doesn’t understand that particular faction or their motivations.

Just One Minute quotes an unsourced (now altered) NY Times article;

By way of contrast, here was the original Times lead:

MUNCIE, Ind. — Senator Obama on Saturday rebutted criticism that has enveloped his campaign over a comment he made last Sunday that many working-class voters are angry and bitter over economic conditions in America, and he told an audience here that his words were not meant to be insulting.

Many dispirited voters believe politicians will not solve their problems, Mr. Obama argued, so they base their votes on issues like religion, gun rights or same-sex marriage rather than voting for their economic interests.

People base their votes on issues like religion, gun rights or same-sex marriage because we know that the only thing government can do for us as far as our economic interests is let us keep more of our own money (read that; tax cuts). But he can’t say that can he? Then the thick-skulls drooling morons that hang on his every (empty) word will look for another messiah at whom they can throw their cash to assuage their white guilt.

From Don Surber

Now he says he misspoke.

Evidently.

But notice, he did not retract his statement. He really thinks what he said.

Oh, and for the record, Clinton got it wrong, too, when she went after Obama, as reported by Reuters (h/t Blue Crab Boulevard);

“Pennsylvania doesn’t need a president who looks down on them,” she said at a rally in Philadelphia. “They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.”

No Pennsylvania and the rest of the country just need you to keep us safe while we work for our own futures, your own jobs and our own families. Stop promising things you can’t do – things we can do for ourselves. I’m so sick of politicians who think I need them to “fight” for me.

Category: Politics