Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it." Ayn Rand

"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

For "a human being, the question 'to be or not to be,' is the question 'to think or not to think.'" Ayn Rand

21 January 2009

Obama - "A is not A."

The President is the executive in our Federal Government whose job is to Constitutionally execute the laws Constitutionally passed by Congress. Great care was taken in formulating the powers of the office, because the Framers of the Constitution were acutely aware that tyrants had arisen throughout history to take over governments. They feared tyrants about as much as they did anarchy. They were also very perceptive in understanding that the passions of men caused democracies to frequently become tyrannical or turn to or fall to tyrants. They therefore feared democracy and took great pains to set up a Constitutionally-limited Republic which would resist both tyrants and fickle, fragile democratic fads and fancies.

Previously, the greatest threats to the rights of the individual which the Constitution was constructed to preserve and defend, were the presidencies of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Each of these men was at once a self-proclaimed pragmatist and an admirer of socialism. On the one hand, their viewpoint was commonly guided by a socialist's outlook and view of history, while on the other hand, they frequently eschewed ideas and ideology in favor of the idea that they could make things work, without having to clearly state the criteria for when things worked and without principles to guide them to the actions that were likely to work.

Roosevelt, with his combination of uncritically analyzed socialist preferences and lack of principles, madly experimented with massive transfers of manpower and wealth from the private sector to government and from the able and responsible in the private sector to the unable and the irresponsible wherever they were to be found. In the process, he created huge uncertainty. He also raised tax rates to very high levels for those able enough to maintain good incomes, thereby causing many of them to work less hard to create jobs. He raised wages for some (usually union workers) so high with mandates, that many others could not be employed at all. His socialist viewpoint and mad pursuit of unprincipled experimentation, deepened and greatly lengthened the Great Depression.

Yesterday, Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office for the presidency, by swearing to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." This was a blatant lie. He is on record with his belief that the Constitution is highly defective because it does not require or even allow the redistribution of wealth and income which he believes is essential to "social justice." The only justice that actually exists is individual justice, just as the only human rights that exist are individual rights. Obama's so-called "positive rights", which require some men to serve others. Positive rights and his idea of social justice, are the means to allow and enable the tyranny of a socialist leader at the expense of the individual citizen. To gain support for a tyrannical socialist rule through his creation of positive rights and social justice, he calls upon us to be selfless. He calls upon us to forget the individual nature of our minds, bodies, and souls. He calls upon us to forget our individual values and life goals. When we have given up our selfish claim to our minds, bodies, souls, values, and goals, we become putty in the hands of the tyrant. This is especially the case if he has a mesmerizing voice, which appeals to the mindless passions of many.

We are asked to give the new President, if a man bent upon the destruction of the Constitution can be called the President, a chance to succeed. This sounds like a call to fairness. It is not really. It is a call to allow him to get fully up to speed in his efforts to trample the rights of the individual.

We are generally told that we should respect others and often even to respect their values, no matter what their character may be. Frankly, this makes the concept of respect meaningless. Respect only exists as a recognition of good character. What we should do is to give every individual in civilized society the benefit of some provisional respect while we are in the process of evaluating their character. When their character is sufficiently assessed, then the respect may become more solid or it may have to be replaced by disgust and disdain. We are obliged to weigh a person's character, not to approve of it no matter what.

I have had months to weigh the character of B.O. and it is fundamentally lacking in gravitas. The gravitas suggested by his voice is a fraud. This man consistently leads the attack on the rights of the individual. The battle for the preservation and defense of the rights of the individual is now and has always been the overriding moral issue of anyone's time. Because it is specifically the duty of the President of the United States to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, which is the primary instrument for preserving, protecting, and defending the rights of the individual, it is crucial to evaluate the character of each President before he might become President. Obama is clearly committed to socialism and to tyranny. Their pursuit nullifies his claim to be President or the man who sees that government operates Constitutionally. He claims to be A, but he does not have the nature of A. His character is such that he belongs in the lowest levels of hell. That is my studied evaluation of this man.

It is most unfortunate that the first African-American elected President is a man of such abominable character. The man who one wishes might symbolize the rise of African-Americans from slavery to acknowledged respectability, is the would-be tyrant our Constitution was supposed to protect us from. This is a man who would enslave every American, not a man who will celebrate the freedom of each and every individual. This is a man who celebrates the incompetent, the irresponsible, and the corner-cutter at the expense of men of good character who are competent, responsible, and hardworking. This man weighs everyone's character and then most enslaves those he finds to have the better character. Good character becomes a fault in the eyes of Obama's government.

Those of us who love the rights of the individual have no obligation to give this would-be tyrant a chance to succeed as President. When he pursues a socialist goal, he is wrong and he should be immediately stopped. He should be given no grace period. This is the fight of our lives. If and when he should do something right, we will recognize that. Given his grotesque character, we cannot expect that he will do much right. It is a tragedy whenever an American President does not understand his job and is not committed to the values recognized by our Constitution. They are all failures as President. It is unfortunate that we can already tell that our first African-American President will be a failure, barring a miracle of self-resurrection on Obama's part. Such a self-resurrection would ironically partially justify his Messiah image, though it is clear that those who think of him now as the Messiah would be disillusioned if he did come to understand the critical nature of the rights of the individual and the virtue of selfishness.

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