This in response to our gracious host’s comments about the feelings of Obama fans (I don’t say “supporters” because “fans” seems so much more accurate), the most cutting of which was, “They love the one without knowing what he stands for and loath the other while mispresenting his record.” Admittedly that observation is anecdotal (although it’s a whole lot like every anecdote I could share on the subject, and apparently everybody else here too – and at some point doesn’t the plural of “anecdote” become “data”?), but it’s hard for me to perceive anything either cranky or sore-loserish about it; houdentenor, if you’re still out there, what did you hear that I didn’t?

The following is is not a knock on your dad personally, because there are millions like him, including my own folks. But the perspective you’ve described is itself far more dangerous than any actual politician could be.

That’s because it implicitly buys into the notion that government, led by the president, “runs” the country, which of course entails stuff like “handling” the economy. As long as this is what Americans now collectively believe — without even questioning whether it SHOULD be that way — then the game is permanently rigged in favor of the left.

The idea of America has been dying a steady death for more than a century. The bombast on display this week on the Washington Mall was merely the latest evidence: We are a nation of people who not only want to elect “leaders” and “rulers” — we’re a nation of people who aren’t even aware that such a concept is antithetical to basic American ideals.

This is no longer a situation where the left is trying to move us that direction and Americans are consciously accepting or rejecting the concept. The concept is now cemented. It’s intrinsic and unquestioned. Our folks and the vast majority of their fellow citizens don’t conceive of things in any other way. They fail to protest not because they don’t want to protest, per se, but because the notion of limited government simply isn’t part of the paradigm in which their thinking takes place.

The American ideal is dead, and not because of some guy named Barack Obama. It’s dead because of the millions of people we by habit still call “Americans,” though that’s the farthest thing from what they actually are.

don’t know

can’t remember

Democrats.

Victor Davis Hanson has “An Uneasy Feeling”–and who can blame him?I distilled from the press coverage and the crowds and the punditry yesterday that for all too many suddenly a vote for Obama redeems America. Now, to paraphrase Michelle Obama,……

And we thought the left was anti-religion…

ha ha ha. They always do that. I had the same experience at a holiday party. In the course of a conversation this young lady asked me what McCain’s foreign policy was. As i attempted to describe it, she kept interrupting me with “that’s not a policy. Obama has a foreign policy.” Finally I asked her to tell me what Obama’s foreign policy is. She tossed her head scornfully and walked off.

I have had good debates with a few leftists, and I respect them even if I disagree with everything they believe.

As long as Obama doesn’t let Israel get annihilated or get one of our cities nuked, or bring about the great depression, I won’t call him ObamaHitler.

My own hatred, if you could call it that (it’s more “disgust”) is aimed towards people who tend to either deify or demonize elected officials, depending on their mood and what their friends are doing, without any rational thought process to back it up. I see some conservatives doing that, but it seems to be a defining feature of the left.