Speaking to students at Ohio State University on May 5, President Obama said:
Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham, with which we can’t be trusted.
Obama said, in effect: Disregard people who worry about tyranny. We can have government do the things that they warn against, without it being tyranny, because we are such wonderful people – so well-intentioned – that it isn’t tyranny, when we do it.
Get it? So, when Obama has his administration lie to Americans so he can win re-election, or when he takes an increasing share of people’s incomes, or requires people to engage in private commerce that he happens to want (Obamacare mandate), or eliminates their rightful choices in the free market, or uses the IRS to obstruct his opponents and violate their privacy, or uses the Justice Department to snoop on reporters, or uses the EPA to extort fees from opponents (that progressive groups don’t have to pay – hat tip V the K), it’s not tyranny. Because it’s Obama doing it, and by his account, he can be trusted.
But the Framers of the constitution thought otherwise. They believed in checks and balances. They *were* those people who “warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.” They founded America, by “gumming up the works.”
Perhaps Obama doesn’t know that the Framers set up the United States as a republic under a limited government, precisely because they knew that all governments tend to degenerate into tyranny. Or perhaps Obama is unaware of his own party’s President Andrew Jackson, who said that “eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty.”
Obama implies that people who warn us of tyranny are distrustful nihilists. Our only choice, Obama implies, is between continuing the crony-social-fascist gargoyle of a government that he now leads – and harmful anarchy. A typical Obama false choice (flowing from a typical Obama straw man), I’m pretty sure it has the Framers rolling in their graves.
So much for Obama. But there’s more! Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee recently said:
…although health care [is] not listed per se in the Constitution, it should be a constitutional right, and if you quote the words of the Declaration of Independence, ‘We hold these truth to be self-evident, that we have certain inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’, one might argue that education and health care fall into those provisions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
To give her credit: She got it right, that health care is not guaranteed by the Constitution. But from there, she goes downhill.
Where does she think that education and health care come from? Do they grow on trees? Of course not. They must be provided – that is, paid for – by somebody.
But government doesn’t produce wealth; it only takes from what the citizenry have produced. Government can only ever ‘guarantee’ benefits by raping the earnings of citizens – those among them, that is, who have chosen to be productive. And government will need to do it a lot in order to guarantee education or health care, since, when under the hand of government, those things become ever more inefficient and costly.
Jackson Lee believes that citizens should be guaranteed that the government will, on their behalf, extort huge percentages of the earnings of their productive neighbors. That is tyranny, and the opposite of what the Framers of the constitution had in mind.
In the olden days, forcing people to work for you (or requiring them to turn huge percentages of their produce over to you) was known as “slavery”. Jackson Lee is, in effect and tragically, a modern-day advocate of slavery.
Stephen Green of PJTV explains what tyranny is.
And now the base of the Obama Party has stated that Obama was right to use the IRS to punish and harass the Tea Party because they’re all racists.
I wonder if any of our liberal trolls have the balls to condemn this.
The irony here is that, as a American man in my mid-40’s, I _did_ grow up hearing exactly these things. Liberal voices, Democrats, Progressives, unions, hippies, peaceniks, stoners, gay activists screaming at me every day about how evil the government is, how the government enslaves me and will shoot me if I step out of line. They told me never, ever trust the government, and how it’s my duty to fight back in any way I can.
Maybe some of us listened.
You answered your own question simply by asking it, NDT.
If they had ‘balls’, they wouldn’t be (leftist) trolls.
Can you hear that?
It sounds like the dam is crumbling……
After I Asked Obama Some Tough Questions, the IRS Began “Pressuring” Me
I wonder what the line is for liberals. What exactly is the line where they start to question the tyranny being set out before us? It’s not a sitting president allowing an ambassador to die for political reasons. It’s not using government resources to persecute opposition. Is there a line for liberals? Or, can we assume everything is ok as long as it’s a democrat doing it?
Wow!
It’s almost like things are spinning out of control for the SCOAMF’s regime, or something……..
EPA waives fee requests for friendly groups, denies conservative groups
With the obvious lies, coverup, and abuse of power by various agencies (DOJ, HHS, EPA, IRS) in the Obama Administration, I can only hope that the students of OSU who attended that assembly had enough sense to see that he was justifying his tyrannical socialistic agenda. As P.T. Barnum,and others have said, ¨You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all the time (libtards), but you can´t fool all the people all of the time.¨ Obama and Axelrod have been operating on Barnum´s maxim that a sucker is born every minute.
Excellent post, Jeff.
Tyranny and incompetence travel the same path;
– Narcissism.
– 47 Appointed-without-Senate Oversight White House Czars.
– Solynra and other Economic tamperings.
– The Government Motors bailout-gift to the UAW.
– Fast and Furious gun-smuggling fiasco.
– Benghazi.
– IRS harassment of Conservatives.
– DOJ spying in the AP.
…And the list grows monthly.
Thanks V! – Yeah Ted; I’ve been wondering if I should keep a list of the scandals/failures. It’s too many to remember now.
“Or, can we assume everything is ok as long as it’s a democrat doing it?” Carolynp @ 1:43
Carolynp,
You’ve hit the nail on the head. BTW, don’t forget drones killing American citizens and arresting scapegoat videographers (Nakoula).
“Obama said, in effect: Disregard people who worry about tyranny. We can have government do the things that they warn against, without it being tyranny, because we are such wonderful people – so well-intentioned – that it isn’t tyranny, when we do it.”
I think you can make that claim, if you ignore:
1. ” incessantly ”
2. ” Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner”
If I might change your claim a little: “”Obama said, in effect: Disregard those people who always warn of tyranny when a government does something they dislike, because they do not believe that government can ever be an instrument of good, only a sham that cannot be trusted… “
Especially when the Obama Party and Barack Obama were screaming “tyrant” mere years ago when government did something they disliked.
Now watch how quickly the rules change.
The Congress-WOMAAAAAAAAAAAAN (as our local conservative talk-show host, Michael Berry, pronounces it) is as dumb as a box of rocks.
Remember, this is the same woman who wanted to see where the astronauts planted the flag on Mars.
She also thinks she “was a slave.” And not in a past life, a la Shirley MacLaine.
For her to think that there is a constitutional right to health care and education merely lowers the bar for her, yet again.
She makes Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) look like a frickin’ Rhodes Scholar.
Regards,
Peter H.
“Gum up the works” = legally fight against tyrants.
I’m sure that Obama and co simply see the people who oppose their ‘good works’ as bumps in the road.
“…a republic under a limited government.”
The fundamental transformation of America is a shift to a more “robust” government which takes on the hard work of “social justice” and rearranges society according to what the government deems fair as measured by the government’s definition of the moment of equality and justice and balance and the public good.
How can a “limited government” rearrange society? It has to have the mechanisms to move private assets around in order to carry out the terms of social justice. It must be able to take from those who have “too much” in order to give to those “in need.”
Can a true republic be created where the people who can do well will continue to work hard to create “too much” in order to fund those “in need” or will they seek ways to avoid the government confiscation of their “excess” assets?
Big Brother knows best and must control the greed of the unregulated accumulators with an iron fist. Under the Obama thinking, the Politburo is the limited government. The elite are the deciders. The Congress is an assembly of eunuchs all applauding the dear leader and rubber stamping the five year plan.
Those who prefer not to examine how The Won operates will always try to see the glass as half full.
John Locke said this about the proper role of limited government:
Our lazy Congress delegated the job of “regulating” to the executive cabinet offices many years ago. We have reached the point where Sebelius is writing the vast details of Obamacare and is even soliciting companies her agency might regulate for donations to help sign up uninsured people for Obamacare. That is to say, an officer of the executive branch is seeking “donations” for financing regulations she has authored from people who may receive special treatment in her writing and enforcing of regulations. The mafia calls this “vigorish.” The “gentlelady secretary” is writing laws and taxing people. Locke be damned.
And The Won goes fund raising and golfing and blaming Rush Limbaugh and word never reachea him of any of this. But, he will be outraged and add it to his list of outrages that he is looking into. And Harry Reid will dutifully keep the Senate in legislative limbo so that Congress is effectively neutered.
The “brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule” is exactly what Obama is telling these people not to trust. A necessary component of the “brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule” is not trusting the government. Government might be a necessary evil, but it is an evil nonetheless. The founding fathers knew that, which is why they established checks and balances to limit the government’s power. For a constitutional scholar, Obama certainly doesn’t know very much about the U.S. Constitution.
As for Sheila Jackson Lee, I would really like to see her reasoning for government-provided healthcare and education being guaranteed by the “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” clause. It says “pursuit of happiness” and not “happiness” for a reason; you aren’t guaranteed happiness. You must create your own happiness. All the government must do is not get in the way (provided you don’t infringe upon other people’s rights). Because of reasons explained by ILC earlier, Sheila Jackson Lee’s suggestion is exactly the opposite of what that clause is supposed to mean.