Posted by
Chris on Thursday, March 12, 2009 8:15:54 PM
According to this opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, President Obama has written a new book saying that it's better for everyone to be worse off together than for some people to do well. (
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123681860305802821.html ) I realize there is a danger in a super-wealthy class having undue influence in public affairs, but I don't get the impression that that's their main concern. They just think it's "unfair" that the rich should get richer on a comparative basis, regardless if the rest of us get marginally richer in absolute terms. I recall two instances during the campaign that caught my attention with this sort of childish thinking. In one case, Obama basically iterated the same idea, that he was more concerned with "fairness" than whether everybody as a whole was better off. In the other, Mr. Obama said he would not support the surge even if he had had the benefit of hindsight knowledge that it worked. They used to call this "class warfare" and "the politics of resentment". Ask yourself: is failure better than success as long as we don't admit that something Bush did worked? Is everyone in a state of equal misery preferable to everyone being better off with some becoming better off than others? I sometimes wonder if we're being led by quasi-Marxists* (or maybe "Marxists-lite") who operate under at least two false assumptions: 1) that the creation of wealth is a zero-sum game; and 2) that it is better to be first among equals in Hell than to allow oneself to occupy a relatively lower spot in a more pleasant locale.
* P.S. - If this seems over the top, consider: after his actions over the past few weeks, is there really any doubt about his socialist leanings? Just as a reminder, he launched his political career in the home of a Marxist (who also bombed the pentagon) and wrote in one of his biographies about his communist organizer "mentor" in Hawaii, and how he hung out with the communist activists in college in California, prior to becoming a "community organizer" himself using the methods of radical activist Saul Alinsky. Is he a Marxist? I won't say that, for now. But he's far too close to being one for my comfort, and he does not have an adequate appreciation of what it means to be free. That much is certain.