"I did not run for this office just to get back to where we were. I ran for this office to get us to where we need to be." - Granite Grok

“I did not run for this office just to get back to where we were. I ran for this office to get us to where we need to be.”

That was a line from one of Obama’s recent campaign speeches.  Now if you took it at face value, it sounds like what any politician would be.  Further, most Americans, steeped in the traditional values of Americana would do the “fill in the blank” – and this is exactly how that phrase was supposed to be taken.  But how come the Media never asks  “”and where is ‘where’?”

“I ran for this office to get us to where we need to be.”

What’s the context?  This:  “we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”  But we know where he is going – he’s told us.  “We Can’t Wait”…if Congress won’t act…his use of Executive Orders….his agencies and departments choosing to make rulings, regulations, and statutes that far exceed their authorizing legislation.  Add to that an almost complete regard to rulings of the court system. Obama rails on the outside, but with a smile on the inside.  You see, it is an inside job.  Added by Harry Reid and the other Progressive and Democrat Socialists in the Senate and the House, they are making Congress irrelevant (what is it, 1200 days since the Senate passed an operating budget?).   Government has grown larger, has inserted itself into almost every aspect of our lives because of the actions of past and present Democrats – and Republicans.  Under the guise of “helping” and “we have DO something!”, bit by bit,  Govt ended up doing more and more.

Expectations are being set.  If you know no different, then what is the loss?  We still are the Land of the Free, right?  Er….sigh….is the water boiling yet?

I think that the most succinct definition of Obama’s “where we need to be” was here:

National Review (December 31, 2011) had an article by Mathew Spaulding that I remembered as I heard Obama’s line (emphasis mine):

But about a hundred years ago, there arose a different dream: that government could engineer a better society, rather than simply leaving the people free to create one. Progressive reformers were convinced not only that the American founders were wrong in their assumptions about man and about the necessity of limited government, but also that advances in science would allow government to reshape society and eradicate the inequalities of property and wealth that had been unleashed by individual rights, democratic capitalism, and the resulting growth of commerce and business. A more activist government, built on evolving rights and a “living” Constitution, would redistribute wealth and level out differences in society through progressive taxation, economic regulations, and extensive social-welfare programs, all centrally administered by expert bureaucrats.

The time has come to reject the ghosts of the Founding and devote ourselves to “a dominant and constructive national purpose” centered on a new theory of the state, in which experts administer government and regulate the economy to achieve progressive outcomes. By becoming “responsible for the subordination of the individual to that purpose,” Croly writes, “the American state will in effect be making itself responsible for a morally and socially desirable distribution of wealth.”

…Progress and welfare require not only the centralization of government but also the nationalization of politics — a break from the American tradition of localism. The federal government should now play an interventionist role to advance progressive democracy, for “if we do not have the right kind of law and the right kind of administration of the law, we cannot go forward as a nation.”

…The word “fair” recurs in various forms throughout the speech, with reminders along the way that things have to be made fair — and that means ever more government authority, programs, and regulation. “As a nation,” Obama said, “we’ve always come together, through our government.” And so Obama returned to his mantra of more federal education programs, more infrastructure spending, and more economic regulations. And, of course, raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for these “investments” would only be fair.

His objective as president is to complete the progressive transformation of America, and define its next phase as assuring not equal opportunity, but “fair” outcomes, by redistributing wealth and benefits through an ever more complicated and extensive government that regulates more and more of the economy and society.

All we hear from the Left is “what is fair?”; they rail about it but never being upfront or being truthful as to what that really means.  What is the end game of their version of “fair”.  Where is the destination of “where we need to be” actually end up being?   Who has what?  What has been taken from others to give to others.  do they actually have the stones to bluntly say – and this is where we want to end up?  Funny, I only seem to hear the complaints of inequity – but never what things would be in specific terms of “what does where really mean”?

Obama  and other Progressives will never say (and push the issue and they walk away or sputter away, you see, we are just dolts and Neaderthals for still believing in the ideals of individual Rights and freedom to pursue our “pursuit of Happiness”) where that will end – and we need to ask over and over again for specifics.  We believe that each of us is responsible for ourselves – and that what is fair is what we ourselves have earned.  And if I happen to earn more than you, perhaps it might have been a bit of luck, but most often, it is an expression preparation, hard work, knowledge, intelligence, the willingness and ability to take advantage of opportunities (in addition to a whole slew of other factors).

Obama and other Progressives will never say that the Constitution is worthless – only a “living” box in which they can pull out lots of stuff that originalists just can’t see in the plain words of ink and paper (free contraceptives, abortion pills, sterilization, and abortions – who knew??).  Except now, they feel emboldened, holding onto two of the three legislative and rule making institutions of our Republic, to simply ignore it or to actually contravene it.

Obama and other Progressives will never say that you don’t have individual Rights but more and more, we hear what is popularly referred to here at the ‘Grok as Warrenism – “You Owe US! You’ll never be anything without US!” – you cannot succeed as an individual; you only succeed because the rest of us allow you to succeed.  Obama has been, more and more, emphasizing that “all together now!, We are all in this together, We are greater together” aspect (here, here, here ) – again, to amplify the collective and to decrease the idea of individualism (thus “The Bigger the Government, the smaller the citizen”).  We see this “the subordination of the individual” not only in Obama’s public policy initiatives of “one size will fit all – and you will like it”, his demands that dissent is no longer patriotic, and in his preferential treatment of unions (the collective way to work – because, you see, individuals can’t succeed)

So where is where?  Well said above: “His objective as president is to complete the progressive transformation of America“.  More and more I write about the Administrative State – an undemocratic, unelected, unaccountable, and more and more, unassailable set of “expert” rulers.  Think I’m kidding?  We are following behind the European Union – a veneer of a democracy of non-directly elected (to the European populace), non-directly unaccountable  (to the European populace), unaccountable  (to the European populace), and unnassailable.

Well, until the very end, as we now see the EU blimp of an overgrown and stagnant example of governance holed in multiple places and we all know what happens next.

Where is where?

Where is a place where we no longer are in control of our lives in large part – that others make the important decisions for us.  We no longer have the freedom to choose but only to accept.  A place where individual merit is subsumed to the needs of the collective.

In essence, a sham ghost of the political genius of the Founders. Oh, they may mouth the words, but in the dark recesses of the Administrative State, they all are smiling, knowing that they have finally have full grasp of all the puppet strings that they have worked over a century to build and attach.

 

 

>