If you want a good distillation of this president’s wrongheaded view of the United States of America, look no further than this rhetorical bit from the end of tonight’s State of the Union address: “No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs.”
Unity is central to American identity, but not the way Obama envisions it. E pluribus unum is not Latin for, “Hey, bro, let’s invest in some infrastructure together.” The notion that this nation is one big team that acts collectively toward shared goals set by the state would be completely foreign to the men who founded it. But that is Obama’s concept of America.
The Founders thought the nation was great, or could become great, because its people had secured individual liberty for themselves and their descendants by strictly limiting the power and reach of the state. The president uttered the word “liberty” only once tonight, and that was in relation not to the American people, but to emerging regimes in the Middle East: “We will support policies that lead to strong and stable democracies and open markets, because tyranny is no match for liberty.”
By contrast, Ronald Reagan in his 1982 SOTU said the word four times. “In forging this new partnership for America, we could achieve the oldest hopes of our Republic — prosperity for our nation, peace for the world, and the blessings of individual liberty for our children and, someday, for all of humanity,” Reagan said. And he concluded with this: “Let us so conduct ourselves that two centuries from now, another Congress and another President, meeting in this Chamber as we are meeting, will speak of us with pride, saying that we met the test and preserved for them in their day the sacred flame of liberty — this last, best hope of man on Earth.”
We have gone from “the sacred flame of liberty” to “we get each other’s backs.” It gives new meaning to the epithet, “President Downgrade.”
Yes, the Collectivist Vision wrapped in traditional American rhetoric.
This President just is not one of us. He is not an American in values, ideals, goals or aspirations.
He is foreign. Marxism was not created here. In fact, it is diametrically opposed to the core values that this country has retained since the days of its founding.
He keeps trying to use the words of traditional American values but by bending them to fit his collectivist goals he breaks them.
That is his biggest crime against this country. He is corrupting the language of public discourse.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe reverence of Andrew Cline for the Founders is only exceeded by his ignorance of them.
Read Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufacturers.
Here is a little excerpt from it, to give you a taste:
External Link
Notice the concern about increasing employment!
Maybe if conservatives actually knew their history instead of just making stuff up about it, they could actually contribute to the discussion.
When President Obama talks about promoting manufacturing, he is talking about promoting an industry that Alexander Hamilton, one of the most important Framers of the Constitution and co-author of the Federalist Papers with James Madison, also talked about promoting.
But Andrew Cline talks as though any collective concern about investing and promoting the economic interests of the nation would be something foreign and strange to the Founders.
It appears that Andrew Cline is suffering from libertarian fantasies about how he wishes the Founders would have been, rather than how they actually were.
I am getting tired of ignorance conservatives who are so blatantly ignorant of history talking about the Founders. At some point, worshipful ignorance becomes a sort of disrespect. Projecting your policy preferences on to the Founders is not admirable.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@David Welker: don't be ignorant. Obama has never been interested in increasing employment. He has been pretty open about the fact that his "economic model" relies on redistributing existing wealth, not creating any new wealth.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSoooo...you're saying David Welker's attempt in trying to increase awareness and knowledge about issue causes him to be ignorant due to your personal opinions that are regurgitated over and over without facts?
I cannot find a wrinkle in your thinking, but that probably due to all the irony. Soldier on "Real American"...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut of course you're certain the Founders wrote separation of church and state into the Constitution, right? And stood four-square for abortion? And knew the proper arithemetic ratio between the moral status of a white man and that of a black? Three-fifths, wasn't it?
Hamilton, incidentally, was concerned with employment, as distinct from "jobs". A "job" is the easiest thing in the world for government to create. Government can hire everybody in the country to write checks to one another, and everyone will have a job.
Employment, as Hamilton understood it, is productive of wealth. The "jobs" Obama and his minions imagine government creating are not. To the contrary, such "jobs" consume wealth rather than produce it.
This distinction utterly escapes the progressive mind.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"I am getting tired of ignorance conservatives who are so blatantly ignorant of history talking about the Founders."
As am I of preachy libs who don't proof their screeds.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYour failure to rebut anything substantive in Mr. Welker's post speaks volumes.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Gotcha back" sounds to me like Obama engaging in one of his standard "code to the black community" things.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEh, doesn't look to me like Obama's the one doing the code-speak here. When did being your brothers keeper become black thing, anyway? I always thought it was a Christian thing...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI suppose President Obama had my back when he made reference to a typical white person, called those who believe we should enforce our immigration laws bigots and described patriotic Americans who gathered together to protest big government as people waving teabags around. If this is the President's idea of team work, if mocking and demonizing the people he serves is his idea of uniting a nation, it's no wonder America is on the decline.
P.S. To those who remind others to stick to the facts - those who are tired of other people's ignorance - take your own advice. If you choose to trumpet the accomplishments of one of the worst Presidents in history, that's your choice, but be honest enough - and smart enough - to admit that you suffer from the same failings you criticize in others.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSure, Jenna, your comment is chock full of demonstrable facts, including "one of the worst presidents in history." Demonizing people? If you're against demonization, please make a specific comment against the many of the bloggers and commenters on this blog who claim that the government is "stealing" their money to give it to undeserving "parasites." Someone of your obvious and unassailable integrity no doubt doesn't like this type of "demonization" either.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOh Kevin stop being such an intellectual snob about her comment. We've figured out you think you're a genius.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhere did Obama make the "reference to a typical white person"?...
You shouldn't get mad at others if the facts do not back up your personal opinions, even if you're more honest and smarter than those you disagree with it's not their fault..
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen Obama says, "I got your back," it's hard not to think of it stickman style....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExternal Link
I just might have to steal this!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAny reference by this temporary occupant of the White House to the American Greatness is a bigger joke than he is. It is time for Conservatives to stop bickering between ourselves and present a united front against everything this bozo has become.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"...we get each other’s backs.” Really? Obama should have chest-bumped Biden and the entire crowd on the way out too.
Once again, I'm reminded of the movie "Idiocracy."
Let's hope we've heard the last SOTU from Obama.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse“No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs.”
So sayeth the party of draft dodgers. The party of undermining troops by calling them murders. The party the community organizer who provides no work but always has its handout to those who do create.
This country is great because it was the land of opportunity. Not the land of bureaucratic maze. The land where anyone could come with their idea, their willingness to work, their desire for a better future and create a better chocolate bar, a better auto manufacturing plant, a better music player, a better tomato, a better cultivar. And when they were done, when they had succeeded, they got to keep the profits from selling in an open market. This country is/was great because anyone can succeed without leave from soverign, state or collective.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou lost me at "draft dodgers." Dick Cheney, anyone? Fact is that most chicken hawks are Republicans.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd most astrophysicists and aerospace engineers have never been in space.
And from these two observations we learn....what?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse