Obama Kansas Speech: Another Progressive Populist Wannabee

Conservatism 101: D.I.Y. Political Education

Barack Obama traveled to Kansas this past week, ostensibly to give a speech, but in reality to pull on a Teddy Roosevelt mask. All in order for the president to pretend that he’s the Great Progressive Populist–an oxymoron for the 2000s. Obama talked about the deck being “stacked against the middle class” without mentioning who the dealer has been. Da Tool Guy calls BHO on his rhetoric and explains a few things our president missed. Will Obama listen to this week’s Conservatism 101?

CIVICS FOR THE MASSES

First he was Abraham Lincoln, then he was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then it was John F. Kennedy and Camelot reborn in Washington DC — now he’s trying to paint himself as Teddy Roosevelt.

President Barack Obama for what I think might be the first time since the last election when he visited 57 states with several more to go, came to Kansas. He stopped in Osawatamie where 101 years ago TR gave his famous “New Nationalism” speech.

I won’t get into the odd dichotomy of Roosevelt the Republican and yet Progressive.

However, that speech of TRs was basic populist, progressive boilerplate.

And so too was Obama’s today.

Back then Roosevelt said: “We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well-used. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.”
We, of course, was the government.

Obama, on the other hand said congressional Republicans “want to go back to the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules. Well, I’m here to say they are wrong.”

In other words, the government should control every aspect of our lives in the name of “fairness.”

Obama would have us believe that because others are successful they hold the rest of us down. That the “rich” (a rather nebulous term that basically means anyone with more money than you) deliberately oppress the “poor” (another nebulous term which means “me and anyone who doesn’t make more money than me.”)

In point of fact, the deck has never been “stacked against middle class Americans” until the last 20 years or so, and particularly in the last three.

What makes live so particularly difficult for the middle class is not billionaires or millionaires. It’s increasing intrusion into our personal lives by the government. It’s insane regulation which makes it impossible for average Americans to start a new business or to stay in business.

Contrary to what progressives like Obama would have you believe, the average small business owner is not wealthy. Oh, they may have cash flow well in excess of the average person, but in a sole proprietorship, much of that money flows out just as fast as it flows in — I know, I used to be one of those small business owners.

I used to have a mobile tool sales business. It was one of the happiest times of my life. I was my own boss, I loved what I did. My first full year in the business my gross earnings were about five times what I’d ever made before — $108,000. My net profit? $12,000.

Most small business owners are middle class and the increasing regulation heaped on them costs money. When those costs rise high enough, they shut down, and then their employees lose jobs.

Progressive populists like Obama love to scream for “fairness” and “justice,” what they don’t tell you is what they mean by those terms.

“Fairness” and “Justice” mean if you have worked hard and been successful, what you have earned will be taken from you and given to others so everything will be fair.

Now to the rest of us, we prefer freedom, aware that life is not, and never will be fair. As the late great Robert A. Heinlein wrote in “Time Enough For Love: “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.’”

This is what Obama and his allies would have happen. They would drive out that tiny minority which as built the businesses and allowed us to prosper. We must see this does not happen. I keep harping on it, but the elections are coming — find the candidates who understand what Heinlein said, and vote for them.

by DaToolGuy
images: dbkp file; hubpages

DaToolGuy is a small town journalist with big time dreams. He’s spent his entire adult life laboring in the obscurity he actually deserves. But he’ll take the opportunity to show off when it comes.

DaToolGuy writes regularly at View from Flyover Country.

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