"And they have a right to be impatient about the pace of change. I'm impatient!"
While the American public has far more right to express those words in regards to the President's policies, it seems this week, President Obama had it backwards. Speaking to a group of voters (barely 3000--remember the days of 100,000 plus with fake roman columns) under the age of 40, the President attempted to make the case that Americans should stick with his party in the November elections.
He did so despite the fact that there were more people out of work in that very age group than when he was elected two years ago. He did so despite the fact that one in ten Americans can not find work. And he did so despite the fact that one family in five is working but cannot cover the costs of their basic needs.
Yes, if he felt he was impatient in seeing change arrive, imagine all the people that feel further away from it than when they voted for him twenty-four months ago.
But it was what he said next that has evoked such curious reaction.
"It took time to free the slaves..."
Directly begging for voters to stick with he and his party in November, his words conjured up loads of emotion.
If one is to properly understand the analogy the parallel to be drawn would be to portray himself as a Lincoln-like, emancipating sort of character in 2010. If one is to be in fierce agreement with what he said one would be forced to analyze who Obama was referring to as slaves, and by necessity who he implied were the slave masters. Lastly, if the statement was to make any sense at all one would have to address the definition of "free."
So just for kicks, let's give it a shot.
OBAMA AS EMANCIPATOR
President Lincoln was facing a culture and society in which the very same Democratic party that exists today issued proclamation after Congressional hearing on how and why the existence of slavery and the need for the commercial benefit that went along with it, were so direly important for the welfare of their enterprise. In the early 1900's in fact through a series of congressional meetings called "The Klan Hearings," Democrats--the party of Barack Obama, came and claimed pride in founding the Ku Klux Klan, they boasted of the vital good the suppression of the black vote would accomplish, and they expressed scorn at the war between the states for having disrupted their agenda. In fact though the Democratic Party has on many occasions embraced the KKK, the idea of forcible slavery, and the argument for unequal treatment on the basis of race, they have never, not once recanted, apologized for, or corrected those statements.
But these were not the people Obama feels the need to liberate modern day slaves from. No instead he believes that in creating greater government dependency in the life of the individual, the more "free" they will be.
Americans do not feel this way.
SLAVES AND MASTERS
By pleading with those scant 3000 in attendance to keep up the effort through November he seemed to imply that the continuance of slavery could be staved off. Yet I'm not sure if he truly understands the difference in slaves and masters. Your very literal ability to live, breathe, think, act, and react for yourself--by your own decisions--is what Americans believe freedom is. Every time Government reaches further into your pocket and takes more of what you produce you have "less ability" by nature. Our choices are shrinking daily with the new pressures Obama's largest programs have dumped upon small businesses. If our choices are shrinking, then our freedom is being erased and we are becoming dependent (read that: enslaved) to a bureaucracy that takes in more of the resources, but only dishes them out via political alliance--or at the very least leaves the door open for such actions to be taken.
THE NATURE OF FREEDOM
Freedom is my ability to choose for myself. In the late 1800's and early 1900's Republicans argued for limited government, greater freedom for all, and absolute emancipation for those that had been acted against our of pure spite and prejudice. When Democrats were burning down homes, dressed in white sheets, Republicans were sending the first black congressional members to both bodies of Congress, as well as the Governor's mansions in several states, and of course to state assemblies. Many of the charter Republican organizations in the South were organized, initiated, and operated by black Americans.
Obama confuses freedom for slavery.
He has read of others who did free slaves. But he himself comes up short.
For anyone that forcibly coerces so many others into poorly run, horribly inefficient public policies to the degree that their very life depends them--may fancy themselves as historic.
But they are not setting anyone free from anything.
He is instead the new slave owner, operating the ultimate plantation, funded on the broken backs of tax-payers, who are in need of a civil revolt to restore what had belonged to them--self determination.