Why are Americans disobeying President Obama?
Because in the United States, most adults don’t think of themselves as helpless children, and we don’t regard out President as one to be “obeyed.”
We entrust tremendous power to our President (although that power is not ultimate or without limits). We may admire, esteem, respect, and place our hopes in the office of the President, if not the occupant of the office. And we “follow” our President, however willingly or unwillingly, as he leads the nation over the course of time.
But we don’t “obey.” In The United States, our President is one of us. So why is President Obama seemingly so indignant that Americans have dared to question, doubt, and even disagree with his plans to take-over the American medical profession, and the American healthcare industry?
I’m not merely observing that Obama is arrogant - there’s nothing new about big ego’s in the White House. Even our second President, John Adams, thought he was such an obvious choice for the Presidency that he didn’t even campaign during his re-election bid, and was outraged when Thomas Jefferson un-seated him.
But in roughly seven months, President Barack Obama has demonstrated an unquenchable need to control the lives of private citizens, and the workings of private sector society, and his indignation is aimed at those who would question this. Two American car companies, multiple banks and financial institutions, the rates of salaries paid to business executives, the entire American medical profession and health care industry, even content on the internet - - Obama will control it all. He knows best in all circumstances, and our role is to simply comply.
Perhaps President Obama’s quest for control has something to do with his upbringing and family lineage. He likes to point out how important it is that he has lived overseas, how he understands the horrible ways in which Americans are perceived abroad (especially within the Muslim world), and how he is able to transcend our narrow, American points of view. But could it be that, despite his diverse, multicultural perspective, President Obama lacks a distinctly American perspective that is common among the several hundred million of us imperfect, limited, narrow people who actually grew up here? Could it be that President Obama perceives the very office that he occupies as being something different than what so many of us slow-thinking Americans perceive it to be?
Although our President barely knew the man, his father Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was, nonetheless a communist in the government of Kenya. The President’s Dad once theorized that it would be fine for the government to tax the wealthiest citizens in his country at a rate of 100%, so long as the “greater good” was served. Mr. Obama was eventually fired from his job in the Kenyan government, largely because Kenya was in the process of privatizing its economy, and he was severely out-of-step with his associates. But his ideas were nonetheless his, and Mr. Obama had a clear preference for the heavy hand of government, over the allegedly “greedy,” “selfish” tendencies of business owners.
In my previous writings about this matter, readers have been quick to tell me how rude, insensitive, and “racist” I am. But how many American Presidents, how many American citizens, have come from this kind of legacy? If one’s personal heritage has any impact on one’s present-day existence, surely President Obama’s family heritage of communism has, in some fashion, informed his view of the world today.
And what about our President’s early upbringing? It certainly contrasts sharply with mine. During my first through fourth grade years in an American public school, I experienced President Richard Nixon win re-election in a landslide, Vice President Spiro Agnew resign in scandal, Gerald Ford appointed to the Vice Presidency as Agnew’s replacement, Richard Nixon resign in scandal, and Gerald Ford ascend to the Presidency. They were tumultuous times. Yet those transitions of power happened peaceably, without gunfire or military engagement, and all according the United States Constitution.
But President Obama spent ages 6-10 in Indonesia, under the Presidency of Suharto, the second President of Indonesia who clung to power for over thirty years (1967-1998). Suharto was an anti-communist, and definitely a friend to the West during the Cold War. Nonetheless, Suharto built a strong, centralized, militaristic government around himself, and fought-off multiple coup attempts from the Indonesian Communist Party. Suffice it to say that the young Barack Obama spent some early and formative years in an environment where communism was alive and well. Might his perspective on the world be a bit different from yours or mine?
Americans will probably never “obey” President Obama the way he might like us to. The real question is whether Congress will simply “obey” the President - or provide a “balance” to his quest for power.