The Potemkin Presidency meets a moment of sanity in The New York Times

pajamasmedia.com ^ | June 29, 2009 | Roger Kimball

[Tolik]

Roger Kimball:

... It has become increasingly clear that the Obama administration is a Potemkin Presidency. It has an impressive façade, propped up by some high-gloss rhetoric and a formidable public relations machine. But at bottom, President Obama and his ideological confrères are totally out of their depth.

They came to the job with an aggressive left-wing agenda that set out (as Obama put it just before the election) “to fundamentally transform the United States of America.” He was going to remake the country top-to-bottom: health care, the environment, foreign policy, immigration policy, the redistribution of wealth and evening out of income (“spreading the wealth around”).

Like so many “community organizers” before him, Obama is a friend of humanity. He wants to make the world a “better place” — better, that is, according to his lights. The problem is, he knows almost nothing about the way the world actually works. The result is that his efforts at beneficence are a series of violations — violations of the law, ... as well as violations of some basic principles of a free society...

It is too early to say how it all will end. Obama has cast many balls in the air. His first few months in office really have been an example of what Governor Mitch Daniels called “shock and awe statism.” We have, of course, been down this road before. And that is what makes Obama’s drama so sad. Unchecked, his initiatives will ruin America. Ruin? I mean, they will make it poorer, less free, less secure. Writing in 1943 in The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek had this to say about one of the many earlier productions of this socialist drama:

... It may sound noble to say, “Damn economics, let us build up a decent world” — but it is, in fact, merely irresponsible.

That’s only 119 characters. Can’t someone Tweet that message to the President and his enablers?

 

Nailed It!

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[BornToBeAmerican]

Quote: [Like so many “community organizers” before him, Obama is a friend of humanity. He wants to make the world a “better place” — better, that is, according to his lights. The problem is, he knows almost nothing about the way the world actually works. The result is that his efforts at beneficence are a series of violations — violations of the law, for example (ask the secured bondholders of Chrysler’s debt about that), as well as violations of some basic principles of a free society (the integrity of private property, for example).]

Oh, this guy is going down faster than I dared hope.

How long will the MSN hold out. I have not heard a positive word about 0 from anyone for a long time

[mojito]

Thanks for posting.

Another great effort by Kimball.

[freekitty]

Gosh, I sure hope so. It seems people are waking up to the fact their lives will all be affected.

[Loud Mime]

bump!!!!

[mick]

Belloc also said:

The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization, should have offended him with priests and soldiers .... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.

[TLI]

And that is what makes Obama’s drama so sad. Unchecked, his initiatives will ruin America. Ruin? I mean, they will make it poorer, less free, less secure.

Cloud over the failing Obama presidency.

[TheThinker]

“The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.”

So concise and simple yet so profoundly true.

[downtownconservative]

You’re being too nice, me-thinks. Obama cares about power and how is is revered by the fawning masses. Like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Lenin and even Marx himself, collateral damage is not a problem.

Ultimately, their flawed arrogance drove them to imagine that with enough power, they can impliment their perfect plan for all mankind, the ushering in of the utopian state and the banning of God from public life. Losses along the way are just the price we all have to pay. Obama calls them “sacrifices”.

[StAnDeliver]

"The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization, should have offended him with priests and soldiers .... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true...We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.

Every time I read that it reminds me of Kipling's greater passages.

[La Lydia]

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. - - Plato

[CPT Clay]

Great Article.

[StormEye]

"It is too early to say how it all will end."

It will end in total collapse of America. In fact the collapse has already started.

[downtownconservative]

I’ve been referring to Obama as “the O’zer”. Henceforce, it will be “O’zer the Barbarian”. Has a certain clarifying ring to it.

[stockpirate]

ping to a great article

[nkycincinnatikid]

mark

[workerbee]

I rather doubt that President Obama or any of his inner circle is a student of Hilaire Belloc. But they have demonstrated again and again their intuitive grasp of Belloc’s insight. If only, they reason, they can turn over enough of the productive capacity of the country to the government, then (so they think) they will be in a position to eradicate the age-old irrationalities and inequities that have beset our capitalist society from the beginning.

Yes. BamBam and his acolytes, like adolescents convinced that prior generations just can't come close to their wordliness and insight, believe they will "do socialism smartly"; they believe that unlike the regimes past that just didn't do things "right" or "enough", they will be the ones to finally get us all to utopia -- and if not that, well then, at least themselves to untouchable power.

[Armando Guerra]

In college I had a left wing professor who advocated banning all advertisements. His rational was that corporations were spending billions on advertisement every year and the money could be better spent on fighting poverty. There were so many problems with this idea that we didn’t know where to begin. We ended up just laughing it off as more of his crazy notions and happy these people were confined to university campuses. Unfortunately, we are now seeing these leftist in power and their delusional ideas being put into policy.

[LucyT]

It has become increasingly clear that the Obama administration is a Potemkin Presidency. It has an impressive façade, propped up by some high-gloss rhetoric and a formidable public relations machine. But at bottom, President Obama and his ideological confrères are totally out of their depth.

They came to the job with an aggressive left-wing agenda that set out (as Obama put it just before the election) “to fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

He was going to remake the country top-to-bottom: health care, the environment, foreign policy, immigration policy, the redistribution of wealth and evening out of income (“spreading the wealth around”).

Like so many “community organizers” before him, Obama is a friend of humanity. He wants to make the world a “better place” — better, that is, according to his lights.

The problem is, he knows almost nothing about the way the world actually works.

The result is that his efforts at beneficence are a series of violations — violations of the law, for example (ask the secured bondholders of Chrysler’s debt about that), as well as violations of some basic principles of a free society (the integrity of private property, for example).

It is too early to say how it all will end.

Thank you, stockpirate.