Has America “Gone Soft”?

Pajamas Media ^ | 30 Sep 2011 | Roger Kimball

[Rummyfan]

Or is it only the welfare-industrial complex that runs greater and greater segments of American society?

Yes, our Spender-in-Chief, B. “Tax-the-Rich” Obama said in an interview that “this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and, you know, we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track.”

Two points: When, Barack, did you start thinking — or, more to the point, start saying — that America was “a great, great country”? It wasn’t so long ago that you were jetting around the world apologizing for America. What changed your mind? Could it be that your handlers have let you in on the fact that bad-mouthing the country is not a good re-election strategy?

They’re right about that, you know, but my chief point is the second: Who told you that America had lost its competitive edge “over the last couple of decades”? Whoever it was, you should sack him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Like Koko in the Mikado, I have a little list, and I offer it to you, Barack, free and for nothing, without tax or levy:

Google. Yahoo. Facebook. Microsoft. Intel. Apple. Cisco. Adobe. Oracle. Wikipedia. YouTube. Twitter. Sun. Amazon. eBay.

What do these world-bestriding colossi have in common? One thing is, they’re American companies. What other country can field a tenth as many innovative tech companies? None.

No, there is nothing flaccid about American business. There’s plenty of keenness on its “competitive edge.” It’s far and away the most productive and innovative economic machine in the world.

What’s “gone soft” and lost its “competitive edge” is American government, which can’t see a pile of money it doesn’t wish to expropriate in order to feed its “spread-the-wealth-around” socialist appetite and which sees government as the adversary rather than the enabler of business. That’s the rotten softness we have to worry about.

So please, Barack, don’t tell us that America has “gone soft” or “lost its competitive edge” when it’s you and your policies that are as soft and edgeless as a freshly shucked oyster. Once again, you have demonstrated beyond cavil that you have no idea what you are talking about. If you and your army of tax-hungry, regulation-spewing bureaucrats would just get out of the way, you’d see in a matter of months what the most innovative and productive economy in the world could do with respect to jobs here at home. But job creation is yet another thing you haven’t a clue about.

Cato the Elder used to end his speeches with the exhortation “Carthago delenda est,” “Carthage must be destroyed.” A friend suggested a fitting imperative for our times: OMG, “Obama must go.” I like it and plan on using it myself. I encourage others to follow suit.

OMG!

[oh8eleven]

If you are actually re-reading that tripe, I hope you are aware that it is fiction.
Steinbeck? Tripe? LOL. Yeah, the world is wrong and you're right. LOL. You probably don't like the Beatles either.
You say it's fiction, but my understanding is that he did the trip, but made up some (many?) of the characters he met on the road.
Fifty years later - WTF cares? I like his style.
Two other books I like - "The Forgotten Soldier" and "As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me" have also been questioned regarding their veracity. I couldn't care less.

[ngat]

Oops. Sorry. It’s never good to burst the bubble a true hero-worshipper lives in.

P.S. In your opinion, what other authors who made their living as fiction writers, over the span of their lives never wrote a bad book?

[Marine_Uncle]

RE: "Here you got The King of the Handout's POTUS endlessly portraying American’s as victims and proposing endless waves of handouts like keeping Americans on unemployment comp for years, now sounding like one of my Mises posts or like demonized Sharon Angle. Is he schizophrenic?"

Don't think so. On the contrary he does his best to live up to all his socialist's master's expectations.