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Dear Average American: It’s All Your Fault - The President thinks national lack of ambition is...
National Review Online ^ | November 18, 2011 | Jonah Goldberg

Posted on 11/18/2011 4:06:48 PM PST by neverdem

Dear Average American: It's All Your Fault
The President thinks national lack of ambition is causing our economic doldrums.

Congratulations, average American! It’s your turn to be blamed for President Obama’s — and America’s — problems.

This is the biggest honor you’ve won since Time magazine named “you” the Person of the Year.

Being the root cause of our dire national predicament puts you in some very august company indeed. You are joining the ranks of George W. Bush, the Japanese tsunami, the Arab Spring, Wall Street fat cats, and other luminaries, both living and merely anthropomorphized.

Last week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Obama explained, “We’ve been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.”

The White House and its proxies insist that Obama wasn’t talking about Americans per se. He just meant we’ve been lazy about attracting foreign investment.

We’ll come back to that in a minute. For now, let’s take him at his word.

Still, you can understand the confusion. In September, the president reflected in an interview that America is “a great, great country that has gotten a little soft, and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades.”

Shortly after that, he told rich donors at a fundraiser that “we have lost our ambition, our imagination and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam.”

So, Obama thinks Americans lack ambition and are soft, but don’t you dare suggest that he also thinks they’re lazy.

The point of all this is pretty obvious. Obama has a long-standing habit of seeing failure to support his agenda as a failure of character. The Democratic voters of western Pennsylvania refused to vote for him, he explained, because they were “bitter.” He told black Democrats lacking sufficient enthusiasm for his reelection to “Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’.”

And in the context of the country’s economic doldrums, Obama sees a lack of ambition, softness, laziness, etc., in anyone who doesn’t support his agenda. He has spent several years now exhorting Americans about how we have to “win the future” by doing what he says. He has told us repeatedly that this is our “Sputnik moment” when all Americans must drop their selfish, cynical, or foolish objections to his program. People who disagree aren’t putting their “country first.”

He’s constantly stoking nationalistic and quasi-paranoid fears of China to goad Americans into supporting ever more “investments” in green energy and high-speed white elephants.

Indeed, China always seems to be on the man’s mind. He has even reportedly expressed envy for Chinese president Hu Jintao. “Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China,” the New York Times reported last year. “As one official put it, ‘No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.’” What’s so pathetic here — other than the obvious grotesqueness of envying a totalitarian tyrant — is that Obama’s objections are so baseless. Americans remain the most productive workers in the world. As Obama himself notes, we attract more foreign investment than any other country.

Meanwhile, it’s Obama and his allies in Congress who’ve been at the forefront of the effort to make America less competitive. Obama delayed free-trade deals for years, until he could lard them up with Big Labor giveaways. He has thrown roadblocks in front of a multibillion-dollar U.S.–Canada pipeline project, which many ambitious and imaginative people see as something like this generation’s Hoover Dam or Golden Gate Bridge. He did postpone those new job-killing smog regulations his EPA administrator wants, but he has also let everyone — including foreign investors — know that he’ll put them back on the agenda if he’s reelected.

In 2008, Obama said Bush’s deficit of $9 trillion was “unpatriotic.” Now he questions the patriotism of those who think the Obama deficit of $15 trillion argues against spending even more money we don’t have. And of course, there’s that giant unfunded disaster known as Obamacare, which Nancy Pelosi claimed was a “jobs bill” because it would lead to “an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.”

But, yes, by all means, let’s blame our lack of competitiveness on the American people.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. You can reach him by e-mail at JonahsColumn@aol.com, or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2011, Tribune Media Services, Inc.



TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: obama
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1 posted on 11/18/2011 4:06:53 PM PST by neverdem
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To: neverdem

Obamalamadingdong is always looking for someone or something other than himself to blame for the mess he’s created and the ruination of America.


2 posted on 11/18/2011 4:09:08 PM PST by SkyDancer ('If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate ")
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To: neverdem

BO has absolutely no shame.


3 posted on 11/18/2011 4:11:02 PM PST by doc1019 (Romney will never get my vote)
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To: neverdem

Right out of the Jimmy Carter play book. Me thinks hes shooting himself in the foot


4 posted on 11/18/2011 4:11:19 PM PST by ronnie raygun (V)
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To: All
In 2008, Obama said Bush’s deficit of $9 trillion was “unpatriotic.”

Jonah meant debt, not deficit. Our debt is all of our accumulated deficits, and that's not counting our unfunded liabilities.

I hit print when I wanted to hit edit.

5 posted on 11/18/2011 4:13:05 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: neverdem
Hell yes it is our fault. All of the finger pointing and posturing by DemonRATs and RINO Republicans alike is only symptomatic of an America that is too lazy to look beyond the sound bite campaigning and really investigate the truth for themselves.

Blaming the endless MSM lies and cheer-leading for Obama and the medias complicit cover ups of his shady background and incompetence is no excuse. When it comes right down to it, America is too lazy to throw the bums out and do the hard work of putting integrity, honor and genuine love of country ahead of “what's in it for me”.

6 posted on 11/18/2011 4:19:53 PM PST by bitterohiogunclinger (Proudly casting a heavy carbon footprint as I clean my guns ---)
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To: ronnie raygun

7 posted on 11/18/2011 4:20:06 PM PST by colorado tanker
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To: neverdem

bttt


8 posted on 11/18/2011 4:20:58 PM PST by LibertarianLiz
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To: All
F U Ø

traitor scum !

9 posted on 11/18/2011 4:22:46 PM PST by tomkat (para bellum)
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To: neverdem

Another page from the Carter playbook.


10 posted on 11/18/2011 4:24:27 PM PST by SmithL (Proud Tennessee Volunteer)
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To: SmithL

Listen here, you lazy god-for-nothing oafs. Get to work, you slackers, (if you have a job) and pay your taxes. Move along...


11 posted on 11/18/2011 4:29:51 PM PST by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation Camp?)
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To: ronnie raygun

Of course we all think of Carter when Obumbo talks like this, but you know who else also said the same thing?

(I know, I’m committing internet suicide by saying this, but here goes.)

Hitler. His last will and testament blamed the German People for losing the war. They weren’t good enough for him. He said that.

So did Carter.

So did Obama.


12 posted on 11/18/2011 4:31:32 PM PST by samtheman
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To: FReepers; everyone; All
FRIDAY NIGHT AT FREE REPUBLIC!

KEEP OUR LIGHTS ON!

Please Donate!!

FReepathon Day 49!!

13 posted on 11/18/2011 4:33:19 PM PST by onyx (PLEASE SUPPORT FREE REPUBLIC BY DONATING NOW! Sarah's New Ping List - tell me if you want on it.)
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To: neverdem
Did anyone truly expect anything different from the candidate who, campaigned in Europe for the American presidency and, in July 2008, on a stage at the foot of Berlin's Victory Column, he chose to stand and deliver these remarks:

"I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before.” -- “Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for president, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.”

And,

“I know my country has not perfected itself. . . . At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people.”

Now, really!!!!

14 posted on 11/18/2011 4:35:46 PM PST by loveliberty2
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To: neverdem

Geez, Obama is always talking about himself.


15 posted on 11/18/2011 4:36:13 PM PST by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote; then find me a real conservative to vote for)
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To: neverdem


16 posted on 11/18/2011 4:48:35 PM PST by Chode (American Hedonist - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: neverdem
Hey Mubarak Hussein Obama, Why don't you tell us how you did it in acorn?
17 posted on 11/18/2011 4:57:41 PM PST by mountainlion (I am voting for Sarah after getting screwed again by the DC Thugs.)
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To: neverdem
Well, isn't a lazy gubermint fed populace the end goal of our "Great Society?"

0 is finally discovering not everyone can get a free ride; someone has to pull the wagon, otherwise it comes to a stop.

18 posted on 11/18/2011 5:01:01 PM PST by Repeat Offender (While the wicked stand confounded, call me with Thy Saints surrounded)
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To: SkyDancer


19 posted on 11/18/2011 5:03:36 PM PST by Iron Munro (Ben Raines For President)
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To: neverdem

This may be the only thing he’s ever said that I agree with.

The only problem is he doesn’t identify the reason. Democrat policies that have made a vast number of “citizens” dependent on the government has created a huge underclass with a “where my check?” mentality.

Collectively, we ARE lazy. Rugged individualism is gone, and has been replaced with the nanny state.


20 posted on 11/18/2011 5:07:45 PM PST by bigdaddy45
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