I think Steyn has gotten it only partly right on this one. The US has been moving to a sort of soft-welfare state since the time of the “Great Society,” but Obama and his crew - or actually, his leaders - have taken it to an entirely different level, and thinking of this as just the same-old same-old call for a little more welfare and a few more bennies is a big mistake.
Osawatomie was the name of the paper published by the Weathermen (or Weather Underground, by that time, I guess) in the 1970s. Its big focus was “anti-racism,” since the Marxists had latched onto the radical black power groups and presented violent, radical blacks as the “vanguard of the Revolution.”
Osawatomie, KS was also where John Brown and other abolitionists holed up and prepared for their attacks, and in fact Brown took the name Osawatomie and was known as Osawatomie Brown. The fact that they were fighting Democrats seems to have been lost on Obama.
However, the newspaper Osawatomie, with which Bill Ayers and his lovely wife Bernadine Dohrn were involved, felt that the usual leftists of the time (meaning hard-line Dems and unionists) were just too old fashioned and didn’t understand the need for violence and class warfare. This was a constant theme of the paper Osawatomie.
I think, for once, perhaps Steyn didn’t do enough research. This goes way beyond the welfare state. It was Obama’s call for class warfare and the purging of non-revolutionary influences, just as Bill Ayers no doubt told him to do. It was meant to be the beginning of the destruction of the US, and I think you’re going to see an increasing number of leftists taking up the call.
"Bring it all down, man."
I remembered the Kansas-Brown connection but not the significance of Osawatomie nor did I recall the significance of Osawatomie (and the newspaper) for the 1960s campus spoiled brats and their ideological issue, BHO.
Thanks again.