Posted on 03/30/2012 6:13:29 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
President Obama today delivered an impassioned attack on what he called Republicans’ “cramped narrow conception” of liberty, during a fiery speech at a campaign fundraiser in Vermont.
Before an electrified crowd of 4500 – his largest of the campaign to date – Obama framed the 2012 campaign as a stark choice between two diametrically opposed political and economic philosophies.
“Their philosophy is simple: you’re on your own,” Obama said of the GOP.
“You’re on your own if you’re out of work, can’t find a job. Tough luck you’re on your own. You don’t have health care: That’s your problem. You’re on your own. If you’re born into poverty, lift yourself up with your own bootstraps, even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own. They believe that’s how America is advanced,” he said.
“That’s the cramped narrow conception they have of liberty, and they are wrong,” he said. “They are wrong.”
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
The man is a genius. Yes Hussein, people worked hard and made a living from the freedom to do business. Take your socialism and shove it up your Ass.
The sound of desperation, I would gladly go back to the Bush years compared to this disaster.
Pray for America
Since all the GOPe seems interested in nominating these days are Compassionate Conservatives at best and flaming liberals at worst, this charge is going nowhere fast this time.
Since all the GOPe seems interested in nominating these days are Compassionate onservatives at best and flaming liberals at worst, this charge is going nowhere fast.
Gas is $4.15, Food prices have doubled. Thanks for help Obama-lama-din-dong.
From the guy who will not pay his fair share in taxes.
The DNC buying vote economics
Guess he must have missed classes during the week they reviewed Madison and Jefferson on the Constitution's protections for "freedom of individual enterprise" and the "benign" influence of government on its operation.
Jefferson, that great intellectual who was chosen to write a people's Declaration of Independence from a government which assumed powers to spend, tax, and overpower citizens, in his "Notes on Religion," made an observation which, while it was directed toward oppressive ecclesiastical rules, seems to be pertinent to the current matter involving coercive government "rules":
"Notes on Religion, 1776 (Ford 2: 252-68)
"The care of every man’s soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or estate, which more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he shall not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills…"
Apparently, "progressives" believe they should, and therein lies a great disparity between the Founders' ideas of liberty for individuals and the so-called "progressives'" ideas of rule and control over individuals. No wonder the President views the Constitution as a document of "negative liberties." In order to fulfill the goals of its Preamble, it does place a negative on unlimited coercive government power.
Yes, the Founders' principle of freedom for individual enterprise brought America from the crude tools of ancient Europe to the most free and prosperous destination for oppressed peoples. See the following essay excerpted from "Our Ageless Constitution," a 292-page history of the ideas of liberty in America, again available after 20 years of being out of print.
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
America's Constitution did not mention freedom of enterprise per se, but it did set up a system of laws to secure individual liberty and freedom of choice in keeping with Creator-endowed natural rights. Out of these, free enterprise flourished naturally. Even though the words "free enterprise' are not in the Constitution, the concept was uppermost in the minds of the Founders, typified by the remarks of Jefferson and Madison as quoted above. Already, in 1787, Americans were enjoying the rewards of individual enterprise and free markets. Their dedication was to securing that freedom for posterity.
The learned men drafting America's Constitution understood history - mankind's struggle against poverty and government oppression. And they had studied the ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers. They were familiar with the near starvation of the early Jamestown settlers under a communal production and distribution system and Governor Bradford's diary account of how all benefited after agreement that each family could do as it wished with the fruits of its own labors. Later, in 1776, Adam Smith's INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Say's POLITICAL ECONOMY had come at just the right time and were perfectly compatible with the Founders' own passion for individual liberty. Jefferson said these were the best books to be had for forming governments based on principles of freedom. They saw a free market economy as the natural result of their ideal of liberty. They feared concentrations of power and the coercion that planners can use in planning other peoples lives; and they valued freedom of choice and acceptance of responsibility of the consequences of such choice as being the very essence of liberty. They envisioned a large and prosperous republic of free people, unhampered by government interference.
The Founders believed the American people, possessors of deeply rooted character and values, could prosper if left free to:
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Such a free market economy was, to them, the natural result of liberty, carried out in the economic dimension of life. Their philosophy tended to enlarge individual freedom - not to restrict or diminish the individual's right to make choices and to succeed or fail based on those choices. The economic role of their Constitutional government was simply to secure rights and encourage commerce. Through the Constitution, they granted their government some very limited powers to:
Adam Smith called it "the system of natural liberty." James Madison referred to it as "the benign influence of a responsible government." Others have called it the free enterprise system. By whatever name it is called, the economic system envisioned by the Founders and encouraged by the Constitution allowed individual enterprise to flourish and triggered the greatest explosion of economic progress in all of history. Americans became the first people truly to realize the economic dimension of liberty.
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
He can take his cronyism mack daddy government uber alles economics and stuff it.
Sorry, but this concept does not appear in the Constitution. In fact, they only area that the Constitution grants the federal government jurisdiction over individuals was Washington, D.C.
In the latter, the local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the supremacy, no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the general authority, than the general authority is subject to them, within its own sphere. In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.
James Madison, Federalist #39
But a contract of this nature actually existed in a visible form, between the citizens of each state, respectively, in their several constitutions; it might therefore he deemed somewhat extraordinary, that in the establishment of a federal republic, it should have been thought necessary to extend it's operation to the persons of individuals, as well as to the states, composing the confederacy. It was apprehended by many, that this innovation would be construed to change the nature of the union, from a confederacy, to a consolidation of the states; that as the tenor of the instrument imported it to be the act of the people, the construction might be made accordingly: an interpretation that would tend to the annihilation of the states, and their authority.
View of the Constitution of the United States Volume 1 — Appendix Note D
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The Law is just balance....So many people want to talk about their 'rights', but what do one wants to acknowledge it the DUTIES that come with them.
With the Right to Life comes the duty to protect that life. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is the means to enforce that duty.
If government were given the ability to protect individuals from the harmful acts of others, they would also have the DUTY to do so.
Yet courts on every level have repeatedly said that the police have NO legal obligation to protect you.
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[I know you aren't the original author of what you posted, so please don't take the above rant at being personally directed at you. It just really bugs me when someone says the Constitution says something it doesn't]
The Constitution doesn't PROTECT 'individuals from the harmful acts of others', it can only PROSECUTE the individuals that did the harmful acts.
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