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The Sources of American Anger
NRO ^ | 28 aug 2010 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 08/28/2010 2:08:16 PM PDT by rellimpank

Barack Obama, the great healer, is proving to be the most divisive president since Richard Nixon.

Behind the anger over the Arizona immigration mess, the Ground Zero mosque, the economy, and the new directions in foreign policy are some recurring general themes that reverberate in each particular new controversy. In sum, they explain everything from the tea parties to the wholly negative perception of Congress to the slide in presidential popularity.

1. Two sets of rules. The public senses there are two standards in America — one for elite overseers, quite another for the supposedly not-to-be-trusted public. The anger over this hypocrisy surfaces over matters from the trivial to the profound. Sometimes the pique arises because the spread-the-wealth, we-all-have-skin-in-shared-sacrifice presidential sermons don’t apply to those who do the preaching, as in the president’s serial polo-shirted golf excursions or Michelle’s movable feast from Marbella to Martha’s Vineyard.

More profoundly, an Al Gore, a Timothy Geithner, a John Kerry, a John Edwards, a Charles Rangel — the luminaries who call for bigger government, higher taxes, and more green coercion — now appear to the public as disingenuous, living lives in abject contradiction to the utopian bromides they would apply to others. So too with the media. The opinion makers at a failing New York Times, Newsweek, or CBS lost readers and viewers not just because of changing technologies, but because of incessant editorializing in which the educated and affluent, the winners in our system, berated the less educated and less well off, the strugglers in our system, as bigoted or selfish or both.

How, for example, can Americans be asked to pay higher power bills in a recession to subsidize wind power, when the green Kennedy clan worries about windmills marring its vacation-spot view?

(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: vdh; victordavishanson
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To: blackbart.223

OBAMA is F’n sissy boy


21 posted on 08/28/2010 3:05:34 PM PDT by wetgundog (" Extremism in the Defense of Liberty is no Vice")
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To: Dilbert San Diego

The White House may not discuss it, and the press may have been ordered to give it a PC swing, but we all know the truth. Especially when ABC comes out last week, in their Early Morning show, that “....the American public needs to know that Obama is Christian. He converted to Christianity.” Liars and idiots.

My response? FU and the horse y’all rode in on. Obama is a Muslim and he lies because that is what is expected of him

The shooter at Ft. Hood, the Muslims who lie to America while “being American” will spend the Eternities in torment. No better for them!

Those who defend America, no matter what, no matter where, will know that God is a God of Love, not one of Hate and Destruction.


22 posted on 08/28/2010 3:06:46 PM PDT by Monkey Face (If you think health care is expensive now, wait till it's free.)
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To: wetgundog
"OBAMA is F’n sissy boy."

No argument here.

23 posted on 08/28/2010 3:12:02 PM PDT by blackbart.223 (I live in Northern Nevada. Reid doesn't represent me.)
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To: rickmichaels

Whoever picked that bike out for him doesn’t know how to size up a person to the right frame size.


24 posted on 08/28/2010 3:16:07 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (I'd like to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.)
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To: rickmichaels

25 posted on 08/28/2010 3:18:10 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: Secret Agent Man

He picked it out for himself? Makes more sense.


26 posted on 08/28/2010 3:19:21 PM PDT by huldah1776
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To: huldah1776

I just assumed his mommy/beard picked it out.


27 posted on 08/28/2010 3:22:09 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (I'd like to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.)
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To: rellimpank

Someone just insulted the late President Nixon.


28 posted on 08/28/2010 3:51:25 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (I don't need a newspaper to know the world's been shaved by a drunken barber.)
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To: rickmichaels

Re post 7, you’re killing me.


29 posted on 08/28/2010 3:51:30 PM PDT by Former Proud Canadian (How do I change my screen name now that we have the most conservative government in the world?)
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To: rickmichaels

Got any pics of President Bush during his bike workout? (Especially the ones after he crashed his bike! Now that’s tough!)

My Heroes have always been cowboys!


30 posted on 08/28/2010 4:00:59 PM PDT by griswold3 ('Regulation and law without enforcement is no law at all)
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To: rellimpank

If only Hillary were president...


31 posted on 08/28/2010 4:28:08 PM PDT by Dick Holmes
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To: rickmichaels

Zero is SUCH a cowardly wimp!


32 posted on 08/28/2010 4:32:04 PM PDT by Monkey Face (If you think health care is expensive now, wait till it's free.)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

That post says it all...wussie-boys hang curtains. Men do what has to be done, whether it’s clearing the land or cleaning out congress.

One of these three can still do the job. Anyone want to take a guess who that is?

Thot not.


33 posted on 08/28/2010 4:34:56 PM PDT by Monkey Face (If you think health care is expensive now, wait till it's free.)
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To: Secret Agent Man

Maybe, just MAYBE, the person who chose that bike knew EXACTLY what he was doing!

Cowards ride cowardly bikes.


34 posted on 08/28/2010 4:37:39 PM PDT by Monkey Face (If you think health care is expensive now, wait till it's free.)
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To: Citizen Tom Paine
I am slowly beginning to wonder if our elections are honest.

Not in King County, WA.

35 posted on 08/28/2010 4:38:02 PM PDT by sionnsar (IranAzadi|5yst3m 0wn3d-it's N0t Y0ur5:SONY|TV--it's NOT news you can trust)
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To: rickmichaels

Doesn’t this dork look like Pee-Wee Herman?

Actually I’d like to think he’s Alfred E.Neuman.After All I think He’s MAD.


36 posted on 08/28/2010 5:11:33 PM PDT by puppypusher
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To: rickmichaels

LOL!! Mr. Wimp-O-Matic


37 posted on 08/28/2010 6:10:43 PM PDT by sergeantdave
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To: Mariner

“Beyond those I’m wondering if they’ll attempt to dissolve the Constitution (in the interest of Social Justice, of course) and effect some sort of Martial Law...with the SEIU/ACORN crowd hired for neighborhood observation and enforcement.”

I suppose...King obuma has the fearsome Fat Welfare Momma Division.

I watched the Fat Wefare Momma Division on maneuvers, and a fat welfare momma pulled into the crippled zone at the grocery store. She waddled out the car and opened the car door and her fire team of four drunken boyfriends charged out.

They exited the grocery store armed with six cases of beer, headed to fat welfare momma’s fort, staggered out and executed their battle plans to drink every can of beer before noon.

It was frightening...We need to be scared.


38 posted on 08/28/2010 6:23:48 PM PDT by sergeantdave
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To: AEMILIUS PAULUS

I agree, but my complaint is with “life’s winners” vs, “life’s losers”.

There are plenty of people who have never aspired to being a journalist or academic or even a university researcher. Nor do they necessarily consider a physician or an attorney to be a winner as opposed to a farmer, mason, carpenter, plumber or electrician, etc.

Some of us have managed to make a decent life, with accumulated assets, out of our creativity and actual manual labor. We might work for ourselves or have “bought ourselves a job”. We may be uncomfortable in large urban concrete warrens or just bored in cul-de-sac suburbs. We may be more adept at using our hands, as well as our minds. That does not define losing.

I suppose that sounds defensive, but it irks me to listen to even conservative academics make these sorts of statements that they simply take for granted. While we do have a meritocracy (of sorts), we are all individuals whose choices are due a degree of respect.

A true elite would have the insight and grace to understand this.


39 posted on 08/28/2010 8:14:35 PM PDT by reformedliberal
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To: sergeantdave
"She waddled out the car"

Beautiful writing...

40 posted on 08/28/2010 8:49:18 PM PDT by Mariner (USS Tarawa, VQ3, USS Benjamin Stoddert, NAVCAMS WestPac, 7th Fleet, Navcommsta Puget Sound)
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