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Tuesday, May 07, 2013

All hail the State

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play. 

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone.  Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.  For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.  No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores.  Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people.


What’s striking about this is how Obama reduces the alternatives to either loners or government. That reflects an extremely artificial view of human nature.

Consider some of the many forms of human organization that Obama is leaving out of consideration: marriage, parents and children, siblings, extended family (e.g. grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins), church, friends, neighbors, classmates, sports teams, private business, gangs, hunt clubs, night clubs, motorcycle clubs, pool halls, opera, school musicals, rock concerts, social networks, &c.

Obama has an arrestingly unnatural, atrophied view of how human beings interrelate. Does Obama have any real friends, or does he view “friends” as simply rungs on the social ladder?

4 comments:

  1. I remember a time when many liberals would vehemently deny being socialists (maybe some still do), but when you openly support gov't health care, welfare, universal child care, and socialized pension plans, at what point can you really say that you've distanced yourself from socialism?

    Also Steve, a question:

    I remember at one point reading from Ayn Rand that her ideal for gov't is that it should consist solely of a court system, an army (I assume this includes secret service), and a police force. All that is necessary for the protection of basic human right, essentially. Gov't going beyond such boundaries would be verboten.

    What do you think of limiting the scope of gov't to that degree? Is it realistic? Is it biblical? (Obviously, Rand didn't have the Bible in mind when she said that, I guess I'm asking if such an idea is compatible with a biblical worldview)

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    1. One technique would be to go through the blue pages, asking yourself what agencies and departments could be eliminated entirely, as well as what functions currently assumed by gov't could be better privatized.

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  2. "What’s striking about this is how Obama reduces the alternatives to either loners or government."

    This is a common Obama tactic. He knows his view is extreme so he paints the opposition as even more extreme on the opposite end of the spectrum, in the hopes that his view will seem normal by comparison.

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  3. What I find strange among conservatives is that there is a great concern about "big govt" and govt power but very little concern about big corporations and corporate power. Why is that? At least a govt is elected by citizens but a corporation is beholdened to only their board and stockholders (and sometimes they seem to ignore even them). It seems in many cases the only constraint on corporate power is government power. I could take the desire for small govt more seriously if there were equal concern about large powerful corporate entities and solutions were proposed to limit their powers.

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