A society that frets about the poor is a society that cannot prosper. Caring for the poor is a very different thing from fretting about the poor - I have no problem with caring for the poor - but fretting suggests an ideological engagement, suggests that a focus on the conditions of the poor feeds an idea one desperately wants to believe in and promote - it suggests an emotional attachment and emotional attachments are always personal and therefore threatened by the governing impersonal reality. Fretting over the least productive constituent of a society shows an inability to understand what really matters if general prosperity and freedom are ones goals. It leads to populist appeals to weakness cloaked in gibberish about highly nebulous conceptions like fairness - it leads to a sort of fascism - it leads to Obama's reelection strategy.
Wait - am I endorsing the notion of liberal fascism? Have I become Rush Limbaugh? No. But after four years of Obama we have spiralling deficits, real unemployment of somewhere between twelve and fifteen percent, anemic GDP growth, no progress made on education reform, tax reform, immigration reform, entitlements reform - no budget plan at all except a prop one released to shamelessly try and make Ryan's budget look evil - oh, and a military getting weaker as a measure of its obligations, not stronger - and yet polls indicate that about 45% of the electorate plan to vote for Obama no matter what - which suggets to me nearly half the electorate is mired, trapped in an irrational if not indeed delusional view of reality. If that sounds like democracy functioning as intended, then we should probably stop calling it democracy and start calling it something else. A little unfair I guess to go with liberal fascism since the GOP primary, now mercifully over it seems, demonstrated that a great many conservatives are just as nuts as the Michael Moores et al - still, since liberal sympathies control the media and you can't have true fascism without the ability to manipulate and co-opt peoples perceptions, indeed their very emotions, and that's the very thing media does so well - seen from that angle liberal fascism does kind of work.
Certainly, Obama is lying as one would tend to imagine a liberal fascist might. He's got that part of it down. All he needs is some kind of silly salute his followers can employ to signify their unwavering allegiance to him. Maybe the Daily Show's writers can come up with something.
