I half-joked yesterday on Twitter and FaceBook that we would see Obama give his “L’etat C’ est Moi” speech. And that is exactly what we got.
Last night we heard a nationally televised speech given by a man so in love with the sound of his own voice that he’s completely deaf to the voices of the vast majority of Americans crying out for their government to change course.
The messages of New Jersey and Virginia last November, and Massachusetts just over a week ago were crystal clear:
“You’ve abused our trust, Federal government, and you’ve abused our power which we so foolishly loaned to you, so we are electing people who will trust us with our own power, wrest it from your clutches, and return it to us.”
Those messages have, without a doubt, fallen on the deaf ears of our Comrade-In-Chief. From the opening lines of this speech, it was obvious which direction he was going to take. No “moral high ground” or Clintonesque triangulation could be possible after this gem in the 3rd paragraph:
And despite all our divisions and disagreements; our hesitations and our fears; America prevailed because we chose to move forward as one nation, and one people.
A highbrow, “holier than y’all,” absolute denial of the incredible role of individuals in shaping, transforming, and leading this great nation out of the struggles and turmoil we’ve survived. Banding together is all well and good, but a crowd accomplishes nothing without the separate volitional acts of its individual members.
Every single course of action outlined in the President’s speech last night stems from bureaucracy-bloated and heavy-handed top-down Federal intrusion into the free market.
A very sentient analysis was provided by Alex Castellanos a few days ago in an article called “The New Republican.” Please check out the full article here, because it’s well worth the read. Here’s an excerpt explaining the Newtonian theory of clock-like societal order, and its failings:
“Similarly, we were led to believe, societies and economies needed design, or they would not run. The alternative, we were told, was chaos. Many of our best and brightest stepped up, over the years, to design the society that would save us. All we needed was single-payer health care, a factory-like public-school system, and that patent-medicine solution to every social problem, the five-point government program.
This thinking continues into the present. President Obama’s economic-recovery package, for example, is based on an over-simplified, Keynesian cooking recipe of aggregate inputs and outputs. He holds the establishment view that the only factors that count are the ones Washington can measure. Damn the interests of distant individuals and their ability to adapt and work around Washington’s schemes. Ignore the inevitable, unintended consequences of high-handed establishment planning. The public-sector lords of design know better. Let Washington build a big, simple vending machine and put in a trillion dollars’ worth of quarters at the top. Jobs, energy, or health care will come out at the bottom.
Unfortunately, you and I are not cogs and gears, and our relationships, rich in connections and complexity, are not at all simple or linear. The end of the industrial age means that everything in our economic ecosystem is woven together in a delicate web composed of relationships. We are all tied together in ways Washington can’t see, much less manage.
Yet our governing intellectual establishment still lives in its old, clocklike, Newtonian universe — even as their giant clocks break down and the age of the machine gives way to the era of the organism and the network. Perhaps, in time, this new generation of Republicans will come to be known as “natural Republicans,” “bottom-up Republicans,” or even “organic Republicans.”
Whatever we will be called, we will not be the first stewards of liberty to see ourselves as cultivators and planters. Friedrich Hayek, in his 1974 Nobel acceptance speech titled “The Pretence of Knowledge,” urged us to cultivate, not manufacture, social progress.
“If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order,” said Hayek, “he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment , in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.”
It is opportunistic, at best, to assume the role of master planner, from a distant location, over the everyday mechanics of interpersonal and interbusiness relationships. At worst? The most egregious form of arrogance: that born from malice.
I do not have the time or inclination to delve into every single facet of this speech (nor every single facetious pledge), so I’ll spare you that here. (Tune in to The Brushfire Hour this Friday night, or The Sons Of Liberty Show on Saturday here, for more in-depth analysis.
The simple point of this post is to implore you, the faithful reader, to apply logic. Contrast the crashing industrial noise government meddling always injects into a given situation with the harmonious whispers of natural law and organic private interaction. And choose.
Will we follow our modern day Sun King, Le Roi Soleil Obama into the age of L’etat C ‘est Moi? Or will we, along with our Tea Party brothers-in-arms (figuratively, mind you), become the New Huguenots?
A decision must be made. Put another way, is this nation strong because of government? Or is it strong because of individuals?
Honestly and truthfully examine your goals, hopes, dreams, ambitions, and the obstacles to each (and where those obstacles originate), and the answer becomes very simple.
At least, it does to me.
Inexplicably Simple, Indescribably Plain
