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Conservative Chronicle
OBAMA PRESIDENCY: December 30, 2015
For Obama, it’s not delusion, it’s purpose
G
ood news, America: the Iran becomes a potential ally. Obama Obama administration has has done the calculations on his chalkachieved peace in Syria. board, and they all add up. Except that they don’t. But that That’s according to John Kirby, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bu- won’t stop Obama from pursuing his tions, thinking himreau of Public Affairs and spokesper- e q u a self the John Nash son at the US State who revolutionDepartment, who ized game theory issued a blog post when he’s actually filled with fivethe John Nash word summations (c) 2015, Creators Syndicate pasting headlines of 2015. Here’s about the comtheir summation of the Syrian crisis: “Bringing Peace, munist conspiracy to the walls of his study. It’s all still beautiful in his head. Security to Syria.” So the hundreds of thousands dead, It’s just delusional. the millions of refugees, the rise of AND THAT delusion has real world ISIS, the enshrinement of dictator Bashar Assad — none of it ever hap- costs. This week, we found out that pened. According to the State Depart- Obama pressured Secretary of Defense ment, everything’s going swimmingly. Ash Carter to release more Guantanamo Bay terrorists into foreign hands, MORE GOOD news: the Obama administration has also defeated terrorEQUALITY: December 29, 2015 ism: “Winning Fight Against Violent Extremists.” Oddly, more Americans now say that America is losing the war on terrorism than at any time since 9/11; 74 percent of Americans say they are dissatisfied with how the war on “We hold these truths to be self-evterror is progressing. ident, that all men are created equal.” But the news gets even better: the Or do we? State Department proclaims that it has At the end of a long, bitter political achieved Iran’s disarmament: “Iran year, with a still grimmer one facing Peaceful Nuclear Program Ensured.” us, shall we take a look? Well, there is that whole awkward The Founding Fathers’ abstract Iran continuing to develop whatever it commitment to equality — reinforced wants while funding terrorism across by the Gettysburg Address — vexes the world with money freed up by the and perplexes Americans across the United States and its allies. But real- political sphere. ly, we’ve stopped the mullahs dead in We know we’re “equal,” more or their tracks. less. But equal on what terms: nature’s There are only two possible ratio- or the government’s? nales for this sort of disconnect with “Equality” takes on the quality that reality: first, the Obama administration 21st century politicians assign it acknows they’re full of it, but they keep cording to vote tallies, with backing on gritting their teeth and pushing the from the media’s noisier voices. misinformation; second, they seriously believe that they are achieving magWE HEAR about economic equalnificent results. In other words, they’re ity; we hear about educational equaleither cynical or delusional. ity; we hear about, let’s say, demoMy money’s on delusional. graphic equality. We learn (from those Barack Obama is a pseudo-intel- talking about it) that we’re apparently lectual who believes so deeply in the deficient as a nation in the ratification power of his own ideas that he gets of Jefferson’s and Lincoln’s visions. lost in them. It never occurs to him We’re told all the things we still need that they could breed violence or evil. to do. They’re beautiful. Like Dr. Manhattan The equality balloon collapses in Watchmen, he’d rather build crystal with this pinprick: the “need to” part. towers of stunning meticulousness on It feeds the belief that government is Mars than anything of value here on supposed to make it all right — to kiss Earth — but unlike Dr. Manhattan, he our hurts and make them go away. won’t leave Earth alone. He’ll transIt makes great presidential-year plant his notions of reality onto the rest rhetoric, but it doesn’t much improve of us. public understanding of the infinite Thus alleged deserter Bowe Bergda- and eternal number of differences hl becomes a soldier who served hon- among humans. All it does, chiefly, is orably; Benghazi becomes a battle over augment existing discontents, setting a YouTube video; Israel becomes the citizens against each other. It likewise aggressor against the peaceful Pales- suggests a previously unsuspected tinians; ISIS becomes a jayvee threat; governmental duty — that of spread-
Ben
Shapiro
and even scolded him personally. Reuters reports, “Since then, the Pentagon has been more cooperative. Administration officials said they expect to begin transferring at least 17 detainees to foreign countries in January.” The report said Obama fired Carter’s predecessor, Chuck Hagel, for slow-walking Gitmo transfers as well. That’s because the Defense Department still has to operate in the realm of
reality, where nearly 30 percent of Gitmo releases have either been confirmed re-entering the fray or are suspected of having done so. Obama doesn’t have to worry about such realities. He’s busy constructing crystal castles on Mars. Except Mars is right here, on Earth. AND OBAMA’S still the most powerful man on this planet.
Equality babble, campaign rhetoric ing Happiness, obliterating pain and jealousy. Well. Hard as modern U.S. government works to slice the pie into 330 million equally sized pieces, inequality persists. It is built into the human condition. We know we’re not all the same. ECONOMIC INEQUALITY is the easiest version to peddle as a problem that needs solving. We can look around and see that not everyone drives a Mercedes S-class sedan. The billionaire phenomenon rattles many.
William
Murchison (c) 2015, Creators Syndicate
Why so much money for relatively few people? And what should we do about it, nonetheless? And what’s the “right” level of income for the “right” number of Americans? Liberal levelers benefit from the public’s inattention to anything but the sermons. Sermons, alas, don’t create wealth or new jobs. Racial “inequality” gets explained — by white Democrats, chiefly — as the consequence of cruelty and bigotry at the hands of Republican-voting whites. Tighter government controls and a looser grip on the federal purse are the touted remedies, offered as such without detailed explanation. Educational disparities seemingly contradict the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. Yet as the New York Times noted in a recent front-page news article, the number of
high school graduates goes up even as the number of graduates prepared for college goes down. Something isn’t working. If we’re so equal, how can achievement rates in college, as in life itself, not grow year by year? Or is that even the right question? Maybe the right question for 2016 is: How much more taxpayer money should we spend on salaries and after-school programs? Or, alternatively, how far can we realistically lower requirements for a college degree? The essential and inevitable nature of some forms of inequality is a matter upon which the modern politician must never, never remark, at the risk of outraging editorial writers and losing votes. Reality itself has to yield to political necessity — a sad admission in an age saddled with the failures of politics. A society’s obligation to all, and not just some of, its citizens requires, not just suggests, interventions of one kind and another. It also requires understanding that equalization of opportunity matters more, and achieves more, than political attacks on those who rise on their own, through work, initiative, and character. These things Jefferson and the Founding Fathers knew, as did Lincoln. TODAY THE Founders would cry out against treating “equality” as a deity to be tended and enlarged by the high priests of government. In this coming debate, in which those touting bigger government are sure to dominate, candidates shouldn’t be spared a fair and honest retort: Just what in Jefferson’s name are you talking about?!