Identifying Traces...Too

"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."

-Samuel Adams

The first time I heard Obama speak I turned to my wife and said, "There is our next President." She being far more intuitive than I replied, "He's a fake."

I do not even remember whether it was a speech or just an interview, I know it was before he announced his candidacy. I did not make the observation based on what he said, but how he said it. It was very inspiring and I knew that it would resonate with the American people, as indeed it did. It resonated so well that people overlooked nearly everything about the man, his past, his associations, his record even his mercurial positions and statements.

After some investigation, I too reached my wife's conclusion, "he's a fake." Not that what he is now is any different than what he has always been only that he brilliantly played a chameleon during the campaign so that the casual observer would not recognize his true colors. Since a fawning press was willing to ignore the inconsistency of nearly everything about the man, he pulled it off.

Shortly after the election I wrote

I find this poll from the Rasmussen Report rather telling. Particularly this portion.

Ninety-five percent (95%) of political conservatives see Obama as politically liberal. Seventy-one percent (71%) of liberals see the President-elect as one of their own.However, political moderates are more likely to see Obama as closer to the political center. Forty-four percent (44%) of moderates see Obama as moderate while 46% see him as liberal

It is not surprising that conservatives would view Obama as a liberal and that liberals in such large numbers would identify him as one of their own, but what is surprising is how few moderates recognize him as being liberal. This may explain why he won the election, the fact that he could portray himself as a moderate to a large portion of those who identify themselves as being moderate probably played a large part in his ability to carry independents and therefore the election. If even a small percentage more of self described moderates had identified him as liberal rather than moderate that very well could have changed the election.

This is why Independents and moderates have left him in such large numbers in the past year, they were the ones who were fooled. They are coming to see what conservatives and liberals have known all along, Obama is a liberal. In fact he is so progressively liberal that once elected he could not govern in any way other than as a far left ideologue. After all once you are in charge you have to actually start doing something and what Obama is doing is enacting the policy agenda of an extreme leftist progressive. This too was easily surmised by observant watchers as I pointed out in the same post in November 2008:

...the idea that Obama will ultimately govern from the middle is unlikely. A person, particularly a person under stress tends to make decisions based on their core beliefs. Unless Obama allows more moderate advisers to influence him towards the center, it is more likely that he will swing left as time goes on. Unlike Clinton or Bush or most presidents this is even more probable now that he has very little legislative or media checks on his power.

It could be very interesting, indeed.

Indeed it has been interesting, but what does it mean? It means that beyond the normal political posturing and pandering that is nearly always present in American politics, we have a President who would not have been elected had he run on what he is actually doing and proposing to do, this is what makes him a fake. In a sense he is being true to himself, which is an admirable trait, by not being true to the American people which is unconscionable in a democratically elected leader.

As Obama so famously reminded us during the campaign, even if the words were purloined from his friend Governor Deval Patrick , "words matter". Yesterday Obama gave the commencement speech at the University of Michigan where he attempted one of his famous slight of hands. Turning his oppositions beliefs (Alinsky rules) against them, it actually was masterful.

He slyly took the criticism of him as a radical outside of the political mainstream, used historical references and quasi constitutionalism and used it against those who criticize him. Why a president would deem it necessary to use a rather important public speech to defend himself and attack his critics is revealing in itself, but he couched it in the guise of opening political dialogue and being civil to your political opponents, it was truly deceitful. I wish to point out just one aspect of this performance.

One of the more popular founding father's quotes amongst the Tea Party Movement, among all those who truly understand and love our Republic is attributed to Ben Franklin. Obama quoted it as the center piece of his speech in Michigan:

On the last day of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was famously asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got -– a republic or a monarchy?” And Franklin gave an answer that’s been quoted for ages: He said, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

In quoting that particular passage he attempted to co-op the over riding theme of the Tea Party Movement and his critics, that WE THE PEOPLE must protect our Republic. But what Obama did was reveal just another "Identifying Trace" as to who he truly is.

When he quotes Benjamin Franklin it is the one and only time in his entire speech where he actually uses the word Republic. Despite the fact that the greater part of the rest of his speech is a recounting of American history and a lecture on our government, whenever he refers to our form of government he calls it a democracy-consistently:

"Through revolution and civil war, our democracy has survived...How will you keep our democracy going? ....how will you keep our democracy alive and vibrant...American democracy has thrived because we have recognized the need for a government that, while limited, can still help us adapt to a changing world...The democracy designed by Jefferson and the other founders was never intended to solve every problem..."

All of the above uses could and should have used the correct description of our nation as a republic. Isn't that after all what Ben Franklin told us we must hold onto?

The next use of the word democracy is particularly galling on several levels. It is he and his ilk who have historically defined our form of government as "menacing and threatening" It is he and his ilk who have undermined the very principles of We The People that he now seems to embrace to muddle the minds of his youthful audience while his entire presidency has been a non stop and arrogant abridging of We The Peoples liberties and rightful place as sovereigns of our nation :

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us. We, the people — We, the people, hold in our hands the power to choose our leaders and change our laws, and shape our own destiny.

In the next use of the word democracy rather than republic he at least reveals his true beliefs:

...remember that the ability for us to adapt our government to the needs of the age has helped make our democracy work since its inception.

It is not his or even his audiences duty or function to "adapt our government". It is the duty of the government to protect the citizen's liberties so they may adapt to the needs of the age. Who after all is the arbiter of what the needs of the age are? The next Republican Administration, the next Democrat Administration? Official at all levels are elected to work within the system of government we have until such time as We The People using the tools within the Constitution choose to modify them. No temporary holder of public office at any level is given the power by process of their election to "adapt" or as Obama so tellingly informed us "transform" the government. In America people are elected to protect and preserve our institutions not to "adapt" them, that is for two bit Venezuelan dictators.

He continues lecturing us on our democracy and proper civil discourse:

Now, the second way to keep our democracy healthy is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate...we now have the option to get our information from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows. And this can have both a good and bad development for democracy...But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. It is essential for our democracy...You’ll learn what it’s like to walk in somebody else’s shoes, and in the process, you will help to make this democracy work...Which brings me to the last ingredient in a functioning democracy, one that’s perhaps most basic — and it’s already been mentioned — and that is participation...when we choose not to make our voices and opinions heard, that’s when democracy breaks down...This democracy we have is a precious thing

Much of what he espouses sounds as if it is coming from someone who truly believes in the American Republic but never once, other than when quoting Franklin, does he mention the Republic, always it is democracy. To those who understand the philosophical difference between a republic and a democracy and the history behind that difference his obvious predilection to use democracy as the over riding theme of the speech is chilling. Particularly when he is supposed to be a Constitutional professor.

Our founders were justifiably fearful of a democracy, that is why they went to such pains to create a Constitutional Republic. The republic which they devised seeks equal justice under the law, whereas a democracy breeds mob rule and a means by which tyrants can attain power through pandering to the masses. A few quotes from our Founding Fathers to illustrate:

We are a Republican Government, Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of democracy...it has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.
-Alexander Hamilton

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
-John Adams

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%....

"In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
- Thomas Jefferson

Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant...

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death
- James Madison

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."
-Patrick Henry

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."

and my favorite

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
-Benjamin Franklin

I could go on but you get the point, democracy bad, Constitutional Republic good and even if you or the President of the United States do not see it that way, that is the legal government of this nation. In fact the president as a condition of his employment swears to uphold that Constitution. But the truth is that our president has never seen it that way, he has always seen the Constitution as an impediment to his philosophical beliefs:

....the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted.

Barack Obama

But that is not the country he lives in and all the twisting and manipulating of the Constitution to meet progessives goals will not change that, unless we let them.

Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare,but only those specifically enumerated.
– Thomas Jefferson

With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.
– James Madison

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
– James Madison

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
-Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Many people in this country, though still a minority, may believe as our president does rather than as was intended by our founders that does not give them either the right or any moral authority to usurp the law of the land. Our Constitution is what makes us a republic rather than a democracy, the only thing democratic about our system of government is how we elect our public officials. When you remove the rule of law from the equation of the democratic process you end up with Hugo Chavez.

For all his bluster and programed eloquence Barack Obama is nothing new at all. He represents a failed social, economic and political philosophy. Whether you call it socialism, Marxism, Fascism, Communism or Liberal Progressives, it is nothing more than people of eitherlow moral character or an elitist mentality whom seek power over others for their own megalomaniac needs.

The modern progressive movement, which Obama represents the apex of, is the coming together of the failing unions both public and private with the academic elite. If you doubt this investigate his administration, particularly below the cabinet level. They in no way represent the vast majority of Americans either in background or political philosophy, they are living on borrowed time politically, and they know it.

The most important thing an American can do is to study their history, understand their Constitution and seek out those who are truly lovers of liberty to both associate with and support. Most important of all be a beacon of Liberties light to all that may be in darkness that they may know where to turn when they begin to see that Liberty is more precious than security for without Liberty there is no security only other peoples promises.

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