--- On Tue, 4/7/09, Harry Gendler <gendl...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> From: Harry Gendler <gendl...@ix.netcom.com>
> Subject: Musings on the Age of Obama - The president seems determined to
> repeat every disastrous mistake of the 1930s.
> To: "Harry Gendler" <gendl...@ix.netcom.com>
> Date: Tuesday, April 7, 2009, 12:42 PM
>
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> National
> Review
>
> April 07, 2009,
> 0:00 a.m.
>
>
>
> Musings on the Age
> of Obama - The
> president seems determined to repeat every disastrous
> mistake of the 1930s.
>
> By Thomas
> Sowell
>
> http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTM2NmJkOWI0ZDkwNDQ1YmQ1YTAzZDk0OGEzOTNlZjU=
>
>
>
>
>
> I am so old that I can remember when
> music was musical.
>
>
>
> Now that the federal government says that it will stand
> behind the warranties
> on GM’s automobiles, does that make you more likely
> or less likely to buy
> a car from GM? If you were a rising young executive with a
> promising future,
> would you be more likely or less likely to go to work for a
> company where
> politicians can fire you?
>
>
>
> We have become such suckers for words that politicians can
> spend our tax money
> like a drunken sailor, provided they call it
> “investment.” At least
> the drunken sailor is spending his own money — but
> people look down on
> him because he doesn’t call it
> “investment.”
>
>
>
> Barack Obama seems determined to repeat every disastrous
> mistake of the 1930s,
> at home and abroad. He has already repeated Herbert
> Hoover’s policy of
> raising taxes on high income earners, FDR’s policy of
> trying to
> micro-manage the economy, and Neville Chamberlain’s
> policy of seeking
> dialogues with hostile nations while downplaying the
> dangers they represent.
>
>
>
> We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society
> where no one is
> responsible for what he himself did but we are all
> responsible for what
> somebody else did, either in the present or in the past.
>
>
>
> The famous editorial cartoonist Herblock could write as
> well as draw. In one of
> his books, he said something like: “You too can have
> the soothing feeling
> of nature’s own baby-soft wool being pulled gently
> over your resting
> eyes.” I think of that every time I see Barack Obama
> talking.
>
>
>
> It has long been said that uncertainty is the hardest thing
> for a market to
> adjust to. No one can generate uncertainty as much as the
> government, which can
> change the rules in midstream or come out with some new
> bright idea at any
> time, as the current administration has already
> demonstrated.
>
>
>
> We have now reached the truly dangerous point where we
> cannot even be warned
> about the lethal, fanatical, and suicidal hatred of our
> society by Islamic
> extremists, because to do so would be politically incorrect
> and, in some
> European countries, would be a violation of the law against
> inciting hostility.
>
>
>
> Perhaps the scariest aspect of our times is how many people
> think in talking
> points, rather than in terms of real world consequences.
>
>
>
> Barack Obama’s favorable reception during his tour in
> Europe may be the
> most enthusiastic international acclaim for a democratic
> government leader
> since Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938,
> proclaiming
> “peace in our time.”
>
>
>
> How a man who holds the entire population of a country as
> his prisoners, and
> punishes the families of those who escape, can be admired
> by people who call
> themselves liberals is one of the many wonders of the human
> mind’s
> ability to rationalize. Yet such is the case with Fidel
> Castro.
>
>
>
> What does “economic justice” mean, except that
> you want something
> that someone else produced, without having to produce
> anything yourself in
> return?
>
>
>
> Perhaps the way President Obama will reduce the deficit is
> by making more
> presidential appointments of people who will pay the back
> taxes they owe, in
> order to get confirmed by the Senate.
>
>
>
> Liberals seem to think that they are doing lagging groups a
> favor by making
> excuses for counterproductive and self-destructive
> behavior. The poor do not
> need press agents. They need the truth. No one ever said,
> “Press agents
> will make you free.”
>
>
>
> If I were Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, I
> would not sign any
> long-term lease on a home in Washington.
>
>
>
> Socialists believe in government ownership of the means of
> production. Fascists
> believed in government control of privately owned
> businesses, which is much
> more the style of this government. That way, politicians
> can intervene whenever
> they feel like it and then, when their interventions turn
> out badly, summon
> executives from the private sector before Congress and
> denounce them on
> nationwide television.
>
>
>
> — Thomas
> Sowell is a senior fellow at the
> Hoover
> Institution.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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