Please keep your political postings OFF of mopo. If you
want to do that there are PLENTY of places to do so.
Kirby McDaniel
On Apr 7, 2009, at 11:33 PM, Lance and Rebecca Malamud wrote:
--- 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
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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