The Big O - Road to the Middle Class - by Christopher Chantrill

LIKE PEGGY Lee in “Is That All There Is,” conservatives keep wondering if they are missing something about the Democratic presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). Meanwhile, we hum to ourselves, in a rich contralto,

If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

It seems tailor-made to be a McCain campaign song, especially if, as everyone thinks, Republicans are going to get hammered anyway this November. Of course, these days, my friends, “binge drinking” is frowned upon by educated, evolved people and only practiced by bitter people after a Saturday afternoon trip to the gun club.

The song makes sense. There’s nothing in Obama’s “Blueprint for Change” except the usual liberal laundry list of new programs and subsidies for Democratic interest groups. But then you’d expect that in a document prepared for the Democratic Party primary season.

Now that Obama’s the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party it is time to check his agenda for a heartbeat, and figure out if there is anything there beyond the Big O.

You’d think his big speech of Tuesday, June 3, 2008 would give us a clue, and it did. On Iraq, he’s beginning to walk back towards the center:

We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in - but start leaving we must. It’s time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future.

It’s an artful statement that could mean anything, but is certainly meant to reassure independent voters, hinting that an Obama administration would continue the Bush policy of standing-up the Iraqi government.

Then, on health care, Obama in his speech wants to:

pass a health care plan that guarantees insurance to every American who wants it and brings down premiums for every family who needs it.

To understand what that means you need help, and the June 6, 2008 edition of The Wall Street Journal has an analysis of the candidate’s position (available online) that mandates that large companies provide health insurance for their employees. Obama would “increase regulations and spend tax dollars” to guarantee health insurance to every American.

On education, the Journal says that Obama would add more money to support No Child Left Behind but relax its punitive aspects. Says Obama:

[W]e owe it to our children to invest in early childhood education; to recruit an army of new teachers and give them better pay and more support... a college education should not be a privilege for the wealthy few, but the birthright of every American.

In other words, on education it’s liberal business-as-usual. There will be more money for the liberal education blob and more subsidies for liberal colleges.

It’s on energy that Obama most closely honors his promise of “unity,” but that’s only because Republican John McCain buys into the liberal “consensus” on global warming. Obama “supports subsidies for solar and wind energy,” and doesn’t want nuclear power before “storage and safety issues are resolved,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Many conservatives are anxious to paint Barack Obama as a radical left-winger, and maybe he is. But plenty of liberals have flirted with the left, in a youthful experiment with a bit of radical rough trade. They return in their years of political viability to the liberal mainstream, and they propose a new top-down expert-led program here, or ratchet up a subsidy for Democratic voters there, just like every other liberal. Radical or mainstream, the difference is merely one of degree.

Sooner or later, after you’ve brought more and more of American life under the knout of compulsion and after you have provided every Democratic voter with a four-course dinner of government services you’ll get to the day where the American people cry Uncle, break out the booze, and decide they can’t take it any more.

Until then, here’s an audacious hope. When you listen to Obama’s rhetoric you may think: I’d have to be born yesterday to believe this! No taxpayer could buy into the notion that this is

the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,

or that college is a “privilege for the wealthy few,” not when government in the United States spend north of $900 billion a year each on health care and education.

Maybe there’s a clue here. Maybe Obama is the candidate for people born yesterday and the people that don’t pay taxes. For the rest of us, the meaning of Obama seems to be symbolized in his ubiquitous “O” logo. He seems to add up not to “change,” not to “unity,” but to a Big Zero.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

Buy his Road to the Middle Class.

print view

To comment on this article at American Thinker click here.

To email the author, click here.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches... they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Home

American Manifesto

Chapters

Chappies

roadtothemiddleclass

presented by Christopher Chantrill

Follow @chrischantrill • Contact