…you have grabbed enough power:
The Founders of the United States were deep students of politics and history, and they shared Aristotle’s concern. Up through their time, history had shown all known democracies to be “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.” James Madison and others held that the “first object of government” was to protect the rights of property. Numerous provisions of the Constitution and Bill of Rights were incorporated to protect the property rights of citizens from the power of the government.
Whatever else might be said about him, President Obama operates on a different philosophy of government from that of the Founders. As Michelle Malkin observes, he spoke the most revealing and clarifying 10 words of his administration this week: “I think at some point you have made enough money.”
The Founders thought that at some point the government had enough power. Obama, however, is a devout believer in unlimited government. The common denominator among so-called health care reform and financial regulatory reform as well as Obama’s other big proposals is the augmented power they confer on the government in general and the executive branch in particular.
But don’t call him a socialist.
“Enough” must be at least $5.5 million a year, which is what he reported on his 2009 income tax return.
But wait…wasn’t he President that whole year? And doesn’t the President get paid $400,000.
Hmmmmmm…..
The thing about power is the more you have the easier it is to get more. This November will tell us if we still have a functioning democracy.
I have noticed He doesn’t care if you call him a Socialist. The word doesn’t have the power it did even a decade ago. With the rise of the new illiteracy among the young, many folks think a “Socialist” is a cool guy who looks good in a bathing suit, smokes cigarettes, is fun at parties, and slips easily in and out of the African-American vernacular.
In his own books, he talks about how he tended to hang out with politically radical people so he wouldn’t be seen as a “sellout”. Why is anyone surprised that he’d actually have these kind of thoughts now?
Clearly they do not yet believe themselves anywhere near the limit.
Typical statist thought, “Hey, it’s there. Let’s go take them!”
Yes, heaven forbid we allow the market rate to float above zero to lessen the shortage.
That should dovetail well with rationed care. Just don’t call it a “death panel.”
The One is not a Socialist……at least not a by the book, pure, socialist. But I’m sure he will give all that power up once everything is set to his liking.
“By the book” is irrelevant. He has a redistributionist, and state-control mentality. He was a red-diaper baby, mentored by a communist, and by his own admission sought out Marxists and radicals in college (a pattern that continued in Chicago). To think that he’s not a socialist by nature and inclination is ludicrous.
It really depends on what people do with all of the money they have earned.
Bill Gates once didn’t do much with his money, but these days he is serious about eradicating polio and on killing mosquitos so children in Africa may live.
That “other fellow”, on the other hand, seems to like smashing doors in in Palo Alto . . .
It really depends on what people do with all of the money they have earned.
Who gets to decide the right way for people to spend their own money, Paul? You? How about me?
Yeah, that’s it. Don’t worry Paul. I’ll make these hard decisions so you don’t have to worry about how your money should be spent. You can trust me!
“Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.” — Ayn Rand
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/socialism.html
This is precisely the premise from which our Looter-in-Chief operates. He is fully prepared to dictate all the details of our lives — which doctors we may or may not see, which medicines we may or may not take, what forms of energy we may or may not use, etc.
Stricly speaking, the form of Obama’s socialism is for the most part the fascism variety. Fascism leaves nominal ownership of property in private hands, but gives government the power to dictate to people what can be done with “their” property — and their lives.
To a lesser extent, this has also been true of the recent Republican presidents we’ve had. Bush, for instance, signed into law an “energy bill” that will dictate what types of light bulbs we can burn — he also signed into law a bill that determines when we may or may not publicly campaign against and speak out against politicians and candidates for office — a blatant violation of the first amendment.
One wonders if there is enough American spine left to organize an effective resistance to this march to socialism/fascism. The Tea Parties are an encouraging sign — we will find out for certain come November.
You mean since the years-long and utterly pointless DOJ investigation that included threats to break up his company?
Yeah, these days he’s pretty much been brought to heel by political correctness.
Back in the ’60’s I remember conservatives being derided for warning us of “creeping socialism”. Unfortunately, we live in times when this warning is coming due. Whenever the excesses of the Obamian powergrab are opposed, there is a significant body of know-nothings who don’t see any fundamental difference between what Obama is proposing (and in many cases, enacting) and those things that government already does. Don’t like ‘death panels’? We already have a Medicare Advisory Board, what’s the difference? Don’t like Government Motors? “We” (i.e. government bureaucrats) already dictate everything from fuel economy to bumper heights. Don’t like ‘cap and trade’? The government already taxes fuel and sets mileage and builds powerplants and regulates oil refineries. Generations of Leftists have had to build the foundation for the takeover by tightly controlling the labels used to describe them, boxing their opponents as “McCarthyite”, and implementing in the schools a silent program of indoctrination by selective memory loss. And now we’ve reached the point where the President, openly educated in the Marxist tradition, can ignore the labels we try to stick on him because the labels themselves mean nothing to most people.
Bill Gates once didn’t do much with his money
Looks like he created a company that currently employs a hundred thousand or more people, supplies software for a huge number of people, and generated a vast amount of wealth in the process. That improves everyone’s standard of living. His current philanthropy is of similar productivity, but it’s worth noting that this is something that governments and societies could have been doing as well, but chose not to.
I’ll make a quick comment. For some decades now there has been a good bit of concentration of wealth — economic power — in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Some people on both the left and right talk honestly about a war on the middle class. Sometimes the attacks come from the left, sometimes from the right, sometimes from government, sometimes from corporate America, sometimes from academia — you get the picture. This kind of thing is not healthy for a free, democratic society. Still, though, more and more people are taking action on this kind of stuff. Some are on the right, some in the middle, some on the left. Try to really listen to other people — they might be more on your side than you think, but coming from a different perspective.
And are these rich people that you freet about forcibly [preventing others from accumulating wealth? Wanna guess Chuck has no problem with greater and greater concentration of power in the State?