Like Ramesh Ponnuru, I’ve been dumpster diving, and acquired the entire draft of Mitt Romney’s speech for his inauguration (that Ramesh merely excerpted from an earlier one). The governor apparently wrote it despite the fact that he didn’t want to be president very much (thanks a heap, Republican establishment, for delivering unto us yet another outstanding nominee). Reading it in its entirety makes it little easier to understand President Obama’s Gettysburgesque speech on Monday. It does clearly illuminate the character of the monster who gleefully killed that unemployed guy’s wife with cancer, and tried to keep Sandra Fluke off the pill, along with the other women in binders.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Vice President Ryan, Mr. Chief Justice, members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens, each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional, what makes us America is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
But we also know that these truths are self executing, and that there is no need for the federal government.
Many say that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers. Some foolishly believe that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play. Many even claim that a great nation must care for the vulnerable and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.
Well, that’s all nonsense. Travel and commerce worked just fine in the days of horses and canal boats — our nation sustained great economic growth then. And when you overeducate people, it just raises their expectations. Rules that ensure competition and so-called “fair play” just inhibit trade and development. And what kind of pansy nation have we become that we think we need government, and particularly the federal government, to protect us from misfortune. Grow a pair, people!
Just as I believe that we could have defeated the communists and fascists with muskets and militia, I believe that even if we do need railroads and highways, we don’t need a government to do it. We have learned from the last four years that it is a mistake to rely on each other and to work together. It is my firm belief that one man, by himself, can train the nation’s math and science teachers — and probably, if he really tries, the nation’s English teachers as well. One man, acting alone, can build all the labs and networks and roads we need. When he is not training those teachers. Yeah, I’m talking about the same guy. What we must resolve never to do is work alongside one another.
I’ll go farther and forthrightly state that the notion that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity is socialistic nonsense. In fact, the key to our country’s success is to have a shrinking few do very well, while the vast majority can barely make it. It toughens them up. Also, children born in the bleakest poverty must learn to accept their fate. That’s just the luck of the draw. The way to reform entitlements is to stop taking care of the generation that built this country. We’ve just got to go cold turkey on that.
And when it comes to freedom, obviously it is reserved for the lucky, and happiness is only for the few. That’s just the way it’s always been, and the way it should be.
I totally reject the overwhelming judgment of science. What do scientists know, anyway? I don’t need science when I have the Book of Mormon.
And even if it’s getting a little warm, and blizzardy and tornadoey, and the planet is on fire, we’ll be OK for a while, and even if not, I repeat, grow a pair, people! Anyway, we have no obligations to posterity — what did posterity ever do for us? We have obligations only to ourselves.
As for technology, I want to cede it to other nations. All it does is generate new products that most people can’t afford anyway.
And I want to come out firmly in favor of perpetual war. It pumps up the economy, and gets all those unemployed people off the streets, so I don’t have to look at them begging when I drive by in my limo. As president, I’m going to invade every country in the world that so much as looks crossways at us.
That’s all I have to say.
So God bless you, and go out and get a job.
Losers.
As Ramesh says, we really dodged a bullet there.
I know it has a satire tag, but there’s an awful lot of people that believe this is the way Republicans think.
Well, it’s the army of straw men that the president burned down on Monday.
Are you really sure there aren’t GOP members — or commenters here — who would endorse some of this? Do you think we need the federal government to protect us from misfortune?
“Straw men” can serve a purpose by pushing people to rein in their extreme views. For years Paul Ryan has described people receiving entitlements as “takers”, but thanks to Obama’s inaugural “straw man” argument against that view, Ryan is now (indignantly) on the record as believing the opposite.
Are you really sure there aren’t GOP members — or commenters here — who would endorse some of this? Do you think we need the federal government to protect us from misfortune?
Well, if they don’t exist naturally, we can always make them! And straw is the natural material of choice.
“Straw men” can serve a purpose by pushing people to rein in their extreme views. For years Paul Ryan has described people receiving entitlements as “takers”, but thanks to Obama’s inaugural “straw man” argument against that view, Ryan is now (indignantly) on the record as believing the opposite.
If we are to believe what you claim, then this is yet another example of the harm done by straw man arguments with “takers” everywhere emboldened.
Here’s a link to Ryan’s before and after view on entitlements and “takers”.
another example of the harm done by straw man arguments
So you’re saying that the problem with Obama’s argument is that it accurately characterized the GOP position (and therefore wasn’t a straw man at all), and that by drawing attention to an unpopular position he forced the GOP to back away from it? That doesn’t sound like much of a harm to me.
Of course there are some GOP members who would endorse some of this. There are morons in both parties.
But Obama thinks (OK, not really, just wants to pretend) that it is the mainstream view of his political opponents, and he never concedes that they are sincere in their opposition, or that they argue in good faith — that they only take the positions that they do because they hate women, children, and puppies. It grows tiresome.
You should be concerned that some charismatic Republican demagogue would do the same thing to your side, because they are in fact much more vulnerable, given how actually venal and amoral they actually are. As just one example, how nuttily violent Democrat office holders seem to be.
he never concedes that they are sincere in their opposition, or that they argue in good faith — that they only take the positions that they do because they hate women, children, and puppies. It grows tiresome.
Whereas Obama’s opponents grant him good faith?!? You’ve got to be kidding. The notion that Obama is intentionally destroying the country is such a commonplace on the right that Michael Medved felt the need to timidly make the contrary case (in Medved’s view the fiscal cliff deal proves that Obama isn’t trying to wreck the country — as if the question was in some doubt before this month!). The mainstream GOP view seems to be that Obama wants to weaken the country’s position in the world, empower Islamist radicals and mullahs, make our citizens dependent on government, and crash the economy in order to justify a socialist takeover.
On this forum, there is a stubborn refusal to grant him a presumption of good faith, even for his welcomed moves on space policy. Instead, there is a notion that anything good he does must be an accident, or the unintended consequence of some nefarious plan. It’s possible to think that Obama has done some good things, but to believe that he wants to do good things? That’s clearly inconceivable.
given how actually venal and amoral they actually are
This is your version of conceding the sincerity and good faith of your opposition?
Obama has to show good faith before he can considered to have it.
Obama wants to weaken the country’s position in the world
I suspect that Left and Right differs on the definition of “strong position,” based on the occasional lefty rhetoric claiming that Obama improved our international stature.
make our citizens dependent on government
It’s bleedingly obvious that that IS one of Obama’s conscious goals. Ever heard of Obamacare?
It’s bleedingly obvious that that IS one of Obama’s conscious goals
Now, now, according to Rand it’s tiresome when you assign negative motives to your opponents, and question their good faith. Democrats aren’t supposed to assume that that Republicans don’t care about poor people just because they want to cut benefits for poor people, right? So you shouldn’t assume that Obama’s goal is to make people dependent on government, just because he wants to make sure they get health insurance.
Dependency on the government to acquire health insurance isn’t dependency on the government?
Doesn’t government micromanagement of the insurance industry place insurers in a state of dependency – dependent on the government for a lot of its decision-making?
Do you think we need the federal government to protect us from misfortune?
No, in fact I don’t. That is not the role of the federal government, other than the misfortune of being attacked by foreign powers. That is a clear delineation between those who believe in the Constitution and limited government, and those who irrationally believe in Leviathan.
So no federal disaster relief? No federal help when farmers are wiped out by drought or pestilence? No federal response to recession or depression? Those things are all “irrational”?
It doesn’t sound like Obama was arguing with straw men after all.
No.
No.
Yes – cut spending to the absolute bone.
Of course those are irrational, Jim. Read the 10th amendment. And give your head a mighty shake.
That word — irrational — does not mean what you think it means. The Constitution dictates what is legal, not what is rational.
Jim, you wrote:
So no federal disaster relief? No federal help when farmers are wiped out by drought or pestilence? No federal response to recession or depression?
First, you have to establish that they actually benefit society in some way beyond their cost. For example, disaster relief has a notorious side effect, “moral hazard” where people are encouraged to build in areas that receive frequent disasters. For example, the US has seen an increase of a factor of five in cost of property damage from “extreme weather”. The study I quote claims this is due to “climate change”. It fails to explain why the US is far more susceptible to so-called “extreme weather” than the rest of the world. Something that does explain that is the US’s broken approach to disaster relief and flood insurance.
Or consider farming. Why should the federal government be involved? What do they bring that a more local approach can’t deliver? If the AGW projections are accurate, then the US is going to have a large population of farmers in permanent drought. How does perpetual bailouts help the US overall? Are you going to force people to stop growing food in order to reduce farming payouts?
Finally, there’s the federal response to economic recessions and “depressions”. It’s worth noting here that we have two separate issues, the preservation of an existing set of market actors and the supposed benefits of stimulus spending. For the former, it’s worth noting that the US rewards failure and has consistently done so for many decades. The seeds for the next recession are often implanted in the recovery from the last one. Such happened with the dotcom burst and 9/11. The recovery process ended up massively pumping money into real estate with predictable consequences in 2007 and 2008. A lot of the same bad actors keep getting into trouble again and again.
Second, there is the theory that Keynesian-type spending helps shorten economic down cycles. We see with both the Japanese recession of 1990 and the recent real estate crisis, that no, Keynesian stimulus is not in itself sufficient.
Jim, this is the difference between just accepting talking points for an unusually (even by Washington standards) shallow and mendacious politician and actually thinking about the subject in question.
Exactly. The pros and cons of federal action in disaster relief, agriculture, and coping with the business cycle are matters for debate. Obama wasn’t attacking straw men — he was countering a legitimate opposing view, the very view you are putting forward here.
Exactly? I’d have to disagree especially with the third claim, the “coping” with the business cycle. I see we now have a third demonstration of the remarkable efficacy of the Keynesian approach with a “triple dip” recession possible in the UK.
“Are you really sure there aren’t GOP members — or commenters here — who would endorse some of this? ”
Are you sure there aren’t Dem members who have endorsed late third trimester abortions? Or were grand kleagles of the KKK? Or endorse governmental takeovers of private businesses at a whim? Or suggested we need a national armed force every bit as capable as the US Military but who are not limited by posse comitatus? Or paid off crony businesspeople who have contributed to campaigns ? Or not only cheated on their tax returns but actually ignore them? Or try to weasel out on $750,000 property tax on their new multi-million dollar yacht while screaming to the rafters that higher taxes must be paid? Or have uttered the word “confiscation” with regard to guns recently while carrying herself?
Gregg,
will you PUH-lease stop muddying up the emotional waters of the Obama Coronation with FACTS! America doesn’t facts, not when we can more easily just ‘feel’ about everything.
I feel better just getting that off my chest.
I’m terribly sorry…..
Its official – Jim has no funny bone.
Or common sense, but every post reminds us of that.
PS: If you’re taking welfare you are a ‘taker’. Sorry.
Let me try my joke, one more time with better timing:
“It is my firm belief that one man, by himself, can train the nation’s math and science teachers — and probably, if he really tries, the nation’s English teachers as well. ”
Khhhhaaaaaannnnnnnn!
Hey people, according to David Maraniss, didn’t a young Barack Obama have an “imaginary girlfriend”, just like that football player guy?
Wasn’t there some young love-of-Barack Obama’s young life, but instead of dying of cancer, she just wasn’t Mr. Obama’s destiny, so he simply turned his back on her and walked out, something that Mr. Obama sorta kinda regrets? Only there was no such young woman, or if there were, she was some kind of composite, you know, like Julia?
It’d be great satire if it wasn’t for that “rely on each other and to work together” crap. As if the government has anything to do with that.
It would be nice if once elected, they’d work WITH US, by voting the way WE want, for the reasons they ran on, for which they got our votes. And I’ve got friends on both sides of the aisle politically who say the same thing.
I do not know one person who is happy with their elected officials in D.C. A recent Poll put Congresses’ popularity rating below cockroaches, lice and traffic jams. Given that the citizens feel like that, and they obviously aren’t playing well with others in D.C. given what they get done on a daily basis, what will they ever get done?
While one opinion poll after another keeps pointing to the unpopularity of congress, when the only poll that counts comes around, 90% or greater of incumbents get reelected.
We need to clean the House and Senate, too. Until we do, we’re in for more of the same.
“‘Straw men’ can serve a purpose by pushing people to rein in their extreme views. ”
Yeah, I’m sure that’s why Obama uses them. [Sarcastic eye-roll.]
By the way, Jim, I have an extreme view myself. If you and your fellow statists try to bugger me, there will never come a time when I will concede your right to do so. Not for the “common good,” to benefit the poor, to benefit the rich, for the glory of the Volk, because it’s God’s Will, or any of the other shibboleths, superstitions, and slogans you State-fellators like to use to justify coercion. A “moderate” or “middle of the roader” would probably allow you to bugger him about half the time, if it were for the common good or whatever.