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What about W’s post-presidency? Carter went into human rights for socialism, Reagan drifted into poor health, Clinton bent over for anyone with a million bucks and GWI virtually disappeared. Is W is going to start an Institute, one devoted to polishing his image rather than offering objective analysis? Does ’freedom’ as an ideology continue in W’s post-presidency?
How’s Obama on ’freedom’? Does he have freedom as an ideology, or as a personal philosophy? He has a preacher’s expertise on "hope" and "change," but how is he on the nuts and bolts of "liberty" or "freedom"? Has Obama even read, ever, Hayek or Friedman in economics, Hoffer or Fromm in sociology, Fried in law, or Berlin or Strauss in political theory? If not, why not, and when will he begin? All of Obama’s formative theorists were from the extreme Left; when does he show an open mind and at least read some guiding thoughts from the many brilliant, small-l, libertarian thinkers? Didn’t Fried, one of America’s foremost jurisprudents and a libertarian, famously endorse Obama in the final weeks of the election campaign? Has Obama even read Fried’s great book on freedom?
What do you think, gentlemen? Any "hope" of some small-l libertarian philosophy in Obama in his first few years, or will ideology triumph for another four/eight years?
Until the government screws up enough that Reagan’s "It’s not the solution, it’s the problem" approach becomes respectable again, no libertarian gains are possible. That was 25 years ago, so we have a generation of young adults that don’t grasp that central element, and won’t know it until they have it rubbed in their faces. Maybe not even then, if their indoctrination at the hands of our educational system and leftist media holds on.
That’s not to say Obama might not make some halting progress on a few issues. However the volatility and instability we’ve seen in the last year is not going to be the last we see. The bill for Social Security and Medicare is still in the process of coming due, and the deficits and/or high taxes required to pay those bills are going to slam the system worse by far than the housing meltdown did. I have no idea what will happen when the Chinese decide to stop buying American debt and start cashing it in, but I don’t see how they can keep loaning to us the way they have in the past indefinitely.
We may get one more good turn of the crank, and Obama may be the beneficiary, just as W was for the first seven years. That is, we might stabilize enough to see decent economic growth during Obama’s administration - maybe. But as the last year should have taught us, you can only kick the problems so far down the road. Obama isn’t going to fix the central issues of Social Security and Medicare. There’s no way in Hades the likes of Pelosi, Waxman, Reid, Dodd, Rangle, et. al. will let him, because it would require radical restructuring that called the socialist underpinnings of those programs into question.
Unfortunately, I’m of the opinion that it is set up for at least 2 years of ideological tyranny (and if they can hold on during the mid-terms in 2010, at least 4).
That was 25 years ago, so we have a generation of young adults that don’t grasp that central element, and won’t know it until they have it rubbed in their faces. Maybe not even then, if their indoctrination at the hands of our educational system and leftist media holds on.
at 30, I’m still a Full Time Student... You don’t want to know how my talkes go with them. If I had a recording device, I would set it to record and ruin your faith in humanity with such...
