Be Patient

Time is the treatment of choice for most minor ills and discomforts. It’s equally efficacious, though it takes longer, in curing the follies and fervencies of youth.

The Pew Research Center has determined that the Millennial generation, those under thirty, is the largest group (as a percentage – 29%), of self-described liberals.

“In every other age group, Pew notes, far more describe themselves as conservatives rather than liberals”.

Progressives (Democrats with a philosophy as well as an agenda) are being reminded, most recently, in a column by E. J. Dionne Jr., not to neglect the Millennials, a politically perishable commodity.

Significantly seduced, by the charisma candidacy of Obama ’08, their enthusiasm has waned.

This was to be expected. Obama, then brimming with promise, was more impressive, backlit on a great stage, framed by fluted columns, than sunlit, amidst the litter of broken promises.

The Democrats understand there are mid-term and long-term consequences to the de facto defection of their most gullible constituency.

The greatest concentration of Liberals, is to be found (not coincidentally) among the young (18-29), naïve and ignorant, a mix of temporary and potentially remediable conditions.

The interesting question for the Democrats is, can they arrest the natural maturation of judgment that time and experience typically confer?

Free Lunch

The “Democrats dependency agenda aims to multiply the ways Americans are dependent on government”.

A remarkable indictment, convincingly demonstrated, in a recent column, “Dems and Dependency”, by George Will.

A partial explanation, of the Democrats rationale, might portray them as merely ruthless, powerhungry opportunists, who simply wish to further their own interest (getting and staying elected) by making themselves seemingly indispensable and therefore politically  unassailable.

The language of social and economic justice (fairness), equal opportunity (outcome based), and positive rights (entitlements) has long since replaced talk of, and a concern for whether we remain a free and independent people.

Should the Democrats succeed in their campaign to corrupt and enfeeble the American spirit, the role and size of government would expand (that was always their intention), becoming more intrusive, confiscatory and inevitably imperious.

But behind the uncomplicated self-interest of the political hack there is the self-righteously ideological hardcore.

The Progressives impulse to “reform”is born of their resentment for a system that has allowed generations to thrive and prosper yet failed to recognize and reward their own, imagined, moral and intellectual superiority.

Left to their own devices (i.e. unopposed)  the Progressives hope to do for the middle class all that they have done for and to their fellow black Americans.

Fat Chance

Michelle Obama is about to bring her considerable celebrity and derivative authority to the fight against childhood obesity.

I would caution the incorrigibly optimistic not to buy broccoli futures just yet.

The First Lady’s “Let’s Move” campaign appears to be a predictable mix of misguided  meddling, socio-economic theorizing and regulatory reach (mayonnaise may yet become a controlled substance.)

Regrettably her crusade against corpulence is likely to replicate the results of the War on Poverty, the War on Cancer, and the War against Drugs.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have replaced self-respect with self-esteem.

Yes, I’ll have fries with that.

Zinn-o-phobia

According to Webster: a fear and loathing of Howard Zinn, the freshly deceased author of “A People’s History of the United States”.

First published in 1980, the book has sold two million copies, becoming something of a “standard” text in many of the nations high schools and colleges.

The question, that Zinn’s death poses anew, is how can a simple minded, slanderous screed against this country be adopted, by much of our educational system, as a reliably accurate narrative of this nation’s history.

Presumably those who make such decisions, including our President – the nation’s chief apologist, embrace the book’s politically correct and accusatory premise.

America, according to Zinn and virtually every left-wing, America-hating, socialist sympathizing academic, has grown and prospered at the expense of its designated downtrodden.

Those with official victim status currently include: women, blacks, Native-Americans, the poor, the undocumented, the generically challenged, etc, etc… virtually everyone except upper-middle class white males.

Zinn and the lunatic fringe, of which he was an icon, believe the country’s government and institutions malevolent, manipulative, and morally criminal.

His objective was to influence, especially the young, rather than inform.

Howard Zinn was no more an historian than Joseph Goebbels was a journalist.

Smile

A picture is still worth a thousand (adjusted for inflation) words. Particularly the photo in Tuesday’s WSJ, captioned: “President Obama Monday after speaking about his budget plan”

Following the President, at a respectful distance, was Secretary Geithner, looking every inch the toady.

In stark contrast was Obama’s bearing and expression. There was an almost ceremonial formality, a commensurate arrogance and a thinly veiled, generic, disdain.

Somehow it all seemed evocative of a tin-pot potentate who imagines he bestrides the world. Tragically and perversely, in some sense he does.

That photo was worth its weight (and Jerrold Nadler’s) in psychiatric and political insights.

The question of whether Obama is an implacable ideologue or a principled pragmatist is laughably inappropriate.

When Obama’s judgment seems as curious as it is questionable perhaps is because he doesn’t feel constrained by logic or facts.

As for truth, it’s a bourgeois morality.

Recent reversals could have inspired a serious reconsideration, but that would have required reason and humility.

Instead we witnessed a clumsy attempt to refute reality and “reconnect”.

There is a theory, somewhat out of fashion, that great men can influence events, I suspect that lesser men, given the leverage of office and authority can be equally influential.

Regrettably.