Barack Obama: Seducer of the Young

Guest Commentary by Edward Cline

A very brief but important article on the fundamental purpose of the health care bill is circulating and with which President Barack Obama and his cadre of communist and pinkish radicals, czars and advisors would agree with nods of approval, and which most Democrats would endorse, had they but the nerve. President Barack Obama will soon plead with Congress to stop dragging its collective feet over “non-essential“ and “distracting” aspects of the “reform” bill, such as its astronomical cost and its usurpation of the right of Americans to reject it, and just pass the damned thing. “The Real Meaning of Health Care Reform” makes this crucial but neglected point:

The primary goal of health care "reform" is the enactment of the legal basis for totalitarianism. So many of the provisions of the health care bill, to a close reading, set a precedent for government control of every single basis of our lives -- health care or not.

That’s it. If the government expropriates the health care realm in any style, shape or form-- no matter how watered down the bill is, if it is reduced from 1,600 pages to merely 400, if it focuses on controlling expenditures and not on choice, if it gives one a temporary but penalized option other than the “public option,” the fancy trimmings are all irrelevant -- it will automatically grant the government the legal power over one’s body and it will govern all actions one might take to sustain it. It needn’t be named after Senator Ted Kennedy to be a nullification of one’s right to live for one’s own sake.

The Crown’s Stamp Act of 1765 had an unchallenged legal basis, dating back to 1650: the will and power of Parliament to legislate for the British colonies. This Act was repealed exactly a year after its passage, as a consequence of violent opposition to it in the colonies, but the repeal was accompanied by the Declaratory Act, which asserted that Parliament retained “the full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.”

Few colonists paid the attention to the Declaratory Act it deserved. Most were celebrating their victory over Parliament. A few regarded it as Parliament’s peevish, ill-mannered means of saving face after a humiliating defeat. But it was a loaded gun. Parliament passed it, ergo it had a legal basis.

In short, the Crown said: You may have won this round, but, nevertheless, we own you, “in all cases whatsoever.”

Obama’s broadcast speech to the nation’s schools complements that totalitarian purpose. The text of it, if Obama sticks to the script, is, on the surface, a yawner. Many a student will feel a desire to nod off. The speech can be faulted only for its patronizing banality. But, as one blogger noted: “It’s not the speech, it’s the subtext.” And subtext there is, very subtly woven throughout Obama’s innocuous blandishments to study hard and to mind what adults say. The subtext declares: I own you. Or, rather, we, the state, own you. This point was made last week in the “I Pledge” video as a prefatory note to America’s school children.

Of course, many newspaper columnists are wondering why the speech is being attacked and called propagandistic. They don’t understand what the hue and cry are about. After all, didn’t Ronald Reagan and George Bush address school children? But, the subtext is invisible to them, or they see nothing wrong with it.

Here are instances of the subtext, and one major gaffe.

Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team. (Paragraph 13.)

I can think of numerous mayors, Senators and Supreme Court Justices -- including a few Presidents -- who didn’t know about the Constitution, or who dismissed it as being as antiquated as a Babylonian law tablet, but that never stopped them from becoming what they are. That’s the gaffe. But, on to the subtext.

What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future. (Paragraph 15.)

Which challenges? Fill in the blanks, children. It’s a multiple choice question. But stick to the choices we give you. My friend Professor Bill Ayers has drawn up a list, in consultation with my many czars and advisors. But never forget that we are a nation, and we must all pull together to meet those challenges.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that -- if you quit on school -- you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country. (Paragraph 17.)

Which difficult problems? Again, fill in the blanks, and choose from Professor Ayers’ list. If you quit on us, it means that you see a conflict between our goals and yours. That would be a selfish thing to do. Fulfillment can be found in selfless service to your country.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country. (Paragraph 38.)

If you give up on yourself, you become useless to your country and a needless charge to society. Then we must and will determine your future as a servant of the state. If you don’t want us to tell you what to do and when and why, then do as we say.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country? (Paragraph 41.)

We expect you to make selfless contributions to the country, regardless of what careers you choose to follow. How would you be able to live with yourself, knowing that you did everything for yourself, and not for your country? You are but a cell of society, and society expects your best, and for you to give back to it. Remember what a great president once said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” That is all I am asking of you, too.

Contradicting the subtext is this statement:

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll wind up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. (Paragraph 24.)

Come again? Or must the future I make for myself first be vetted by the state? That’s what brighter students might ask of the President. He would have no answer for them, and might ask whoever on his staff wrote that statement what the hell he meant by it.

If the adults won’t listen, go after the kids. Can you think of a better way to inculcate the character of totalitarian servitude and obeisance in children than this speech? Of making seductive enlistment in the Obama Youth or Ayers’ New Pioneers? Of having children believe from the start of their lives that the government has a right to control ever single basis of their lives, and that this is a moral norm?

If you wanted better proof of how Obama, his cadre in the White House, his appointees, and the Democrats in Congress want to own Americans “in all cases whatsoever,” read a transcript of Obama’s speech, and watch the video. Judge for yourself. His speech is an invitation to children to become moral monsters.

For years I have kept a page from The New York Times. It features a teen-aged Bill Clinton shaking hands with JFK. It is a symbol, not so much of a generational link, but of a philosophical link, of the passing on of the political torch of statism and collectivism. Now we have Barack Obama reaching out to shake hands with another generation.

This has got to stop. And if Americans have any kind of duty to their country, that is what they must stop. For their own sakes, and for the sake of their children.

Crossposted at The Dougout