Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   2/24/2015

Non-recovery, lovers and patriots

The Tea Party Patriots will host District Attorney Greg Cohen tonight at 6 PM, at the Westside Grange on Walnut Street, west of Baker Rd. His updates on the pressing issues of crime and punishment are always worth hearing.

While digging through year-old source articles and material I was chagrined to read about then-prominent issues. Some illustrated the weakness of the economy after Obama’s fifth year in office: 4 ½ years after the official end of the recession in mid-2009. Since none of Obama’s policies had begun to take effect; no stimulus money was, by his own admission, going to “shovel ready jobs;” and the only thing he had to do was get out of the way of the expected recovery—Emperor Obama bears full responsibility for the worst recovery since WWII. Then, as now, it’s a recovery generating cumulatively millions of fewer jobs than normal recoveries, trillions of dollars of lost GDP and tens of billions of dollars of reduced government tax revenue.

One year-old story bears somewhat on the kerfuffle over Rudy Giuliani’s stated doubts that Obama “loves America.” Having read all of Giuliani’s remarks in context, as well as his subsequent statements in interviews, I find much to whole-heartedly agree with; however, I also take exception to judging someone’s motives, heart, patriotism or love of country, without proof.

Someone, please provide Obama’s statements affirming that he loves and cherishes America, our founding documents, way of life, history, military, role in world affairs, etc—I’ll take them at face value. Very few spouses, or “significant others,” would show their “love” by pointing out the faults of their partner to others. It would also strain anyone’s idea of “love” to proclaim that they were determined to “fundamentally transform” that partner.

Barack Obama has routinely used such rhetoric about America; Michelle Obama had no pride in our country until her husband became a candidate. Giuliani insisted he was not doubting Obama’s patriotism, but was on the mark: “I do not get from the president a feeling that he has this overriding love of this country the way other American presidents did with the idea of how exceptional, how wonderful this country is” [or] that Obama has the same understanding or view of western civilization and the exceptional nature of America he has seen in other American presidents..."(Obama) was brought up as a critic of America as opposed to an unabashed admirer who can exalt in American exceptionalism and then see our faults and kind of lead us to correction ourselves with positive reinforcement rather than being lectured on what’s wrong with us, including from Europe.”

Obama himself, as a U.S. Senator, directly stated that then-President Bush was “unpatriotic” for deficits that pale in comparison to those Obama has presided over. Therefore, by his own standard, Barack Obama is, indeed, “unpatriotic.” Moreover, among liberals and Democrats, regarding their “love for America,” it is generally framed as loving America for what it could be under a more progressively “transformed” nation, such that America’s faults and evils, if you will, could be corrected. America’s formation, foundations, history and world role? Apparently, not so loved by the left.

Anyway, some other year-old news items covered the IRS scandal. A cogent, insightful piece in particular was “Barack Obama: the George Wallace of Free Speech” by John Hinderaker (2/08/2014). The Wallace analogy stems from the persistent refusal by Southern Democrats (who presided over and enforced Jim Crow, if you recall) to heed court rulings like Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, wherein the Supreme Court overturned “separate but equal,” i.e. segregated, schooling for minorities. Alabama Gov. Wallace infamously “stood in a schoolhouse door to personally block African-American students from enrolling at the University of Alabama.

“Something similar is happening with the Supreme Court’s ‘Citizens United’ decision, a landmark of First Amendment jurisprudence. Democrats refuse to accept the decision. Barack Obama denounced it in a State of the Union speech, and his example has been followed by many other Democrats—nearly all of whom, it should be added, misrepresent that case’s holding as they criticize it. Bitterly hostile to free speech when exercised by their political opponents, Democrats have done whatever they can to undermine ‘Citizens United’ just as they did decades ago with ‘Brown vs. Education.’

“The I.R.S scandal can best be seen in this light. The Democrats are using the levers of the executive branch, particularly the I.R.S., to deter Americans from exercising the First Amendment rights that were guaranteed them by the Supreme Court.” Republican Congressmen Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform documented “a full history of the Obama administration’s assault on civil rights.”

I have no qualms stating that those, such as Emperor Obama and his ideological minions, that hate the free expression of their opponents, even their enemies (Obama: “punish your enemies”), have no love for the Constitution, our liberties or America itself. They certainly, however, love America when they are the ones writing the laws, the regulations, the court rulings and our education. They would surely love that America if they could ever succeed in “fundamentally transforming” what America is and has been, into what they want it to be.