Every time Barack Obama opens his mouth, he shows himself to be a
bigger fraud. I thought it would be nice to remind everyone of the
difference between Obama's false hope in government and Ronald Reagan's
real hope of freedom.
Some in the media
have compared Barack Obama's supposed charisma and speaking ability to
the real charisma and real power of Ronald Reagan's words. They have
said that each man is defined by simple optimism about "hope" and
"change."
Those who would make the comparison ignore one
important difference: Ronald Reagan spoke about ground-breaking ideas,
and Reagan's speeches almost always focused on individual freedom. Nothing
illustrates the difference between the two better than a comparison of
their ideas about what constituted "hope" and "change." I have bolded
all words pertaining to hope, change, freedom and individual liberty.
You can do this with almost any Reagan speech, and most of the speech
will be in boldface type.
The following Reagan quotes are taken
from his speech in Westminster on June 8, 1982, shortly after his
meeting with Pope John Paul II, when Reagan and the Pope pledged to do
everything in their power to bring down Soviet communism. Note that
this was at a time when absolutely nobody in academia or the media felt
that the Soviet Union was in any sort of danger of imminent downfall.
In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right...But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens...The dimensions of its failure are astounding: a country which employs one-fifth of its population in agriculture is unable to feed its own people...
The decay of the Soviet experiment (remember, nobody else was talking about this - in fact, media reports in the coming days insisted that Reagan was loony if he thought the Soviet Union was in any real danger) should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparison has been made between free and closed societies...it is the democratic countries that are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people...
We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings. The objective I propose is quite simple to state: To foster the infrastructure of democracy -- the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities-- which allows a people to choose their own way, to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means...
I do not wish to sound overly optimistic... (But) what I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term-- the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of individual freedom...
Let us be shy no longer -- let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable...What kind of people are we? Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so, but to help others gain their freedom as well...
Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best -- a crusade for freedom that will...let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.
More inspirational words have not been uttered in American political history. By the way, the entire Iron Curtain fell within ten years of this speech.
EJ Dionne is so far off in the above article when he writes, "It's laughable to hear conservatives talk darkly about a "cult of personality" around Obama. The Reaganites, after all, have lobbied to name every airport, school, library, road, bridge, government building and lamppost after the Gipper. When it comes to personality cults, the right wing knows what it's talking about."
Yes, we have done all the above. But it has nothing to do with a "cult of personality." Reagan's legacy is a "cult of ideas," ideas that did more to change the world for the better than any president since Lincoln, at a minimum. I would argue that he did more to change the world for the better than any politician in world history. Lincoln freed the American slaves; Reagan freed half the world. Without firing a shot.
Meanwhile, Obama's "hope" is predicated on running from our obligation to ensure that we leave a free, democratic future in place for the Iraqi people. It is predicated on denying people freedom to choose how to provide (or not to provide) for their own health care needs. It is predicated on stealing from those who succeed in our free market system, and redistributing it to those who don't.
Obama's hope would sacrifice our freedom at the altar of the false religion and junk science of man-made global warming. It is predicated on more power to the government and less freedom to the individual. It is predicated on sacrificing our sovereignty to the United Nations. As he said recently, “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.” It is also based on sacrificing our sovereignty to those who enter our country illegally. He would continue our governmental policy of restricting freedom in managing our Social Security benefits.
Obama's hope is predicated on restricting school choice, particularly to our inner-city kids who need it most, while choosing to send his own kids to private school. It is predicated on eliminating or severely limiting our Second Amendment rights. It is predicated on destroying the free market and restricting free trade. Obama's hope would punish businesses that succeed, while propping up government "Barack-racies" that fail.
This is all spelled out, in different words, in Obama's "Blueprint for Change."
Meanwhile, could there be a starker difference between Reagan's and Obama's views of average Americans?
Obama:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
How inspiring. Ronald Reagan, speaking in the middle of the 2nd worst economy in American history, saw a different picture of the average American:
Everywhere we have met thousands of Democrats, independents and Republicans from all economic conditions and walks of life bound together in that community of shared values of family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom. They are concerned, yes, but they are not frightened. They are disturbed but not dismayed. They are the kind of men and women Tom Paine had in mind when he wrote -- during the darkest days of the American Revolution -- 'We have it in our power to begin the world over again.'
And so they did. No comparison whatsoever, but as long as liberals think you don't need ideas to inspire most Americans, more power to them.
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