Reason magazine asks, “Are Obama’s ideas un-American?” Um, is a bean green?
Obama has it all backward. It is the charity of a prosperous free society that allows people to become community organizers or attain “free” health care. Washington rarely helps the free market prosper, but a prosperous private sector is what allows Washington to throw billions of dollars into unproductive but morally pleasing environmental projects and dependency programs favored by the president. Society needs the rule of law to function, not another parent.
Of course, Obama is not the first class warrior in politics. But has there ever been a major presidential campaign focused almost exclusively on ginning up class envy and fear (Teddy Roosevelt’s third-party run excluded)? The attack on Romney also, almost exclusively, entails calling out the guy for being rich and then relying on the assumption that you can only get that wealthy by being corrupt.
Un-American may be too mild a word. Let’s try out “anti-American” for size. “Un-American” implies that something is just contradictory to American values, as traditionally understood. “Anti-American” connotes an effort to destroy and supplant those values. I don’t think that “un-American” is anywhere near strong enough language to describe the rhetoric and policies of Obama.