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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Daren Jonescu
If you could submit just one question to be asked of President Obama during
a televised presidential debate, what would it be? Once you have formulated
your best idea, ask yourself this: do you think any of this year's line-up
of debate hosts and moderators would ever actually ask your question, as you
framed it? Your answer, I am sure, is almost as self-evident as is the
importance of your imaginary debate question. The questions that matter
most are precisely the ones that will not be asked, and for that very reason.
For all the analysis that has been, and will be, devoted to explaining why
so many Americans -- and not only knee-jerk liberals, but also a lot of self
-described moderates and conservatives -- fail to see the primal menace in
Barack Obama's presidency, one simple fact probably explains it all: most
people pay no attention to such "analysis" and instead get all their
political information from mainstream sources (from 60 Minutes to The Daily
Show to the morning coffee klatch programs) that will never broach the
issues that seem most vital to those who actually think.
To clarify, when I say "think," I mean it in the strict sense of using one's
rational faculty to seek understanding -- i.e., to dig through the rough
rock pile of transient "facts" and words in search of the firm ground of
principle and purpose that lies beneath. That difficult work is what leads
people to a knowledge of ultimate causes, or at least to formulating
trenchant questions that might take us to a more fundamental layer of the
rock pile.
A simple example will suffice. Obama is excessively fond of the word "
fairness." Anyone reading this article is likely to have thought carefully
and often through the seemingly obvious question of what Obama means by "
fairness," and what he is, by implication, damning as "unfair." Most of
Obama's listeners, however, simply follow him along on his dreamy trip to
socialism through the sweet smoke of moral abstraction. After all, who
doesn't want to do what is "fair"?
By never asking Obama pointed questions about his notion of fairness, but
instead always allowing him to frame and lead the conversation as he wishes,
his friends and enablers in the mainstream media and Washington
establishment effectively hide the underlying issues from their audience.
It is easy to be pessimistic and denounce that audience as simply too stupid
to reason through these issues on their own. And it is true that they are
too passive. However, a passive audience can sometimes be roused from
passivity by having matters presented to them in a manner that awakens
curiosity, which is to say in a manner that promotes the search for deeper
understanding.
This rousing manner is precisely what the mainstreamers carefully avoid in
the way they present Obama, his policies, his principles, and his past.
Curiosity -- about fairness, about the meaning of community organizing,
about William Ayers, about so many things -- is the enemy of Barack Obama,
and therefore, it is the avowed enemy of the mainstream media in its
presentation of presidential politics. Everything they do, and every pseudo
-question they ask, is designed to tamp down the intellectual mud that will
keep that obfuscating rock pile firmly in place, and avoid reminding people
of the infertile ground beneath.
This is why the debates are bound to be frustrating, as usual, for
conservatives -- along with the likelihood that Mitt Romney will be cowed by
the media into conceding the usual "Of course my opponent loves America"
nonsense that causes apoplexy among those of us concerned for the survival
of Western civilization. This frustration, however, is no cause for
despondency, but rather a reminder of the need to make this season a
continual shadow production, within the sphere of one's personal influence,
of the debate that ought to take place, with the questions that ought to be
asked.
The fact that we can't ask Obama himself makes little difference. The
figurative empty chair to which our questions must be posed has an eloquence
of its own. Its silence helps to highlight that scurrying sound of the
mainstream media mice among the rocks. If they who hold the microphones
were men, they would be asking the hard questions, rather than crawling up
Obama's well-creased pant leg in search of an honored position as Big
Brother's top-rated propagandist.
So, in the spirit of a respectful but honest debate moderator -- one hoping
to promote, rather than stifle, curiosity -- I offer three questions that I
would ask Barack Obama, were I permitted to do so.
(1) Mr. President, you speak frequently of "fairness," of doing one's "fair
share," and so on. Of course, "fairness" is an abstract concept.
Furthermore, it is not a political system. Rather, it expresses the
intended result of one political system or other, depending on how one
defines "fairness." For example, one might say that the free market
promotes fairness, if by fairness we mean that everyone has what he is able
to earn by his own effort, with his own talent, and through uncoerced
interaction with others. On the other hand, a socialist would define
fairness as everyone getting an equal share of the available material wealth
, by means of continuously regulated and maintained government
redistribution.
So I would like you to explain as clearly as possible what you mean by
fairness, and which politico-economic system -- the free market, socialism,
or some other system -- is most conducive to your understanding of fairness.
In short, is freedom or socialism fairer, in your view, and why?
(2) The American founders, following John Locke and others, were strong
defenders of property rights. Specifically, they believed, as Locke
explained, that all human beings inviolably own themselves as individual
material beings, and hence that the product of their effort and voluntary
exchange with others belongs to them, by extension from their initial and
natural ownership of their own bodies and minds.
Various federal government programs and regulations you support, such as
ObamaCare and many EPA initiatives, fly in the face of this notion of a
natural right to property. Do you believe in private property as a right?
And if so, on what grounds do you believe that this right can be violated?
(3) We know that your father, whose dreams you famously claim to have
inherited, was a prominent Kenyan socialist, and that your mentor in your
youth, Frank Marshall Davis, was an avowed communist. We also know that
your longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has deeply anti-American convictions;
that Bill Ayers, who enthusiastically supported your election in 2008, and
with whom you have had some kind of personal relationship for many years,
has been openly dedicated to the demise of the American political system for
his entire adult life; that you have appointed several avowed socialists,
communists, admirers of Mao, and celebrators of May Day to significant
positions within your administration; and that prior to running for
president you frequently described yourself and your interests as "
progressive," which is a well-known alternative name for "socialist."
Furthermore, you have spoken frequently of government as an agent of "
sharing the prosperity" (see here) and of "fundamentally transforming"
America; your wife said your nomination was the first time she was ever
proud of America; and you famously boasted in your 2008 victory speech that
"change has come to America."
We know, in short, that you were involved in socialist or progressive
thinking and causes prior to running for president, and that you have had
extensive and seemingly formative associations with socialists and
communists who were fundamentally critical of America, from your childhood
through to your adult life prior to 2008. The question, Mr. President, is:
have you disavowed this thinking and these causes, and if so, when and why
did you do so?
These offerings are merely the tip of the iceberg, of course. With the most
concealed and protected president of modern times, one could literally go
on all day with these questions, each one as vital as the last: about drugs,
about Fast and Furious, about whispering promises of post-election
accommodation to a Russian president, about his hidden university career and
transcripts, and on and on.
There is a significant segment of the population that can no longer be
reached. There is, however, probably at least as large a segment that
merely falls into the category of the passively ignorant. These people must
be reached, because the civilizational renewal that is needed is impossible
without them. They will not be reached by anything that happens on their
televisions. They must have the hard questions, the digging questions,
thrust in their way over and over, forcefully but respectfully, until at
last, slowly, their long-suppressed curiosity is aroused.
Thinking is, to a large extent, a matter of asking questions and of pursuing
answers with enthusiasm, and without fear of the truth one might discover.
A thinking population is an anti-leftist population. The job of those who
are already thinking is not to bludgeon the late arrivals into submission,
but to pique their interest in that which has hitherto been concealed from
them -- to teach them, in other words, the joys of thinking for themselves.
Keep asking the empty chair those hard questions. The answers you get will
be no less informative than the ones the real Obama -- if there is such a
thing -- will give during the actual debates. And your shadow debate just
might attract a thoughtful audience of its own. Lord knows Bob Schieffer
isn't going to attract one. |
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