King Barack I vs. the American Gospel of Success By Robert Tracinski

I like this analysis byRobert Tracinski. It covers a lot of ground and I agree with the points he makes.


King Barack I vs. the American Gospel of Success

Over the years I've met several business owners who have created their enterprises from nothing. One is a college friend of my wife who spent years scrimping and saving, working insane hours without knowing whether or not her business was going to succeed or not. Finally over. Here's the business to take off and eventually was bought out by a much larger organization. Our friend was asked to stay on and help continue managing the business the sheep built. But for years we saw very little of her because she was working 18 hour days six and seven days a week.

I also recall meeting a fellow while working on account where he and some of his coworkers bought the plant that was being sold by the parent company. They scraped together enough money by mortgaging their homes to buy the plant. There were no guarantees either business was going to survive. And if the businesses had failed the guys who bought the plant I mentioned above could have easily lost their homes.

Why tell the stories to uphold liberal friends of mine live in the area and indicate how much these people put on the line and how many hours they work I get to look of disbelief as if they are saying, “How could that possibly be?” In fact when one friend almost comes out and says it's not possible anybody could work harder than him. I'm not saying he doesn't work hard but I also know he engages in a lot of activities such as biking, tennis, hiking etc. that our friend I mentioned above had to completely abandon in order to build her business. I don't begrudge her the money she made. But I do sense resentment from our friends.

Obama talks about how people who have succeeded in creating and building their business are basically not smarter than the rest of us or haven't worked harder than the rest of us (although I would dispute that). He conveniently ignores one point that distinguishes people who have succeeded in creating their own businesses: they have taken risks that other people have not taken or are not willing to take.

He also conveniently forgets to mention the fact that the same people who created businesses from nothing did so from a vision of what they wanted to create.

If polled I would assume that the majority of business owners would agree with Obama's general point that it would not have been possible for them to create their business without the foundation of the infrastructure provided by local and federal taxes. To me this is the equivalent of saying we all need soil in order to grow crops. But it still takes someone with initiative, vision, and willingness to take risks to plant their seeds in the soil and spend the time and effort and sweat it takes for the seeds to grow. All this without a guarantee that their seeds will actually sprout.

Jeffrey Epstein's Society Friends Close Ranks

Jeffrey Epstein's Society Friends Close Ranks

I had not heard of this story until Robert Bidinotto commented on it in Facebook. Below is his take on why certain celebs and politicians jumped to Epstein’s defense.

One of the most revealing aspects of this episode is how the ethics of altruism serves to exonerate and absolve an individual even of sexual exploitation of young girls. What flaw of character these days cannot be overlooked and forgiven, simply by writing a check to some charity, or -- even easier -- simply by publicly advocating some Politically Correct cause, without even so much as writing the check? That this creep is a pal of Bill Clinton and Woody Allen speaks volumes, doesn't it?

Consider the case of Clinton, who soiled the presidency with his sordid Oval Office dalliances, then ruthlessly tried to destroy the reputations of women who resisted and reported his behavior. Where was the National Organization for Women to stand up for the women? Where were all the lefties who eagerly sought to expose Republican politicians who cheated on their wives? What was the difference in the behavior? None, except for one thing: that "their" candidates and public figures got a moral pass simply because they pay lip service to the "right" causes and policies, while their targeted enemies did not.

To the Ruling Class -- and by that term, I mean not just political leaders but also the intellectual-cultural Establishment -- "ethical behavior" is a concept that has been expunged from the personal realm and now applies solely to social-political activity. One can be a complete degenerate in his personal life -- a ruinous parent, an unfaithful spouse, a coke-snorting wastrel, a pedophile or pervert or crook -- and yet remain a hero among the self-anointed Elite, simply by virtue of promoting "charity," "self-sacrifice," "spreading the wealth around," etc. In this last, even blatant hypocrisy is excused. Think of all the jet-setting, gas-guzzling, mansion-dwelling celebs and politicians who pontificate about the perils of your carbon footprint. Think of the Charlie Rangels and Timothy Geithners and Jeff Immelts and other tax-dodgers who push the redistribution of OTHER people's wealth.

What we see in all of these contradictions, inconsistencies, and hypocrisies is one constant goal: the retention of their power and status. In the end, all the sanctimonious philosophizing and sophistic theorizing of the Ruling Class, all their chatter about charity and the ethics of altruistic sacrifice for Others, is nothing more than grand-scale rationalizing: moral excuse-making that will allow them to retain their status as members of the Ruling Class.

And that is why they will all rally together to support one of their own -- even if he is a convicted child molester. This is class warfare: warfare of the Ruling Class against the tediously restrictive standards and impossibly constraining principles of the Lower Classes. They are doing to ethics what they are doing to the Constitution -- and for the same reason.