What Obama Really Thinks

July 20, 2012 By 45 Comments

Albert Jay Nock, observing another alarming rise in state power during the 1930s, advanced a conception of the state in polar opposition to this president’s. “It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own,” the former New Republic scribe reasoned in Our Enemy, the State. “All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.”

The words that slipped off the president’s tongue didn’t arrive there via his teleprompter. Seeking to let Barack be Barack, the president’s handlers have unleashed him with note cards in hopes that a more extemporaneous speaking style will inject life into an increasingly pedantic politician. The strategy obviously carries risk.

Unscripted Obama told Joe the Plumber in 2008 that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” He candidly held during that year’s primaries that working-class whites “get bitter” and “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.”

Off-teleprompter Obama always seems to reveal a smug ideologue at odds with the made-for-TV centrist. Campaign by teleprompter strips the president of the energy that catapulted him into the Oval Office four years ago. But it also protects the president from his own instincts, which, when voiced, often deeply offend voters.

The president’s rambling rhetoric in Roanoke said little about American businessmen. It said much about their tormentor.

“Well, then, since you were brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us, can you deny in the first place that you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before you?” Socrates imagined his state captors lecturing him. The philosopher balked at fleeing the state that he had served as a soldier. A creature of Athens became a casualty of it.

The Athenian way isn’t the American way.

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About

Daniel J. Flynn is the author of numerous books, including "Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America," now available from ISI Books. Read Daniel's blog at www.flynnfiles.com.

  • Lady_Dr

    Exactly right!

  • ydroustan

    Obama is the enemy within.

    • ppd000037

      Oh he's the greatest just ask sweden how he got the nobel peace prize…the rational According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." So what did this oxygen thief do in his two months of office? Oh yeah he is black that's the only reason for the award. He certainly has done nothing for peace and BOWS to all of the foreign muslim leaders. I guess being a black muslim ass kisser gets you an award these days…

  • ydroustan

    Obama is the enemy within.

  • Asher

    http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2009islaminobama&…

    "I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."

    "Islam has always been a part of America's history." American Muslims have enriched the United States. Hardly unless one counts the tiny percentage of African slaves who were muslims.

    "America is not–and never will be at war with Islam."

    "as the Holy Koran tells us, "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." Note the use of "Holy Koran," a translation from the standard reference in Arabic, Al-Qur"an al-Karim.

    Obama was prepped for his job as President years ago!

  • Fred Dawes

    Obama is a total Hoax and a black rat who wants you disappeared under NDA

  • pierce

    This President is really starting to turn me off with his unscripted remarks, and holier than thou attitude.
    Hopefully the American people will realize the mistake they made in 2008 when they elected perhaps the most biased, racist President the nation has ever had. To add to that he is the most undisciplined money manager I have ever seen, as he thinks money grows on trees. If I managed my affairs as he does, I would be dead flat broke, and could never recover. He is our enemy , no doubt about it.

    • fiddler

      I think Romney needs to provoke a response in the upcoming debates. Oh yes, you might say, he doesn't want to offend the "undecided" swing voters. But how many lies does he need to tell before people are wise? At best he shows contempt for people unless they are in his pocket.

    • kafir4life

      Stinky's (-bo) second, slimy Joe, earned over 370,000 last year. He had a little over 3,000 dollars in charitable deductions. He has a NEGATIVE net worth of about 1.5 million. Yeah….I want him and Stinks to manage my money.

  • tagalog

    Let's assume the truth that "somwhere along the line, someone gave you some help" to get wherever you've managed to get. It's surely true that we didn't achieve what we achieved WHOLLY without some assistance and some breaks, entirely alone and relying SOLELY on our own resources, although I bet we got where we are LARGELY because of our own resources. But let's assume for the sake of argument that we got a leg up at some point. What do we owe to the society because of that?

    Traditionally, the answer has been one of moral obligation, to be determined by non-binding criteria such as one's conscience, the approval of one's fellows, and so on. Most typically, whatever obligation there might be was owed to the immediate community, to the actual people who helped one, or to the village, town, or city, not some vague, generalized government, but the people we meet daily on the street. What was Obama driving at? Something like Plato put in the mouths of the Athenian Senate, that we owe even our very lives to the state? I say hogwash; they can have my life when they come and take it from me. In that one regard, I want to emulate Randy Weaver.

    And in answer to the question, what do we owe to the government because it buit our infrastructure? Because that infrastructure was built for everyone, I owe what everyone else owes. If 47% of the people who make income in our country, but pay no income tax, that should be figured into that equation. I say we owe nothing to government; government owes us – that's why we let it exist, to serve us, not for us to serve it.

  • Jerry

    It was not the government that built America, it was the people. Unfortunately, the people entrusted with guarding against those who wish to destroy this nation have fallen asleep. As disaster looms ever closer, we can only pray they wake.

    • fiddler

      Good people in Congress need to get over their career aspirations and start governing! There may not be a country left for them to "bask" in if they don't save it. Forget about "offending" someone when the roof falls in.

  • Guest

    “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

    So then why is it that only a fraction of all business startups survive. Thay all operate in this "unbelievable American system" yet most fail. Why? How can that be if the people that start and run them aren't the reason thay succeed? If the state has gifted us a system that allows businesses to thrive, why do they not? Or maybe Obama and his minions have no idea when it come to business success. Or economics.

    • kasandra

      Right you are. I'm not an economist. Nor do I play one on TV. But even I know that money doesn't grow on trees and that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The point you made can't be made enough. If it's roads, teachers, bridges, etc. that are responsible for entrepreneurial economic success, why do the overwhelming majority of business start-ups fail even though they have access to the same roads, teachers, bridges, etc. as do the ones that succeed? In prior speeches Obama has covered that. The successful ones were just, as he likes to say, "fortunate." No hard work and sacrifice there. It was blind luck.

    • fiddler

      "Or maybe Obama and his minions have no idea when it come to business success. Or economics."

      Uhh, BINGO. But do they care? Or worse, they DO and want it to happen anyway. I'm inclined to believe the latter.

  • Joe in Houston

    old white guy teabags….please stop crying… You know what Obama said and you know it makes sense.

    I know you hate this guy… But you really cant tell me why, so you distort, take out of context or lie.

    Just rest assured you will be fine when Obama gets re elected. The boogieman will not get you.

    • tagalog

      What part of what Obama said about the infrastructure making it possible for a person to start a business makes sense?

      In America, long before there was any infrastructure, there was commerce and people building and operating businesses, so it can't be that. The people built the roads. Even the great projects of the Depression, the building of the dams and providing electricity, was performed by private industry, not by the government. Government regulated it, mostly to get money from taxes, it didn't build it.

      Do you mean we have a collective that we have empowered government to provide aid to and therefore we all owe something to the government? Get rid of the government programs. Let us be free instead.

      Just for the record, like most righties, I don't hate Obama, I just think he's utterly incompetent, committed to policies that provably don't work, appears to believe in an ideology that is repugnant to me, and is moving this country rapidly toward an economic disaster that will resound long after he is consigned to oblivion in private life, and therefore he MUST be replaced before he creates another Great Depression. If that's not acceptable as a "why," I guess it's true that I can't really tell you. But that seems more like a problem of comprehension on your part, not a lack of ability to articulate my opposition on my part.

      • fiddler

        Facts are a hard thing for a leftist to grapple with.

        Hey Joe, people like you want to think the best of the president, even if what he does is reckless. Fair enough. But at what point do we dispense with on-the-job-training and just concede that he is not up to the job? CEO's of businesses are fired for much worse. Why should the electorate be ham-strung and just sit back and be lectured to by someone who has NO experience in this area? As for his good intentions, remember the old adage:

        "The road to hell is PAVED (pardon the pun) with good intentions".

        • fiddler

          Correction:
          CEO's of businesses are fired for much LESS.

    • Wideband

      Didn't read the aticle, did you Joe? Most of us can tell you exactly why we disapprove of Obama – we're adults, we don't hate politicians, just their policies – and if you read the vast majority of the articles here, you'd know why, and never say something as stupid as, "you really cant tell me why".

    • fiddler

      Hey Joe, people like you want to think the best of the president, even if what he does is reckless. Fair enough. But at what point do we dispense with on-the-job-training and just concede that he is not up to the job? CEO's of businesses are fired for much LESS. Why should the electorate be ham-strung and just sit back and be lectured to by someone who has NO experience in this area? As for his good intentions, remember the old adage:

      "The road to hell is PAVED (pardon the pun) with good intentions".

    • carolina

      Hi Joe, who's the racial profiler? I'm not an old white guy, I´m a middle-aged Hispanic woman, and I can't wait for Obama to be kicked out.

      How come the racial profiling gets a pass when you do it?

    • A. Keen Observer

      I'm not an old white guy. I'm a woman who has been out of a job for a long time and so have some of my friends and acquaintances. We don't want welfare, foodstamps or gov't. controlled healthcare. We want jobs with for-profit companies. However, the group that has been hit the hardest by Obama aren't whites at all. THEY ARE BLACKS! The black male unemployment rate is 2x that of white males. The black foreclosure rate is substantially higher than that of whites. I suspect that you, Joe, actually hate blacks because you cheer for another term of their worst nightmare! Shame on you!

  • dennis x

    Funny, willard made the same speech and you red necks had no problem with it, why , because its about color . Los Angeles is about to close down the 405fwy for construction again and all business is doing is crying about lack of access to thier stores. Maybe goverment/ tax payers help them be successful?

    • tagalog

      So when government, which allegedly built the infrastructure that made the businesses possible, then takes action to make it difficult for those businesses to operate successfully, what does the government owe those businesses?

      Is it really going to be "we created you, we can destroy you?" If so, what's the difference between that and the lefty propaganda that righties believe in "everyone is on his own?"

      Come to think of it, I'd rather be on my own. Then if I fail, it's solely on me, right?

    • fiddler

      First of all Dennis, you lead with ad hominem (typical). Color? Forgot about Condi Rice and Colin Powel? How about Clarence Thomas?

      Sorry, but how naive! Really, does it all come down to that? The recurring theme I see is, "us against them; you need us". Just remember that a business has to SURVIVE through it's own work. The government survives through OUR work. See the difference? Sorry, the money is not theirs; though they spread it around as though it was. Then they have the "audacity" to claim it was from them to curry favor in order to get elected. Meanwhile the business is struggling to stay afloat by innovation that can eventually "give back" to others.

      I little humility from the government is in order.

    • carolina

      Oh, if only McCain has been black and Obama had been white. Then we could have avoided all this nonsense.

      (it would not have changed my vote, nor the vote of any of the conservatives I know)

  • fiddler

    "unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges"

    These men pledged their lives, forturnes and sacred honor. They took a major risk. What has this guy pledged? What did it cost him?

    • WilliamJamesWard

      Nothing……………….William

  • Choi

    Of course NOI member Dennis X would say that.
    Jimmy Carter,WHITE,was the WORST President until Obama.
    As bad as Carter was,THIS is different.
    This is the "Midas Touch" in REVERSE,and DELIBERATE.
    IF an Elected Official CANNOT be criticized for their policies without that criticism being labeled "racist",than that official has NO business running for office.
    That being said,since the Democrats and the Left love to play the RACE CARD, I'm here to say that ANY Democratic criticism of Cong. Allen West or any other African-American Conservative is RACIST in motivation.
    IT GOES BOTH WAYS,so West's challenger better NOT say one negative or we will label that challenger a RACIST BIGOT.

  • Jim_C

    Mitt made the same comments as Obama. It's just that everyone loves to impute "secret motivations" to their opponent.

    This is the ultimate political time-waster: throwing charges of "hypocisy." Easiest game in the world to play. You tell me what my guy did wrong, I'll show you where your guy did the same thing.

    If we could all own up to being hypocrites, we might actually have a debate about political philosophies and judge people by their actions, not their words or their "motivations."

    • fiddler

      Moral equivalence by any means possible. You are scraping the bottom of the barrel Jim. For instance, do you STILL want to buy the pap that Fort Hood was "workplace violence"? The "wrong type" of person comitted the crime. So, the left has to change the language.

      How ironic. Go ahead and do your best to justify him. Heck Chris Matthews called him the "perfect American". So much for objectivity.

      • Jim_C

        What does this have to do with Fort Hood, genius?

        Mitt said the SAME thing. No need to charge "moral (?) equivalence." It's equivalent on it's face.

  • clarespark

    The reference to Plato is good, for the original Progressives were great elitists. But after the 1930s, progressivism came to laud and defer to "the common man." I wrote about that transformation here: http://clarespark.com/2012/07/19/communist-ideas-…. Title: "Communist ideas go mainstream."

  • http://tarandfeathersusa.wordpress.com/ Iratus Vulgas

    Let's remember that characters like Houston Joe and Denny X are pretty typical of the current Obama demographic. Ignorant, ill-informed, and only partially literate. Obama seems to be playing exclusively to these people nowadays: citizens who are happy with their servitude as long as they get their monthly bag of cookies. At least back in the old days, slaves knew they were slaves, didn't like it, and aspired for freedom. Slavery today has been perfected by the tyrants on the Left. Bondage without the hard work. Sweet.

    • fiddler

      Servile toadies, all.

    • fiddler

      And they exact the thing they're looking for — A VOTE. After all that's all the people are worth to them. Reward us for distributing somebody else's money. We are GLAD to do it. Aren't we SOOOO wonderful?

  • BLJ

    Obama is a piece of feces. Always has been, always will be.

    • kafir4life

      We just call him Stinky (-bo). No matter where you go, BO is Stinky.

      Let's get the stink out of the white house in November, and he can take that fat-bottomed media wh()re with him.

      A question raised by Stinky's owner and master Bill Maher does beg to be answered….What did Stinky do to Moochie to make TWO babies fall out?

  • Ghostwriter

    Both Joe from Houston and dennis x are wrong. They want to assign racism where there was none. What President Obama did was insult those who worked hard to get their businesses going and I think they're going to remember that in November. And let me say something about what dennis x said about what was going on in Los Angeles. Maybe things would be better if the tax money wasn't frittered away on OTHER things and ACTUALLY went to doing infrastructure projects.

  • carolina

    If the government is responsible for their success, it follows that it is also responsible for their failure.

    Do we want to go there?

  • WilliamJamesWard

    What is Obama thinking, beat on a drum and listen closely and the buffoonery will out, boom boom,
    dumb dumb. It is his handlers that know what he is thinking, 'purgamentum init, exit purgamentum'.
    To the forces that wish to destroy America, Obama's Presidency will always be a success even in
    it's abject failure…………………………………………William

  • Western Spirit

    McCain wasn't the answer to anything. He was a rino with a thick skin and thick head to boot. He'd have led us down the same path but would be less obvious about it and slower.

  • RUI

    It's like saying we owe our fathers a cup of semen! Complete nonsense!
    And when and if we do become indebted, it would be towards the society at large, never the government.The institutions on which we rely derive from an outreach to satisfy the needs of citizens as individuals, i.e., they were created from the bottom up and not by top down government interference. Unless he was talking about his beloved soviet union.

  • Poupic

    "He candidly held during that year’s primaries that working-class whites “get bitter” and “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.”
    You must explain the why of such statements, it is easy to do. For 20 years Obama followed Wright "His spiritual Mentor" (Barak's own words) he applauded him all that time for his anti- Semitic rants and his Liberation theology blaming the USA for all the problems of the third world. That Liberation Theology did not disappear from Obama's mind by being elected President, it guided him up to now. We have no doubt that if re elected as he promised Putin his chummy buddy he will have no restraint once re elected because he will not have to face the voters again. His anti US learning at the feet of Wright is now obvious because the pressure gets to him and he is less careful as a result. In November I will vote to replace Obama the anti- US, anti- Semite for good.