When the Right Is Wrong
“Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for Liberty. … If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?” –John Adams
Not a month goes by without some “pop-media conservative” falling victim to a non compos mentis moment.
This lapse in judgment almost universally befalls urbanites or Beltway types, and at one time I speculated it might be associated with a moon-and-tide cycle. However, our crack team of social scientists and physicians found this affliction to be the result of cerebral polihypoxia, a chronic lack of fresh air from the grassrooted plains. The result is confusion about right and wrong as it pertains to First Principles and our nation’s heritage of Essential Liberty.
February’s victim is Michael Medved, the 60-something former Democrat operative and now political commentator who hosts a top-10 nationally syndicated radio show every weekday. Until his radio debut, Medved was primarily a film critic whose “Hollywood vs. America” reviews were conservative, consistent and predictable. After an interview with Rush Limbaugh, the king of conservative talk was so impressed with Medved that Rush invited Michael back as a guest host some 30 times.
Indeed, it was Medved’s performance hosting for Limbaugh that landed him an offer from a Seattle radio station for his own show. So it’s no small irony that this week, Medved used his elevated stature to criticize the man who brought him to the party.
In a Wall Street Journal column entitled “Obama Isn’t Trying to ‘Weaken America’,” Medved takes aim at those who think Obama’s “bad policies” are a reflection of a “bad man.”
He singled out Limbaugh for asserting, “I think we face something we’ve never faced before in the country – and that is, we’re now governed by people who do not like the country. There’s no question that payback is what this administration is all about, presiding over the decline of the United States of America, and doing so happily.”
Citing a quote from John Adams etched in the state dining room mantelpiece at the White House – “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof” – Medved insists that those who followed Adams, including Obama, “worked hard, took their responsibilities seriously, and sincerely pursued the nation’s good.”
Medved concludes, “The White House record of more than 200 years shows plenty of bad decisions but no bad men. For all their foibles, every president attempted to rise to the challenges of leadership and never displayed disloyal or treasonous intent.” He then hauled out the old “respect for the office” maxim, claiming “the current insistence in seeing every misstep or setback by the Obama administration as part of a diabolical master plan for national destruction disregards the powerful reverence for the White House that’s been part of our national character for two centuries.”
Clearly, when it comes to “the nation’s good,” “bad men” and “disloyal or treasonous intent,” Medved needs some fresh air.
Sadly, some conservatives just can’t muster up the nerve to call Leftists what they really are, even when their agenda threatens the continuity of our Republic. Limbaugh, though, unlike Medved, is not a member of that pack of pantywaists.
In rebuttal to Medved, Limbaugh wrote, “The Obama way fails. Socialism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, whatever strain of big-governmentism you want to cite, the evidence is that [it] generates failure, misery, unhappiness, squalor, certainly not prosperity except for the people at the top. So when the evidence is clear that [Obama’s] way doesn’t work and you keep doubling down on your way, what does it say? Does it say that you’re stupid, naive, ignorant, unaware, or does it say that you are an arrogant, egotistical guy who thinks [Socialism] works, it just hasn’t been tried by the right guy yet?”
More to the point, however, I would contend that bad motives are a reflection of “bad men,” and that motives that are a direct affront to our Constitution and Rule of Law it enshrines do constitute bad motives.
Arguably, Obama is, at his core, a Socialist who has, for most of his adult life, demonstrated great contempt for our Constitution and the Republic it established.
This assessment is not based on how I “feel” about Obama. Truth be told, I feel a measure of compassion for him, given that he never chose the tragic childhood which resulted in the manifestation of Narcissistic Pathology Disorder.
My conclusions about Obama’s motives and character are based on the record of his words and deeds, which do not reflect the character of a “good man” whose objectives are consistent with “the nation’s good.”
Obama’s Socialist foundation was shaped by black radical Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party USA member who mentored Obama for most of his formative years. His subsequent close association with Leftist political benefactors, William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Michael Pfleger, Khalid al-Mansour, Bob Creamer, Rashid Khalidi and others, defined his political agenda. Obama’s political action model is based on that of radical Leftist Saul Alinsky, the patron saint of “community organizers.” But perhaps no man had more influence on Obama than his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright, whose black supremacy “GD America” message of hate wedded Obama’s anger and ambition.
William Ayers, who hosted Obama’s first major Senate campaign fundraiser, wrote, “The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.” Wonder why he would raise money for Obama?
Ideological Socialists are not interested in the good of the nation or its people. Instead, they are driven by their own lust for power over the same.
Moreover, in regard to “disloyal or treasonous intent,” Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution notes: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”
Obama’s intent may not be overtly “treasonous,” but his actions do invoke the words of that brilliant Roman statesman and political theorist Marcus Tullius Cicero: “A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves against those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
A traitor by constitutional standards he may not be, but “disloyal”? Article VI, clause 3 of our Constitution stipulates that the president “solemnly swear that [he] will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of [his] ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Obama took that “sacred oath,” but I would argue that he subscribes only to an adulterated “living constitution” which bears little resemblance to the authentic one. Consequently, I conclude that Obama is the most disloyal president in the history of our Republic.
Why is this disloyalty not abundantly evident to Medved? Perhaps it is something other than lunar cycles, cerebral polihypoxia or his Leftist roots. Medved’s tender defense of Obama posted on Valentine’s Day, so maybe an overabundance of X’s and O’s floating around unduly influenced his better judgment.