The Out-of-Context President

By Mr. Curmudgeon:

It’s difficult for supporters of the smartest man in the world to admit he makes gaffes. Instead, President Obama’s acolytes insist his detractors take him “out of context.”

When conservative talk radio and Mitt Romney pilloried Obama for saying “the private sector is doing fine,” Obama’s main man in Chicago, David Axelrod, said, “They’re more eager to have a debate over an out-of-context clause in his [Obama’s] remarks than the substance of what he said,” he told CNN.

Axelrod failed to enlighten the paltry CNN audience as to Obama’s context, changing the subject instead. “We need to accelerate job creation in the private sector,” said Axelrod, “One of the ways that we can do that is putting teachers and fire fighters and police back to work because those are good middle class jobs.”

Axelrod failed to mention that the jobs on his and Obama’s list are supported through local taxes. A commodity in short supply as unemployment rises and the local tax base shrinks.

But I might be taking Axelrod’s remarks out of context.

Then, the smartest man in the world said, “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Some said the president lacked a basic understanding of individual initiative and the workings of our private sector economy. His supporters said the remarks were taken out of context.

In search of much needed context, Michael Smerconish of the Philadelphia Inquirer looked to the Native American wisdom of Massachusetts’ Democratic Senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren.

“Warren offered a fiery defense of liberal economic theory at an event in Andover, Mass,” insisted Smerconish.

With that, Smerconish quotes Warren: “You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.”

I think I understand the “liberal economics” of professors Obama and Warren. Boiled down to its essence, it goes like this: If you buy a chicken, transport it over public roads and bridges, put it in your yard, feed and care for it, and it lays two eggs, you get to keep one for breakfast. The other must be divided equally among the masses.

There is an obvious fallacy in Obama and Warren’s liberal economics. Before government can build roads and bridges, it must first collect taxes. Only two groups of Americans pay taxes: wealth creators and those that work for them. Government uses these funds to build public works. The public, and not the government, own these roads and bridges … they paid for them and they, like government, serve us. In the bizzaro world of Obama and Warren, roads, bridges and government own us. Rational and free Americans should respond, “You didn’t build these roads and bridges, our tax dollars made that happen.”

If we take liberal economics to its logical conclusion, since the federal government is actively involved in maintaining air and water quality, liberal economics says we become ever more the property of the state with every breath (don’t inhale too deeply) and every gulp of cold water on a hot summer’s day.

Smerconish did his best to clarify the context of Obama’s liberal economics, “He [Obama] was arguing that, while he was willing to cut government waste, he would not gut investments that grow the economy or give tax breaks to the likes of himself or Romney,” adding that the president advanced “a legitimate, substantive conversation about social contracts …”

This totalitarian vision for America is what the out-of-context left calls a “social contract.” This contract cancels the one hammered out by the nation’s Founders in 1776. The new “you didn’t build that” social contract diminishes individual liberty, enshrines high unemployment, assures an ever shrinking economy and accepts poverty at levels not seen in America for half a century.

At this point, the context of November’s election should be coming into sharp focus.