Crimes Against Liberty (2 page)

UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES

ISRAEL: A BIPARTISAN CAUSE NO MORE

BACKLASH

Chapter Fifteen - SEE NO EVIL

PAPER TIGER

A THWARTED ATTACK

“MY DUTY IS TO EXAMINE THE FACTS AND TO FOLLOW THE LAW”

“THE PUBLIC IS VERY, VERY SAFE”

ADMINISTRATION ROADBLOCKS

REFUSING TO CONNECT THE DOTS

THE NO-NUKE COMMITMENT

CONCLUSION

Acknowledgements

NOTES

INDEX

Copyright Page

To Rush and Kathryn

INTRODUCTION

T
his book is about a young presidency—young, but already the most destructive in American history.

Everything about Barack Obama’s radical background signals his visceral contempt for America—its culture, its values, and its political and economic systems. His unmistakable goal is to bring America down to size—an America that has been, in his view, too big for its britches, selfish, exploitive, unfairly wealthy, arrogant, and dismissive.

Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly promised to bring “fundamental change.” The week before the election, he ominously declared, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” That same week, I expressed these concerns in my syndicated column:

I am sincerely worried that if Obama wins, the checks and balances incorporated into our Constitution may not be enough to prevent a radical and irreversible diminution of our individual liberties because a confluence of factors has emerged to create a climate conducive to fundamental change. These factors are: a shockingly unknown candidate, whose mysterious past and numerous shady alliances are deliberately left unexplored by a corrupt, supportive media; the candidate’s charismatic qualities that inspire a cultish loyalty; his intellectual trappings that create a fascination and allure among the intellectual elite, including some hypnotized conservatives; a major financial crisis that exacerbates the people’s fears and uncertainties; a largely manufactured cloud of negativity placed over America by the media and a grossly partisan Democratic Party that places its self-interest above the national interest; and an apparently discredited Republican Party and conservative movement that have been blamed for our actual and perceived problems.

. . . All of these factors could coalesce to give Obama a mandate to fundamentally move our economy toward socialism in the name of economic fairness and emasculate our war on terrorists in the name of our international image.

I wish I had been wrong, but it turns out my fears were hardly exaggerated. Though Obama denied his extreme liberalism during the campaign, he couldn’t conceal it entirely. Since his first day in office he has been trying to uproot our national moorings and “transform” the country into a land consistent with his socialist, secular, multicultural vision for America—an America that in his view has squandered its power and potential for good by: a) failing sufficiently to atone for its racial sins; b) subscribing to an antiquated and discriminatory system of values; c) having an economic system that fosters an “inequitable” distribution of wealth; d) selfishly consuming a disproportionate share of the world’s resources; and e) imperialistically projecting its power in the world.

But Obama does have some ambivalence about America. On the one hand he deeply dislikes this country; on the other, he sees in it great potential—a potential he believes, immodestly, he can personally unleash as president. He admires America’s wealth and power, even if undeserved in his view, but he is passionate about redirecting them and remaking us into a truly great nation—a part of the global community that shares rather than exploits its resources. In 2007 he told a
Rolling Stone
reporter he has faith in America’s capacity for acts of outstanding virtue, but as a black man, he “feels very deeply that this country’s exercise of its great inherited wealth and power has been grossly unjust.” Obama added, “I’m somebody who believes in this country and its institutions, but I often think they’re broken.”
¹

Tragically, Obama’s ideological blindness precludes him from recognizing America’s unparalleled record of benevolence as the world’s greatest superpower. It numbs him to the wonders of America’s free-market system, which has produced unprecedented prosperity for Americans and contributed to the advancement of civilization throughout the world. It obscures a realistic assessment of global politics that comprehends the existence of rogue nations, evil empires, and Islamic terrorists who intend us harm and who cannot be mollified through pandering and “engagement,” but must be approached from a position of strength.

His abundantly documented radical background soured his taste on America, compelling him to believe America’s wealth and power were “inherited,” rather than
inspired
by America’s god-fearing founders, who crafted a government designed to establish and maximize individual liberties—a government that has been preserved with the blood, sweat, and tears of generations of Americans.

Ironically, Obama’s domestic policy, foreign policy, and national security prescriptions are the opposite of what America needs. In transforming America to “spread the wealth around,” he is actually spreading the misery around, burying us in debt, and potentially enslaving us to our foreign creditors. In the name of improving our image in the world, he is compromising our national security.

He is reaping destruction in America’s culture, its Constitution, and in every sector of the American economy (save the public sector), administering one kick in the gut after another and inflicting damage from which it will be difficult to recover.

While holding himself out as a post-partisan, post-racial president, he has exacerbated racial tensions, inflamed partisan divisiveness, engaged in acrimonious class warfare, and demonized anyone to the political right of the late Ted Kennedy.

For someone who inspired so much “hope” and had so much goodwill upon taking office, even among certain commentators and media professionals who consider themselves conservatives, it is striking how far he has fallen so fast. His approval ratings have cratered more rapidly than those of any modern president. He has squandered more political capital than most presidents ever possessed. And he has done it all himself; his popularity freefall hasn’t occurred as a result of circumstances beyond his control. But that hasn’t prevented him from milking the economic crisis excuse ad nauseam and endlessly scapegoating his predecessor for the “multitude of problems” Obama allegedly inherited. He owns our current set of problems, which if he did inherit, he greatly exacerbated through a series of deplorable policies and actions.

He promised to lead a transparent, ethical administration, free of corruption and sanitized of conflicts of interest generated by the revolving door between lawmakers and lobbyists. But he appointed a host of tax cheats, lobbyists, and leftist radicals, and has cloaked many of his policy actions in secrecy. He has reportedly used his appointment power to offer high-ranking government jobs and other benefits in exchange for votes supporting his agenda. He has brought Chicago-style politics and Saul Alinsky street organizing tactics to Washington, diverting federal funds to the now-defunct ACORN as his political and re-election arm, using the Justice Department as an advocacy bureau and his campaign organization as an ongoing war room. He fired Inspector General Gerald Walpin after Walpin filed two reports implicating one of Obama’s prominent supporters in the misappropriation of federal AmeriCorps funds, and then used the power of his office to wrongfully discredit Walpin and whitewash his allegations.

He presented himself as an exemplar of honesty—a new kind of politician with unique character and integrity. But he has been one of the most fundamentally dishonest chief executives in our history. He has broken promises on a broad range of important issues, from his pledge not to raise taxes in any form on those making less than $250,000 a year to his expedient promise to end the practice of extraordinary rendition. Nowhere has his pattern for dishonesty been more apparent than in his obsessive drive for socialized medicine, from his slandering of the nonpareil quality of American healthcare, to his promise to televise the healthcare debates on C-SPAN, to his pledge not to force the uninsured to buy insurance, to his varying claims about the numbers of uninsured, to denying his support for a single-payer plan, to dismissing allegations that the public option was a Trojan horse for a single-payer plan, to his dissembling about whether abortion would be federally funded, to whether “his plan” would cover illegal immigrants, to his promise that he would not interfere with the doctor-patient relationship and would expand healthcare choices, to his pooh-poohing the legitimate charge that his plan would lead to rationing.

He promised to be a uniter, but has proven more divisive than any president in the modern era, including George W. Bush. Pew Research Center reported after only his first few months in office that “for all his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval of any president in the past four decades.”
²
His situation did not improve as the year continued. Gallup reported on January 25, 2010, that Obama has been the most polarizing first-year president in the pollster’s history. “The 65 percentage-point gap between Democrats’ (88%) and Republicans’ (23 percent) average job approval ratings for Barack Obama is easily the largest for any president in his first year in office, greatly exceeding the prior high of 52 points for Bill Clinton.”
³
Polls aside, he has behaved as a rabid partisan with little patience for opposing viewpoints. He has routinely mischaracterized Republican positions and demeaned those who dared to oppose him as liars, insisting they shut up, get out of the way, and let him go about handling this mess he “inherited.”

He promised to deliver us from racial disharmony, or at least to help ameliorate racial tensions, yet he has appointed race-oriented “czars,” has issued reckless statements with racial implications, often reminds us of our “racist” heritage, and unpresidentially injected himself into a local police dispute involving his personal friend, erroneously prejudging the situation from the Oval Office with incendiary language guaranteed to heighten racial discord.

He promised his stimulus bill would “jump-start the economy,” create jobs, and grow us out of the recession. He promised to “save or create” three million jobs (or was it two million, or two and a half million?), yet presided over the net loss of millions. He promised these would mainly be private sector jobs, but the only sector that has grown has been the public sector—no surprise, given Obama’s big-government orientation. Even after the facts are in, he still clings to his original claims and says he fulfilled them. As they say, if you tell a lie often enough . . .

Obama said he would rigorously ensure the proper expenditure of the stimulus funds. Instead, a great portion of the stimulus money was never intended to be spent in time to do any stimulating, much of it has been sent to phantom addresses with phantom zip codes, and millions upon millions of dollars have been wasted on projects that the American people would never approve if they knew of them. Much of the money has also been used as a political slush fund, going to Obama-friendly groups that will work for his re-election.

He promised no political favoritism but has greased the skids for his union friends, stacking the deck for them against secured creditors in the GM and Chrysler negotiations, carving out exemptions for them in various healthcare proposals, adopting policies to give unionized companies preferences on federal contract bidding, pushing “card-check” legislation to intimidate workers into joining unions, and enlisting union thugs to disrupt conservative grassroots tea party protests.

He promised the Justice Department would be free of politics, but instead has presided over the most politicized DOJ since Janet Reno. Without explanation, Justice dismissed a cinch-lock voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party whose members, one armed with a billy club, were videotaped patrolling in front of a Philadelphia voting precinct during the 2008 presidential election. When asked to provide its reasons, DOJ stonewalled.