One year ago this week, I stood in front of the Lawyers Syndicate in downtown Cairo and watched as a few thousand protesters suddenly streamed into the area from the north, overwhelmed Egypt's notoriously violent riot police, and pushed onward towards Tahrir Square. That mile-long march, which culminated with the protesters bursting through a human chain of officers and seizing the Square, was the most inspiring thing that I've ever witnessed, and it remains so. Long presumed to be politically passive, ordinary Egyptians bravely amassed with one simple demand: That decades of dictatorship had to end. When Hosni Mubarak resigned eighteen tumultuous days later, the Arab Spring had bloomed.
Or so we wanted to believe. The reality of the past twelve months, however, has undone whatever high hopes one might have held. Egypt is now headed for radical theocratic, rather than liberal democratic, rule. And a befuddled Obama administration has failed to do anything to stop the coming disaster.
Has Barack Obama learned nothing in three years? Last night, during his State of the Union address, he promised "a blueprint for an economy." But economies are crushed by blueprints. An economy is really nothing more than people participating in an unfathomably complex spontaneous network of exchanges aimed at improving their material circumstances. It can't even be diagrammed, much less planned. And any attempt at it will come to grief.
Politicians like Obama believe they are the best judges of how we should conduct our lives. Of course a word like "blueprint" would occur to the president. He, like most who want his job, aspires to be the architect of a new society.
But we who love our lives and our freedom say: No, thanks. We need no social architect. We need liberty under law. That's it.
Barack Obama released a statemtent this past weekend on the 39th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade Decision. Obama said abortion "enabled our daughters" to "fulfill their dreams." Sick.
Previously, in a speech endorsing abortion, Barack Obama told an audience that he didn't want his daughters punished with a baby.
The media, the occupiers, and others engaging in "the bitter politics of envy" have it all wrong. If they were concerned with anything other than dividing Americans and punishing success, their full attention would be on the 21%, not the 1%.
Who are the 21%? They are the Americans who, according to The Heritage Foundation, "rely on government subsidies for their existence." Read that again: rely on government subsidies for their existence. That is a fundamentally un-American idea. And in 2009 (the last available data), 20.9% of the entire population in America was dependent upon government programs for their existence.
Over the Christmas holiday I took my family to Pearl Harbor, shortly after the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack that plunged the United States into World War II. I figured that my daughter, now 6 and in first grade, should be old enough to get an up-close and personal experience with this key chapter in world history.
But I was soon consumed by a horrifying event.
While waiting for the boat to take us across the channel to the USS Arizona Memorial, I overheard a group of college students discussing history. Unable to help myself, I lingered to eavesdrop. And this is the gist of what I heard:
"The World War II [sic] started with a bunch of countries on one side and a bunch of countries on the other side," a young man began, his companions listening with rapt attention as if it were a lecture, "and we didn't know which side we wanted to be on and we had a hard time picking sides. But when the Japanese attacked us, that made it easy to go against their side."
I didn't know whether I should be enraged at or take pity on the young man's ignorance. But what was most troubling was that he was the one dispensing "knowledge"! The others -- judging by the fact that no one disputed or challenged his account -- knew less than he did, even after apparently 12 years of compulsory education.
It's starting to feel a lot like 1992, and President Obama's re-election team should be worried. At this point in President George H.W. Bush's term, the president's approval rating stood at 46 percent. According to Gallup, Mr. Obama's is doing worse by 1 percent.
"It's the economy, stupid" was 1992's winning campaign slogan, and the message will be just as effective 20 years later. Mr. Obama is stuck defending an economic record far worse than Mr. Bush‘s. The gross domestic product (GDP) grew an average of 4.3 percent over the first three quarters in 1992, while 2012's growth is expected to be half that rate. Unemployment in October 1992 was 7.3 percent, while Mr. Obama has said that an 8 percent rate by election day is "possible." Inconvenient truths like these are why the White House is trying to steer the debate into the vaguer arena of class warfare and away from the specifics of Mr. Obama's unhappy record.
One year ago this week, I stood in front of the Lawyers Syndicate in downtown Cairo and watched as a few thousand protesters suddenly streamed into the area from the north, overwhelmed Egypt's notoriously violent riot police, and pushed onward towards Tahrir Square. That mile-long march, which culminated with the protesters bursting through a human chain of officers and seizing the Square, was the most inspiring thing that I've ever witnessed, and it remains so. Long presumed to be politically passive, ordinary Egyptians bravely amassed with one simple demand: That decades of dictatorship had to end. When Hosni Mubarak resigned eighteen tumultuous days later, the Arab Spring had bloomed.
Has Barack Obama learned nothing in three years? Last night, during his State of the Union address, he promised "a blueprint for an economy." But economies are crushed by blueprints. An economy is really nothing more than people participating in an unfathomably complex spontaneous network of exchanges aimed at improving their material circumstances. It can't even be diagrammed, much less planned. And any attempt at it will come to grief.
The media, the occupiers, and others engaging in "the bitter politics of envy" have it all wrong. If they were concerned with anything other than dividing Americans and punishing success, their full attention would be on the 21%, not the 1%.
Over the Christmas holiday I took my family to Pearl Harbor, shortly after the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack that plunged the United States into World War II. I figured that my daughter, now 6 and in first grade, should be old enough to get an up-close and personal experience with this key chapter in world history.
It's starting to feel a lot like 1992, and President Obama's re-election team should be worried. At this point in President George H.W. Bush's term, the president's approval rating stood at 46 percent. According to Gallup, Mr. Obama's is doing worse by 1 percent.