Blue Collar Muse

On Friday, Townhall.com posted a brief article on B. Hussein Obama’s activities. He delivered a stump speech at Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Spartanburg, SC. The theme was fatherhood and family values in advance of the national celebration of Father’s Day. Usually, when people desire to praise a person or thing, they talk about that person or thing directly, telling listeners the good and positive things about their subject. Curiously, Obama takes the opposite approach and lauds family values and fatherhood by talking about all the bad fathers and poor examples of family values. Just more evidence that the Left approaches most issues in a fearful, negative and backwards fashion. That the article further describes the topic as Obama’s “life message” as well doesn’t speak well for the Illinois Democrat.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Friday that fathers have to share the responsibility for raising children and caring for families because their role doesn’t end at conception.

Days before Father’s Day, the first-term Illinois senator and father of two daughters delivered his life message as well as an assessment of what government needs to do in remarks at a Baptist church.

“It’s about to be Father’s Day,” he said. “Let’s admit to ourselves that there are a lot of men out there that need to stop acting like boys; who need to realize that responsibility does not end at conception; who need to know that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise a child.”

He recalled his own upbringing as the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas. Obama said he grew up with a father he know only through letters and stories told by his mothers and the relatives who raised him.

While he acknowledges the problem is confined, there are only “a lot of men out there” shirking their responsibilities, it is his solutions to the problem that are the most disturbing. He fails to be the voice of reason and truth in his party. Instead of standing up and saying that 50 years of deeply flawed Democrat policies and approaches to the issue have almost destroyed the family in many parts of American society, including black America, he skips past the true problem to promote the same worthless, tepid programs at the root of the very problem he says he wants to fix. In addition, he spouts the ever present, reason numbing, Democrat mantra that the entire problem is Bush’s fault. Evidently, prosperity in black America is just around the corner in January of 2009 when George “Just call me Sauron, all my enemies do!” Bush is no longer President.

He bemoaned the nation’s economic divide.

Changes in the way we “work and live have trapped too many American families between an economy that’s gone global and government that’s gone AWOL. Too many rungs have been removed from the ladder to middle-class security and the safety net that’s supposed to break any fall from that ladder has grown badly frayed,” Obama said.

The Illinois senator said he would invest $50 million in programs to help people find transitional jobs and get training for permanent employment. That is needed, he said, to help men _ especially black men _ find work to replace hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs they’ve lost in the last six years.

“Without a job or an education, many black men simply cannot afford to raise a family _ and too many have made the sad choice not to,” he said.

He said he would push to expand the federal earned income tax credit and the minimum hourly wages should be linked to the rate of inflation.

He’s right, there are problems that keep people from achieving success in this country in a time of unparalleled economic success. He’s right that there is a huge gap in the ladder of success. He’s right there are many men, black and white, without jobs or educations and thus without prospects of achieving the American dream. He’s also right that these things are mostly a matter of choices - bad choices. Choices made by the men themselves and choices made by an out of touch, irrational and irresponsible Democrat Party.

The “way we work and live” has changed in the last 50 years. It used to be that families endured tough times and hung together knowing that better days were ahead if they would perservere. Things like no fault divorce, the minimum wage, welfare, Aid to Dependent Children and hosts of other Democrat social programs, while sounding compassionate and helpful, not only did not fix the problems they were designed to address, they actually compounded those problems. Left in place over decades, the compounded problems have themselves been compounded and compounded yet again.

Refusing to be bound by sound economic principle and common sense, the Left ignores the truth that you get more of what you pay for. Thus, when they pay mothers for having children and remove financial incentives for men and women to marry, all in the name of compassion, they feign surprise when out of wedlock pregnancies skyrocket and two parent familes evaporate. This is taken as evidence the American dream doesn’t work for black America, justifying even more social engineering. When it is pointed out other minority groups with strong family bonds do better than blacks despite living in the same economic and social environment, that argument is dismissed as the ravings of ancient, white European males who have no way to understand the crises in black America. And so the farce is perpetuated.

According to Obama, the adverse employment situation for black men is due to 6 years of bad Bush labor policies whereby “hundreds of thousands” of manufacturing jobs have been lost. Nice to know the problem is only 6 years old. That shouldn’t be too hard to fix. But what if the problem is decades old? What if giving just enough money to men every month that they can barely survive without lifting a finger is the reason that men have opted to stay home? Kept by their government mistress, these gigolos provide the services their mistress demands every 2 years by voting in the crowd that will continue the largesse as opposed to dealing with the deteriorating condition this immoral arrangement has produced.

Why should they acquire basic work and life skills on rungs 1 through 10 on Obama’s “ladder to middle-class security” when the government puts a net out to keep them safe? Unfortunately, that net isn’t the “safety net that’s supposed to break any fall from that ladder”. It’s a fowler’s net spread near the ladder, preventing anyone it traps from climbing at all! Without basic job skills, it is difficult to obtain a job requiring intermediate skills and impossible to get one requiring advanced skills. The rungs on the ladder that are missing are not the middle ones. They weren’t removed by Bush, evil GOPers and Conservatives. In fact, there aren’t any rungs missing at all. The only thing missing is a huge sign with an arrow pointing at the “safety net” with the written warning, “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here!” Those with different values stand on every rung of the ladder, all of which are still strong and functional and able to bear whatever weight is placed on them. They call out warnings to those below that the music from those encouraging them to trust the net is a siren song of personal and societal destruction.

There is no guarantee on the ladder like there is in the net. But there are no limits either. Instead of pointing to black success stories like Sowell, Williams, Watts, Rice, Thomas and thousands more - frankly, instead of pointing to himself and his family, instead of touting hard work, education, discipline and the perserverance that positions you to take advantage of the mythical “lucky break” that so often appears for those who practice such things and tragically eludes those who do not, Obama comes SO close to being something akin to a Savior for black America and lets the opportunity pass in favor of the party line. Instead of honoring fathers by lauding those successful in the endeavor, he denigrates the concept by relegating it to a mere pad from which to launch his own agenda.

His solutions to these important and profound issues are stale and proven worthless at best and counter productive at worst. Pay more for having kids, raise the minimum wage even more, discourage personal initiative and responsibility and encourage others to make your decisions for you, permit others to establish limits on your plans and allow someone else to distract you from the process of dreaming of a better tomorrow. Tragically, after 50 years there are still people that think this is the best way to govern and for us to live. Even more tragic is there are still people willing to accept those limits as being the best life has to offer.

Thinking it’s been going on too long to be anything other than deliberate …

Blue Collar Muse

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Committees of Correspondence, Mark My Words, The Random Yak, guerrilla radio, DeMediacratic Nation, Maggie’s Notebook, DragonLady’s World, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Adeline and Hazel, third world county, stikNstein… has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Nuke’s news and views, Pirate’s Cove, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, The Yankee Sailor, and OTB Sports, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 4:31 am and is filed under 2008 election season, Conservative, Liberal, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.