Charlie Sykes. via Hot Air, posts the latest Doxology to Obama. I join Charlie in extending my sympathies to Christian Schneider on Jessica Alba. It's a good thing that men are pigs. I mean, really, who cares ...?
Seriously, when the Reddess described this to me, I thought that she must have come across a spoof. I couldn't imagine that anyone would really lack the perspective and, oh I don't know, passing acquaintance with reality to make a video chanting the name of a politician.
My question to Obamatons: I understand that you all don't think that the repose of this kind of devotion to - and expectations from - one individual or, even worse, the state is dangerous. You like candlelight vigils and torchlit parades. I get it.
But don't you think that this kind of mindless hero worship is embarassing?
4 comments:
I agree. A video with an Obama chant in the background is over the top and unbecoming.
Campaign supporters need to be careful with these videos. This one has the potential to do more harm than help.
How many "Obamatons" read your blog, do you suppose?
I think the chanting video is daft, but in all seriousness it is no more daft than "devotion" to the absurd strawman and false presupposition in the following hysterical bit of psychoanalysis:
"I understand that you all don't think that the repose of this kind of devotion to - and expectations from - one individual or, even worse, the state is dangerous. You like candlelight vigils and torchlit parades. I get it."
Quite apart from the foolish linking of chants to expectations, and of Obama with some Statist cult (why is that argument so curiously impossible to articulate? the smear posts keep coming, but never the reasoning...), one difference between the two kinds of silliness is that I doubt that the chanting video was produced by anyone billing themselves as part of the professoriate, nor by anyone presuming to teach students how to reason.
Anon
I don't know how many Obama supporters read this blog, but there are apparently enough to get upset and post comments when I express my views on Obama.
As far as comparing Obama with some statist cult, it is more the reaction to Obama that concerns me although I think, increasingly, he encourages it.
The reasoning is not all that complicated. The reaction of many Obama supporters to the candidate (and, here I'll add, the over the top quality of the candidate's rhetoric)seems wholly unconnected to anything that it would be rational to expect of a political candidate.
I find that disturbing because I think that it is dangerous to combine the search for meaning with the coercive authority of the state. This doesn't mean that I expect to find a series of proposals out of Huxley on Obama's website. It means that I don't think it's healthy to expect that politics will create a "world without fear" or mean that you will never "go back to your old life...." When you expect this much good from the state, you run the risk of losing perspective on the limits of government and that tends to lead to breaking eggs to make an omelette.
Because I'm more or less a Burkean conservative, this worries me more than it might worry others.
but there are apparently enough to get upset and post comments when I express my views on Obama.
People get upset when you don't explain yourself, Rick, or -- as is the case in your last comment -- your explanations don't live up to the strong language you use in your posts.
To be honest, you're one of the few voices on the right side of the blogosphere that people on the left respect. So when some of us see you -- along with other smart conservative voices like the Recess Supervisor -- using your posts to take poorly reasoned hack-job shots at Obama, it's a distressing sign that this is as good as the discourse is going to get over the next eight months.
Bottom line, you've never explained what exactly you think an Obama presidency is going to do to the country that's so dangerous, except to say, as you just did, that it won't be capable of living up to the hype (which, as a conservative, I imagine should make you happy since it means Obama almost certainly would be out after 4 years). But, importantly, this isn't even close to the type of active danger that you suggest in your posts; it's that active danger that you've never been able to explain.
Lastly, I'll leave you with a quote from Reagan, spoken when he accepted the GOP nomination in 1980:
More than anything else, I want my candidacy to unify our country, to renew the American spirit and sense of purpose. I want to carry our message to every American, regardless of party affiliation, who is a member of this community of shared values . . . For those who have abandoned hope, we'll restore hope and we'll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again!
As you put it, "When you expect this much good from the state, you run the risk of losing perspective on the limits of government and that tends to lead to breaking eggs to make an omelette."
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