Tuesday 21 February 2012

Obama against the Deer Hunters


This is a piece I wrote a year and a half ago. It has a topical relevance though some of the reference points are now slightly dated.

The United States is a nation built by rebels, built by those hostile to the state, those who sought freedom across the ocean and deep into the frontier. Looking over the country’s history one can see this principle, this hostility to state power asserted time and again, from the Bill of Rights onwards. Last century the House of Un-American Activities was set up specifically to examine those who embraced ideologies that challenged the basic principles on which the nation had been built. Senator Joseph McCarthy also set off in pursuit of those same elements.

How things have changed, how things are changing. The House and McCarthy would not have to look in hidden places for threats to the rebel nation; for the most un-American American is now lodged firmly in the White House. The most un-American American is now the President.

I’m not sure if Americans knew what they were getting when they voted for Barack Obama in November 2008. But what they are getting is arguably the biggest structural transformation in their country’s history, bigger than FDR’s New Deal, which was nothing more than smoke and mirrors in contrast. Obama’s socialism, expressed in the centralised health care system and a redistributive tax programme, comes, as all socialism comes, with an increase in the power of bureaucracy, an increase in state power and authority.

The irony here is that the Democrats are losing the support of the deer hunter vote. Who on earth are the deer hunters, you might wonder, and what have they got to do with American politics? My reference here is to The Deer Hunter, the 1978 movie about men from a blue collar community who went to Vietnam, inspired by now unfashionable ideas of patriotism and love of nation.

Blue collar and working class these people are; socialists they are not. They are people who gain no benefit from the Big State and Obamaism, people who resent their tax dollars being used for welfare programmes and administration; people who resent America being turned into just another ‘social democracy’, just another version of the European Union. Obama told Joe the Plumber, the archetypal deer hunter, that he intended to “spread the wealth around.” What he did not tell him was that it was his ‘wealth’ that would be spreading.

Janet Daley writing in The Sunday Telegraph said that it was unacceptable in bien-pensant circles to express concern over mass immigration or Obama’s heath care programme. They are educated people, sophisticated people, people with a bourgeois sense of morality. Those who do express concern over big government and mass migration are, of course, small-minded bigots, rednecks; just not the right sort.

The thing is ‘the right sort’, these refugees from The West Wing, did not build America. That was the achievement of small people, those who believed in self-reliance, those who had ambition and the drive to clear the wilderness, those who believed that they should benefit from the fruits of their own labour. It was the deer hunters who built America; it’s the liberals and the socialists who are destroying it.

16 comments:

  1. Ana, the cabal is terrified of Americans. That is the real reason for the 'war on terror.'

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  2. This may sound a bit over the top, but I don't really see any fundamental difference between the government and a terrorist organization.

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    1. Deino, I certainly think that so much the government does is terrifying. As Ronald Reagan said, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'

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    2. Perhaps the difference is that the government is all too real, while 'terrorism' is mostly fantasy.

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  3. Yeah, we have to get The Marxist Kenyan out of office this year.

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  4. "How things have changed, how things are changing."
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    Perhaps the only statement I can really agree with in this essay. It's no longer a nation of frontier fur trappers who have the leisure of telling jolly old King George III to "Bugger off!" We live de-facto in a growing social world, which is becoming - thank the Internet - increasingly socially networked.
    While the American dream of a chicken in every pot and a Hummer with a full rack of Winchesters in every garage is diminishing, it's no wonder the America is holding their casting show, "America's Search for the Next St Martin". What a bitter disappointment it wasn't his cloak he was dividing, but the one he received from the Roman Army. Nevertheless, half a cloak - regardless of the source - is better than none. His rival officers firmly believe that beggars should be crucified on the cross rather than give them half a cloak, as they repeat incessantly on Fox News how beggars should have no voice and no right to exist.

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    1. Weissdorn, agree or not I welcome your comment. Yes, you are right; the old notion of the frontier is long gone. What is now being killed off is the frontier spirit, the 'can do' attitude that was so important in building America as a major economic power in the world. I intend to follow this up with an article on bureaucracy and red tape in general. Keep watching. :-)

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  5. The following comment has been posted on behalf of Nobby, who is having technical difficulties. :-)

    Never read this first time around, Ana. Excellent.

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  6. Thanks for that link, RT, which I read with interest. But the definition of socialism given by Bruce Bartlet is far too simplistic. It does not simply mean public ownership of the means of production. In Europe that notion has long been replaced by the state as the ultimate enabler, involved in many areas of public and private life. I intend to write an article on how bureaucracy is creeping through so many areas of American life. People in the States have no direct experience of the hydra, which makes its growing presence all the more invidious, all the more dangerous.

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  7. Thank you for clarifying this, Ana. I'm always mystified how the word "social" has the effect on the American people like "Hannibal ante portas" - except - when they use "social" together with the word "network" - then it suddenly it magically transform into something "socially" acceptable. ;-P
    Prehaps you will have to explain in one of your blogs the difference between a social democracy and a totalitarian dictatorship, because I suspect Rick Perry confuses the two.

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  8. Ah, I shall have to research Rick Perry. :-)

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  9. Great post. It remains to be seen if there's enough of us deer hunters left to boot the Perrier-sipping progressives and their fellow travelers from the seats of power before they unravel what's left of our Constitution. Let's hope so, because waiting in the wings are the true totalitarians. Will re-blog this on my site.

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