Ideas are intangible, of course, but they do have a "shine" to them. Ideas in the hands of a skillful rhetorician are bright and shiny for a long time. And our president is a skillful rhetorician. A rhetorician spins reality to read the way he wants it to. And his efforts hold up – until reality intrudes in an overwhelming way. Then his fantasy collapses, and the rhetoric loses its shine.
Recent events brought reality crashing in on the skillful fantasy structures of the Obama Administration with three great thunderclaps of news: the Benghazi hearings; the exposure
of IRS attempt to intimidate the Tea Party using audits last year; and the Justice Dept. sweeping search of months of phone records of the Associated Press in search of a source of embarrassing news in an AP story.
Each event is patently a gross abuse of executive powers by this administration. Each has been covered in detail by the media. In each case the Obama team has been exposed as the "big government" bullies that they truly are, conflicting with the "trust me" rhetoric the nation regularly hears from Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama has long been identified as a left-wing Liberal-Progressive – one who believes that only government can accomplish good things for the country; therefore in order to do these good things one needs a bigger Federal government. He has been busy creating a bigger government with greater powers.
But the "big government is good government" bias of the administration has been handily downplayed by the national media because of its political stance favoring Mr. Obama. Or at least until the AP – certainly a bona fide member of the national media – had its ox gored!
Then in a rush of bombast all the national media closed ranks and blasted the Obama team and its transgressions.
‘It ain’t fair to track down sources! It will suppress our ability to "get the facts." People will not talk to us!" All of which is true enough. (The panicky hue-and-cry raised by the liberal talking heads was actually pretty funny to those of use with of conservative bent!)
The Administration immediately went into full crisis management mode; apologies and explanations were poured out by the bucketful. But the essential violations remain: This administration’s team over-reaches; it uses powers abusively; this is a natural impulse with them.
And the fact remains: this is one aspect of BIG Government at work! Big Government will step on any bothersome obstacle between where we are and where these guys want to be!
Thus it is a perfect case study of why conservatives love the Constitution and its check-and-balance structure which offsets the powers of government by careful delegation and limitation. Stretching Constitutional provisions and ideas is inherently risky: see the evidence.
In short: BIG Government is inherently untrustworthy. It is oppressive by nature. Cases in point: if you are a diplomat, don’t get on the wrong side of politics. If you are a reporter, don’t write anything that embarrasses us. If you are right-wing, don’t campaign too hard against this
administration.
