Clarity on Obama for the Asking

On his way to completely eviscerating a recent remark by Barack Obama,  Thomas Sowell offers supporters of Barack Obama an introduction to civics, taking recent remarks by the President as his point of departure:

One of the ways of fighting poverty, he proposed, was to "ask from society's lottery winners" that they make a "modest investment" in government programs to help the poor.

...

Despite pious rhetoric on the left about "asking" the more fortunate for more money, the government does not "ask" anything. It seizes what it wants by force. If you don't pay up, it can take not only your paycheck, it can seize your bank account, put a lien on your home and/or put you in federal prison.

So please don't insult our intelligence by talking piously about "asking."

Sowell also touches on economics before moving on to the discipline of rhetoric to add the final touches to his portrait of a morally bankrupt political movement and a thieving, dishonest politician:

Most people who want to redistribute wealth don't want to talk about how that wealth was produced in the first place. They just want "the rich" to pay their undefined "fair share" of taxes. This "fair share" must remain undefined because all it really means is "more."

Once you have defined it -- whether at 30 percent, 60 percent or 90 percent -- you wouldn't be able to come back for more.

This is all just a taste: Sowell weaves together many other themes of the Obama Presidency. I recommend the whole column as a very succinct rebuttal to an entire presidency.

-- CAV