Posted on January 17,
2024
Michelle Means It
Don't let Mrs. O "do everything for us"
by
Daniel
Clark
Can it possibly be true that Michelle Obama is
planning to jump into the presidential race as a late replacement for Joe
Biden? Considering our nation's recent
presidential electoral history, it's fair to say that stranger things have
happened. Such speculation has been
fueled by an interview she gave to British podcaster Jay Shetty, during
which she professed herself to be "terrified" about this November's election.
Why
does she feel so threatened? Here's a
hint: "The fact that people think that government, 'does it really do
anything?' and I'm like, 'Oh my God, does government do everything for us.' And we cannot take this democracy for
granted." In the Obama family tradition,
she was inventing an argument that nobody is making in order to rebut it. Even the most recalcitrant libertarian would
be unlikely to say that our government does absolutely nothing for its
people. Her opposite contention that it
does "everything," by comparison, is chillingly sincere. To her, people are nothing without their
government. Free people making their own
decisions in life while providing for their families is what Democrat
scaremongers call "fending for themselves."
As first lady, Mrs. Obama took up the cause of
combating childhood obesity. The two
phases of this approach were to change children's eating habits, and to
encourage them to become more physically active. The truth be known, these are just pilot
programs, which are meant to eventually be applied to the whole of the
population, in keeping with her party's view of its constituents as the
children of government.
Midway through the second term of Barack Obama's
presidency, a report was issued by an obscure federal body called the Dietary
Guidelines Advisory Committee, which was created jointly by the Departments of
Agriculture and Health and Human Services.
The paper concluded that, in order for its recommendations to be
implemented, "motivating and facilitating behavioral change at the individual
level is required." You read that
right. A group of 20 unaccountable
appointees to a federal office that has no business existing decided that we
mere citizens must change our behavior.
And they did it "for us."
In 2010, President Obama signed Executive Order 13544,
creating the poorly worded National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public
Health Council, which was chaired by the Surgeon General, and tasked with,
among other objectives, reducing "sedentary behavior." This new office was instructed to recommend
changes in federal policy that are designed to make us get up and do things
we'd rather not do. These are not
changes to scholastic physical education curricula we're talking about. Our presumptive superiors in the NPHPPHC are
talking about changing behavior in the personal lives of grown people in a free
country.
Want
some more examples of what a government that does everything for us can
do? How about Social Security? The government takes money out of your
paycheck for decades with the promise of giving it back to you later, based on
the premise that you can't be trusted with it in the meantime. When it comes time to return it to you, this
same government can't do that because it has already spent it, so it takes the
money from somebody else and gives it to you, thereby pitting one generation
against another.
Likewise, our government wishes to prevent us from
misusing our property. For that reason,
it reserves the right to stop you from developing your land, if the conditions
on it happen to be consistent with the habitat of some supposedly endangered
rat or mosquito. If your property
includes a marsh, a pond, or even a puddle, it could be designated a federally
protected wetland. From that point on,
you won't be able to do a thing with it, except that you'll still have to pay
the property taxes. Ever since the Kelo
v. New London Supreme Court decision, the government can even seize your
land under eminent domain laws, just to transfer it to someone it thinks will
put it to better use.
Another thing our government does for us is prevent us
from using household appliances that actually work, because the ones that
function properly are characterized as a threat to The Planet. People are now paying good money for
dishwashers that don't get dishes clean, and dryers that don't get clothes
dry. The phenomenon of clothes still
stinking when they come out of the washer has become so commonplace that there
are now products on the market that are designed to combat it.
The government is mandating that people start driving
electric vehicles they don't want and can't afford, which don't handle either
hot or cold weather very well, and which take a heck of a lot longer to
recharge than it takes to fill up a gas tank.
These cars run on lithium ion batteries that occasionally, and for reasons
not entirely understood, burst into flames, which is a bit of an unsettling
thought to those of us who own houses with built-in garages.
All these things are but minor inconveniences compared
to public education. The government
promises to teach the children, but then uses them as subjects for social
experimentation. Public schools take the
separation of children from their parents as an opportunity to inculcate them with
values to which they know most parents would object.
They push a godless narrative based on the premise
that life came about by accident, and thus is without purpose or intrinsic
value. Without parental knowledge, let
alone approval, they prey upon the sadness and confusion of pubescent children
by encouraging them to reject their own identities, at a time when they are
most in need of structure in their lives.
They tend not to try very hard to teach the children anything useful,
but they immerse them in racial obsessiveness, tell them malicious lies about
their country and its history, and condition them to believe that human
prosperity is destroying the earth.
These are just some of the most prominent examples of
the "everything" that Mrs. Obama says the government does "for us." It cannot possibly escape her notice that in
every one of these cases, it is doing things that the vast majority of us never
asked for, and would never have chosen for ourselves. But what do we know? We're just people.
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