Quickies: "Good Intentions"

I have a mountain or two to scale today, so I must make do with a "quickie" and then be off.

Victor Davis Hanson produces a lament of considerable dimensions today, wherein he briefly mentions only the major lunacies of the Obama years -- and look at how many pixels they occupy:

Not since Richard Nixon have we seen such a record of scandal. The disclosures of wrong-doing and cover-ups now come so often that they become mind-numbing — Fast and Furious, Benghazi, and the IRS, AP, NSA, and ACA messes. After the president’s flips and flops over Syria, confusion about Egypt, and leading from behind in Libya, no one believes him — which is why also that no one was surprised at home about the untruth about Obamacare. In such a context, misdeeds like the Pigford payouts or Solyndra do not even raise an eyebrow.

Foreign policy is likewise in shambles. No one in the administration brags of “leading from behind” in Libya, or of “reset” with Russia, or of “red lines” and “game changers” in Syria. On most foreign policy issues, Obama is to the left of the current French socialist government. A Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s legacy is trying to bypass the UN about Syria, exceeding the UN mandate in Libya, and now ignoring it with Iran....

The Obama cabinet is the weakest in modern memory. Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress. By his polarizing rhetoric (“my people,” “cowards,” etc.), he has helped to set back racial relations a generation. Kathleen Sebelius oversaw the most disastrous rollout of a federal program of the modern era. Chuck Hagel is becoming irrelevant at Defense.

John Kerry at State will be known for his promise of an “unbelievably small” bombing campaign to come against Syria — that in itself was explained by Obama as a non-pinprick. Hillary Clinton had declared Assad a “reformer,” scoffed off Benghazi as “what difference does it make?” and tried to parlay “Bush did it” into a foreign policy.

Steven Chu proved a sort of idiot-savant at Energy, reminding us that Nobel Prize winners can lack even an iota of common sense. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s chief task was finding ways to grant election-time amnesties without being caught at it, while inventing adolescent euphemisms for terrorism.

The less said about the quotes about a peaceful and secular Islamism from James Clapper and John Brennan the better. Citigroup’s Peter Orszag and Jack Lew were refutations of the Obama promises to end the revolving door between big money and big government.

Lisa Jackson at EPA quietly left, after fabricating a fake email identity of “Richard Windsor.” Press Secretary Jay Carney has made Ron Ziegler’s tenure appear veracious in comparison. Thomas Perez and Hilda Solis at Labor saw their job as the promotion of unionism at all costs.

Obama, the self-described constitutional lawyer, has done more to endanger personal liberty and the rule of law than any president since FDR put Japanese-American citizens into camps. Associated Press reporters were monitored. The NSA tapped personal communications. The IRS went after Obama’s opponents. An innocent video maker was jailed on trumped-up charges of parole violations after being falsely accused by the president and the secretary of State of inciting the Benghazi attacks. When a law was deemed inconvenient, Obama simply either overrode or ignored it, whether Obamacare’s employer mandate or federal border enforcement statutes.

Despite all that, were it Constitutionally permissible for Obama to run for a third term as president in 2016, he'd have no worse than an even-money shot at it. The reasons are twofold:

• Massive giveaways to voters who would support him out of naked self-interest;
• "Good Intentions."

I trust the first of those is self-explanatory. The second stands at the heart of allegiance to the Democrat Party among ordinary Americans. The Democrats have established themselves as "the party of good intentions," in contrast to those eeeeevil Republicans, and there are altogether too many Americans who place good intentions above all other considerations...even when the proposals are plainly anti-Constitutional...even when "well-intentioned" policies and programs create unimaginable suffering...even when the objective evidence makes it obvious that the Democrats' professed intentions were not their true ones.

It's time to think seriously about alternatives -- and not just to the major political parties. And now, a few quotes about power from persons who might just command more authority on the subject than myself.

"Our mistake is in supposing men better than they are. They are bad, and will act their character out." -- Fisher Ames

"Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation." -- Charles Colton

"Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they have been resisted with either words or blows, or with both." -- Frederick Douglass

" The craving for power which characterizes the governing class in every nation is hostile to any limitation of the national sovereignty." -- Albert Einstein

"The possession of power over others is inherently destructive both to the possessor of power and to those over whom it is exercised." -- George Herron

" Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it." -- Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"In order to obtain and hold power, a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, cunning, and cruelty." -- Leo Tolstoy

Keep those sentiments in mind when next you confront some clown who wants you to vote him into power over you.