For a very very long read of Who’s Who in the conservative movement, particularly the successful (read: unashamed) capitalists that Obama disciples are incensed about, see this article in the latest New Yorker magazine .
The radical philosophy of the “covert war against Obama” is freedom. The article does a pretty good job, in fact, of describing how hard work + freedom to work and freedom of consumers to choose = the possibility of great financial return. It’s simply sour grapes that the authors and editors choose to try to tarnish every philanthropic gift and every capitalist success by implying that they are impure in spirit.
Well, yes, corporate shareholders want to reduce corporate taxes, etc., in their self-interest as joint owners of a productive enterprise?this is the damning indictment the author brings, clearly hoping to sway public opinion against good works that are not of the type or in the spirit of the Obama administration’s wishes and current policies. Trying to drum up sympathy that isn’t there for the besieged administration, the author concedes that “a recent poll agreed that fifty-five percent of Americans agreed that Obama is a socialist.”
This leaves several options, and the Left is trying them all: selling the socialist label as innocuous, selling the socialist program under the label ‘progressivism,’ or purifying their own self-serving motives with public-good style rhetoric. Wealthy liberals/progressives are never, never self-serving in a bad way, the author intimates.
Is the political Right on Obama’s case? Oh yeah. Much of the straight facts are correct. Is the Right being unfair or unethical–that’s the rub. The slant here is all hand-wringing for the poor benevolent but mistreated Obama administration. “But it?s not just about Obama.” the author notes, just in case readers thought that Obama was a special or a specially bad case from the point of view of political conservatives. “They would have done the same to Hillary Clinton. They did the same with Bill Clinton. They are out to destroy progressivism.? Well, that’s not incredible; no real argument there, just in the way one might state it. Freedom and progressivism are incompatible. The pro-liberty side is out to preserve freedom and individual choice in America, while they still exist. It’s pretty simple. What is incredible is that this mind set doesn’t even see freedom as a viable option. In fact, that’s pretty scary, and no doubt what is mobilizing so many people right now across the land.
