Barack Obama has recently given us his view of the State of the Union.\u00a0 Like almost everything else he has ever said it was pure nonsense, intended only for consumption by his own low-information voter base.\u00a0 So please allow me to write a response.\u00a0 And since I know of two pieces of writing which, taken together, create a perfect essay on the prophesy and fulfillment of our time\u2026 the state of our Union\u2026 I will quote liberally from both.<\/p>\n
The first is purely prophetic.\u00a0 It is from a May 23, 1857 letter written by British historian and social philosopher, T.B. Macaulay, to an American colleague, Henry S. Randall, author of The Life of Thomas Jefferson<\/em>.\u00a0 The latter is a clear and unambiguous expos\u00e9 of the current state of the union, taken from a November 13, 2012 article titled, Why Romney Didn’t Get Enough Votes to Win<\/em>, by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, of congregation B\u2019nai Yeshurun, Teaneck, New Jersey.<\/p>\n In his 1857 letter to H.S. Randall, Lord Macaulay wrote, \u201cI have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened lately in France is an example.\u00a0 In 1848 a pure democracy was established there.\u00a0 During a short time there was reason to expect a general spoilation, a national bankruptcy, a new partition of the soil, a maximum of prices, a ruinous load of taxation laid on the rich for the purpose of supporting the poor in idleness\u2026 Happily, the danger was averted and now there is a despotism, a silent tribune, an enslaved press. \u00a0Liberty is gone, but civilization has been saved.<\/p>\n \u201cYou may think that your country enjoys an exemption from these evils.\u00a0 I will frankly own to you that I am of a very different opinion.\u00a0 Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred by a physical cause.\u00a0 As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land your labouring population will be far more at ease than the labouring population of the Old World.\u00a0 But the time will come when New England will be as thickly populated as Old England.\u00a0 Wages will be as low and will fluctuate as much with you as with us.\u00a0 You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams, and in those Manchesters and Birminghams hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work.\u00a0 Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test.<\/p>\n \u201cDistress everywhere makes the labourer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million, while another cannot get a full meal\u2026\u00a0 Through such seasons the United States will have to pass in the course of the next century, if not this.\u00a0 How will you pass through them?\u00a0 I heartily wish you a good deliverance, but my reason and my wishes are at war and I cannot help foreboding the worst.\u00a0 It is quite plain that your government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority, for with you the majority is the government and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe day will come when in the State of New York a multitude of people, none of whom has more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a legislature.\u00a0 On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith.\u00a0 On the other us a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink champagne and to ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessities.\u00a0 Which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by a working man who hears his children cry for more bread?<\/p>\n \u201cI seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperity from returning; that you will act like people who should in a year of scarcity devour all the seed-corn, and thus make the next a year not of scarcity, but of absolute famine.\u00a0 There will be, I fear, spoilation.\u00a0 The spoilation will increase the distress.\u00a0 The distress will produce fresh spoilation.\u00a0 There is nothing to stop you.\u00a0 Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cAs I said before, when a society has entered on this downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish.\u00a0 Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth; with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n In his November 13, 2012 op-ed for Arutz Sheva, an Israeli news network, Rabbi Pruzansky describes the Obama reelection of 2012, the state of the nation today\u2026 as predicted by Lord Macaulay in 1857\u2026 and his prediction of things to come.<\/p>\n In describing the 2012 General Election, he tells us, \u201cThe simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against free stuff. \u00a0Every businessman knows this; that is why the \u2018loss leader\u2019 or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. \u00a0Obama\u2019s America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who \u2013 courtesy of Obama \u2013 receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote; so too those who anticipate \u201cfree\u201d health care, who expect the government to pay their mortgages, who look for the government to give them jobs. \u00a0The lure of free stuff is irresistible.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine two restaurants side by side. \u00a0One sells its customers fine cuisine at a reasonable price, and the other offers a free buffet, all-you-can-eat as long as supplies last\u2026 Now imagine that the second restaurant stays in business because the first restaurant is forced to provide it with the food for the free buffet and we have the current economy\u2026 until, at least, the first restaurant \u00a0decides to go out of business\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cIt is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. \u00a0In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.<\/p>\n \u201cThat engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that the electorate is dumb \u2013 ignorant, and uninformed. \u00a0Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter, because most other voters \u2013 the clear majority \u2013 are unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw populism\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cSimilarly, Obama could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be taken away. \u00a0He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to Mexico, and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the current immigration laws. \u00a0He could espouse the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and unions, in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone. \u00a0He could do and say all these things because he knew his voters were dolts.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not embrace the devil\u2019s bargain of making unsustainable promises, and by talking as the adult and not the adolescent. \u00a0Obama has spent the last six years campaigning; even his governance has been focused on payoffs to his favored interest groups.<\/p>\n \u201cBut this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. \u00a0There is no permanent empire, nor is there an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. \u00a0The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. \u00a0This election only hastens that decline. \u00a0Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. \u00a0It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations. \u00a0The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come. \u00a0Across the world, America under Bush was feared but not respected. \u00a0Under Obama, America is neither feared nor respected.<\/p>\n \u201cOur relationship with God matters more than our relationship with any politician, Republican or Democrat. \u00a0And, notwithstanding the problems in Israel, it is time for Jews to go home, to Israel. \u00a0We have about a decade, perhaps 15 years, to leave with dignity and without stress. \u00a0Thinking that it will always be, because it always was, has been a repetitive and deadly Jewish mistake\u2026\u00a0 The increased (emigration of Jews to Israel) in the last few years is partly attributable to young people fleeing the high cost of Jewish living in America. \u00a0Those costs will only increase in the coming years. \u00a0We should draw the appropriate conclusions.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. \u00a0And, sad for the world, it is not coming back\u2026\u00a0 During his 1956 presidential election campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson: \u2018Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!\u2019 \u00a0Stevenson called back: \u2018That\u2019s not enough, madam. \u00a0We need a majority!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n And that, my friends, is the state of our Union, the truth that Obama dare not speak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barack Obama has recently given us his view of the State of the Union.\u00a0 Like almost everything else he has ever said it was pure nonsense, intended only for consumption by his own low-information voter base.\u00a0 So please allow me … Continue reading