“I’ve Got What it Takes to Take What You’ve Got.”

Throwing Down the Gauntlet

by Burt Prelutsky

When Catholic bishops speak out against wholesale abortions, they’re crossing the line. But when Obama sits in a pew for 20 years while Jeremiah Wright condemns white people or when Rev. Luis Leon of St. John’s Episcopal devotes an Easter sermon to labeling conservatives racists, Obama and his supporters are as happy as pigs in slop.

A friend of mine suggested a slogan Obama should have employed last year instead of his generic “Forward.” He thought it would have been more honest if the radical transformer had used “I’ve Got What it Takes to Take What You’ve Got.” And by reading between the lines, which is all the reading some people do, young women, Hispanics, blacks and public sector union members, knew that once he took it, he would split the proceeds with them. What, after all, is redistribution of wealth but taking what some people have worked to earn and using it to bribe those who want it in exchange for their votes?

H.L. Mencken, the cynical sage of Baltimore, wrote, nearly a century ago, “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Some people, even some conservatives will take umbrage at calling Obama a moron. Like trained parrots, they will say, “I may not agree with his policies, but he is an Ivy League graduate, after all.” In rebuttal, I will say, he is merely the over-weaned product of affirmative action. Not only have generations of morons graduated from Harvard, Yale and Princeton, but generations of the mentally challenged have taught there and continue to teach there.

A recent poll of America’s college law faculty shows that nearly 30% of the law professors made political contributions last year. Over 76% of them only contributed to Democrats, while 12.8% contributed only to Republicans. That says all you need to know about diversity on college campuses.

Getting back to Obama, I must confess I found myself chuckling when I saw him sink just two of the 22 shots he took at the Easter festivities. It wasn’t just a rare pleasure to see him fail at something he likes to boast about, but it provided a perfect insight to his mentality. As he shot one brick after another, you would have thought you were looking at the same shot over and over again. That’s because he stubbornly refused to change the arc on his shots. Even though one shot after another bounced off the rim, he kept shooting it the exact same way. Rarely have I seen such a perfect illustration of that old definition of insanity: Doing the exact same thing again and again in the deluded belief that you will get different results.

So it should be no surprise that his solution to our financial malaise is to raise taxes and pass more regulations on business. After all, it hasn’t worked before, so it figures Mr. 2-for- 22 is firmly convinced it will work this time.

But Obama isn’t alone in his delusions. After all, he was re-elected after the worst first term any president, including Jimmy Carter, has ever overseen.

When I think of the nation that was bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers, I could sit down and weep. We Americans are like the ne’er-do-well scions of great men who are left large fortunes, only to fritter them away on electronic toys, drugs, booze and pornography. And simply because we haven’t squandered away every last nickel, and because we say nice, but generally untrue, things about illegal aliens, sodomites and people so ignorant and lazy that if the government didn’t coerce the rest of us to support them with our taxes, could only survive by stealing, we hold ourselves in ridiculously high esteem.

Some will take fierce objection to that last paragraph, which suits me just fine. I only hope it won’t be used to tar all conservatives as heartless, homophobic racists. The worst I can say about most conservatives, at least those in public office, is that they’ve become so accustomed to mincing their words, they fail to notice that eventually it’s the truth that gets minced.

For my part, I will quote George Orwell, who observed that “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” 

It took a revolution, after all, to create this nation. It will take nothing less to save it.