#82: Thanks, Obama, We Couldn’t Have Done It Without You.

November 4, 2010

When I attended P.S. 28 on Anthony Ave. in the Bronx, way back in the very early 1950s, we had instruction in what they called “Social Studies.” Courses of this kind continued into what was then called “Junior High School.” The point of such courses was to create a politically informed citizenry in the belief that this is a free society’s only bulwark against the loss of its freedom from within. I have been sympathetic to this view most of my adult life and have even lamented the civic and historical ignorance of the vast majority of citizens.

However, on reflection, I must confess that those courses, starting with “Social Studies” in grade school and continuing on to university courses in political “science,” actually had little or no impact on me at the times when I was taking them. I confess with no little shame that I can’t remember a single thing from any of those courses. And, yet, I still do believe that an educated citizenry is the only thing that stands between us and the fate that befell Rome. This is a serious conundrum. If civics courses at every level of education cannot save us, what will? I’ll tell you what: Obama will!

Am I claiming that Obama’s tired, second-hand, naïve Socialism is what will save us from inexorable decline? Of course not. History has already shown us what both sophisticated and naïve Socialism begets: anomie and a low standard of living for everyone other than the ruling class – and, ultimately, burning tires in the streets.

Nonetheless, it with this conundrum in mind that I sincerely thank Obama and his minions, for they have accomplished something I had come to believe was impossible: they created a self-educating citizenry!

I have never in my lifetime seen so many so-called “ordinary folk” reading so much history and political theory. How many of our friends, prior to the coming of America’s first Affirmative Action Figure (oops! Sorry, “Pres-ident”), had ever read the “Federalist Papers” or knew the issues surrounding the Revolution of 1775? How many knew who Alexander Hamilton was or what his disagreements with Jefferson were? Who knew of John Adams?

But, even further, who knew what Socialism was, when it was invented, and how it fared in Western and Eastern Europe? Who knew how many were murdered in the name of progress, how many were killed by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, how many by Mao, how many by Mussolini and by Hitler (for they were also Socialists)?

How many knew how many half-truths and outright lies had been sold to unwitting generations of students from 1900 to the present by the Leftist infiltrators standing at the lecterns of our universities?

Pretty much, nobody.

But Obama has changed all that. Obama has made political history and theory a topic of discussion at lunch tables, in coffee shops, in churches, on construction sites, and on blogs.

This was a wonderful gift, Obama, thank you. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Now do the classy thing and leave.