Since Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Democrat Party has sought to secure political power by promising to eliminate our own personal responsibilities by expanding the welfare state and instituting collectivist government programs. On April 6th, at a private fundraiser in San Francisco, Senator Barack Obama was asked to explain his woes in the Keystone State. Predictably the Democrat presidential hopeful remained intellectually consistent with his party’s philosophical disbelief of personal responsibility by disregarding his own responsibility for his electoral failures and placing culpability onto the culture of the rural constituency in question.
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and ... the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
The aftermath of this sound bite has instigated much analysis and debate within the media. Everyone generally agrees that racism, sexism, and homophobia by definition stem from bitterness, resentment, and antipathy. I wonder if this great unifier sees his hypocrisy by stereotyping poor rural Americans who “aren’t like him,” as miserable hopeless ignorant bigots because they don’t agree with his world view. I even concede the Senator’s argument that anti-immigrant sentiment is grounded in socioeconomic frustrations. Albeit, us small town bumpkins usually distinguish between legal and illegal immigration before we start waving our guns in bitterness.
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and ... the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
The aftermath of this sound bite has instigated much analysis and debate within the media. Everyone generally agrees that racism, sexism, and homophobia by definition stem from bitterness, resentment, and antipathy. I wonder if this great unifier sees his hypocrisy by stereotyping poor rural Americans who “aren’t like him,” as miserable hopeless ignorant bigots because they don’t agree with his world view. I even concede the Senator’s argument that anti-immigrant sentiment is grounded in socioeconomic frustrations. Albeit, us small town bumpkins usually distinguish between legal and illegal immigration before we start waving our guns in bitterness.
I also think it can be agreed upon that “anti-trade sentiment” is founded in “bitterness” and scapegoating. Funny when Mr. Obama is not in front of a bunch of educated cosmopolitan elites, he has the Ivy League audacity to pander to ignorant frustrated blue collar workers with protectionist anti-NAFTA sentiments of his own. His hypocrisy is a microcosm of the Left’s long tradition in hollow advocacy for the working class while simultaneously holding condescension for them as human beings. “The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing” is a legendary Marxist axiom.
The controversy of Mr. Obama’s statements has centered on the disparaging tone towards religious Americans by lumping the basis of their faith with nefarious beliefs of bigots. However, one cannot be surprised considering leftist orthodoxy has always disregarded religion as the “Opiate of the masses” and a refuge for the working class from focusing on its economic self-interests in socialism. As an aside, I must note that the only church I am aware of that amalgamates bitter classism with Christianity is the Black Liberation Theology of Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ.
As a proud lifetime member of the NRA, my main concern with this revealing sound bite of candor was Obama’s inclusion of gun enthusiasts as senseless reactionaries. My concern has been amplified by mainstream media’s lack of analysis and discussion of this inclusion. Most pundits seemed baffled about what guns have to do with impoverished socioeconomics in rural America. The press largely dismissed it as an unrelated issue inadvertently included in an awkward off the cuff remark. It is understandable that poor rural (white) people blame immigrants, free trade, and minorities for their struggles to clime the prosperity ladder. Furthermore, it is understandable that downtrodden souls find salvation in the ethics, charity, community, and hope within their church. But, what does “clinging” to guns have to do with people “frustrated” about their economic circumstances?
To those of us who hold self defense as a fundamental human right, the answer is obviously nothing. People of all income levels support the 2nd Amendment. But the political left views the world solely through the lens of material inequalities rather than moral values. If there is one thing I have learned in college, it is recognizing a Marxist argument. Professor Obama’s link between poverty in the vast White majority populous of rural America and support for gun rights is steeped in perverted liberal identity politics. His perceived link is significant to understanding the antagonism for the 2nd Amendment by Obama, a constitutional lawyer, as well as the Democrat Party, and the “progressive movement.”
The first time I heard Mr. Obama’s now infamous quote, it evoked an uncomfortable memory of a lecture on similar subject matter in one of my general education requirement courses titled “Comparative American Cultures.” Democrat Party Chairman Howard Dean had just rationalized an embarrassing defeat by stating that Americans cast their ballot for Republicans because the GOP is successful at distracting folk on peripheral issues concerning guns, god, and gays instead of voting for Democrat Party’s superior populist platform. My professor connected this proclamation with the premise of the course adding, “You don’t see any African Americans sporting NRA garb do you?”
My professor then went on to qualify his claim to the class by explaining that the NRA is a racist organization because its membership demographics are well over 90 percent White. “As the subordinates within our society deconstruct institutionalized discrimination and oppression, the existing power structure fights to conserve their control on the means of production. Hence the opposing ideological and political definitions of Progressive vs. Conservative. Note there aren’t too many conservative minorities, are there? There aren’t too many poor people in the Republican leadership either.” He concluded his rant with, “White male supremacists subconsciously rally around the Second Amendment as their last line of resort in an evolving America in order to protect their position on the social pedestal.”
A common demagogic rhetorical exercise of “progressives” is to ascribe conservative reasoning as the outcome of psychological malady wrought by social inequalities in order to explain away political disagreements rather than answering or seceding legitimate points. For example: Statistics have proven that strict gun control is directly related to an increase in crime because criminals are emboldened in an unarmed society. Instead of refuting the research with counter evidence and reasoning to disprove the statement, liberals dismiss the purveyor as a paranoid unenlightened hick, and thus debate is unnecessary. I heard many times in both my academic studies and from the soaring platitudes in speeches given by the enlightened Barrack Obama, a former University of Chicago professor, that everything from poverty, racism, sexism, injustice, pollution, and crime can be minimized if only we eliminated the economic inequality and class structure in our society. In the Left’s utopia, guns and therefore gun rights are obviously unnecessary and therefore to be reviled.
It is no coincidence that the NRA endorses candidates on the political Right whom not only support the right to bear arms, but also are free market capitalists that advocate limited government, low taxes, and oppose the confiscation and redistribution of wealth. Socialists who do not believe in the right to keep what you earn by definition won’t support in the right to protect that property. Remember, the National Journal lists Mr. Obama as the most liberal Senator in Congress ahead of self described socialist Bernie Sanders. Obama’s campaign slogan, “We are the change we’ve been waiting for!” is plagiarized from Fidel Castro’s, “La Revolucion Somos Nosotros!” (“We are the Revolution!”)
Applying the lessons from that Comparative American Cultures lecture, Barrack Obama may be subconsciously an elitist, but he is very consciously a leftist who really does want dramatic “change” in America. Obama's interpretation of rural Pennsylvania told us little about small-town American culture or its correlation with gun rights advocacy, but it does reveal a great deal about Barack’s condescension for Middle America and his disregard for your right to protect your family.
