Is Barack Obama Anti-American?

My friend Bookworm has a lollapaloozer of an article on American Thinker that is probably one of the best things I think she's ever done..and if you're familiar with her writing, that's saying something:

Everything has a fundamental essence, a quality that makes it uniquely itself. Take an orange, for example. It's not only a citrus fruit -- it's an orange-colored citrus fruit. Horticulturists can alter its size, its texture, its sweetness, and even (to a limited extent) its color, but as long as its color is orange, the fruit remains "an orange" because that color is its definition. Change the color, however, and suddenly you have the un-orange, the anti-orange. You have something completely different that no longer contains the essence of the original fruit. Lose the essence and you lose the orange.

America has an essence too, and that essence is liberty. Since its inception, America has been defined by liberty -- both the liberty of the individual and the liberty of the nation. As the Declaration of Independence more elegantly states, "Goverments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." If we, the people make a social compact by which we consent to be governed, it means that government is our servant, not our master. Lincoln understood that ours is a nation boasting a "government of the people, by the people[, and] for the people."

This uniquely American precept, one that sees the power of government flowing from the people rather than controlling the people, ideally results in a situation in which citizens are subject to minimal government constraints. As the Founders envisioned American government, the state exists to optimize individual freedoms, not to control the individual.

To this end, once the Founders delineated our government's structure in the Constitution -- a structure that grants the government only specifically enumerated powers and ensures that no single branch of the government can become dominant -- the Founders immediately turned their attention to the individual freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Each of these rights is intended to optimize the citizen's power against his (or her) own government.

The First Amendment espouses the purest statement of individual rights ever set to paper and imposed against a government: American citizens can practice their religion without government interference, speak freely without government censorship, read papers untouched by government control, and gather openly and loudly to make their political views known.

Unlike citizens at all other times and in all other places, Americans can protect these broad rights with firepower, because the Second Amendment grants them the right to bear arms on their own soil, a right entirely separate from the military's obligation to protect American citizens from foreign enemies. Given that the Second Amendment was ratified on the heels of a successful revolution, the Founders manifestly intended that Americans, protected by the military abroad, were free to protect themselves from their own government at home. (To appreciate this right fully, remember that one of the first things the Nazis did was to make private arms illegal, especially for Jews.)

In the Fourth Amendment, the Founders protected American citizens from government overreach that extends into the home. This was the first time in history that a government promised its people that they did not need to fear that their own government would seize their persons, despoil their homes, or steal their property.

If the government does engage in a reasonable search and seizure, the Fifth Amendment promises that the citizens swept in the government net will be given a fair trial. Further, when the Founders stated that the government cannot force people to testify against themselves, they put a definitive end to the practice of torture, once a staple of judicial systems the world over (and one still routinely practiced in totalitarian theocracies such as Iran).

Read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution and you will see that the American system is structured so that government is subordinate to the people, not vice-versa. The government's sole purpose is to provide a functioning framework within which American citizens can act freely to exercise their "unalienable Rights ... among these ... Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Liberty also extends to the nation as a whole. Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are replete with examples of the Founders' absolute obsession with a free-standing national sovereignty. Indeed, the entire point of the Declaration of Independence is to establish America as a nation second to none.

The Founders, wise in the ways of man, were also aware that foreign powers can gain control, not only through aggressive acts, but also through apparent acts of friendship. Presidents who might develop overly friendly relationships with foreign leaders may not unilaterally enter into treaties unless a two-thirds (or super-) majority of the Senate ratifies the treaty. Likewise, without Congress's explicit permission, no government official may be flattered into acts contrary to American interests by accepting "any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State."

Despite blunders of enormous magnitude (e.g., slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, and the imprisonment of American Japanese), Americans have for the most part taken their freedoms with the utmost seriousness. We have not allowed ourselves to be ruled by tyrannies, dictators or bureaucracies. We like our taxes low and our freedoms high. We tore ourselves asunder to wipe away slavery's stain. In the past ninety or so years, when we've fought wars, we haven't attempted to conquer other people. Instead, since 1917, we've shed our American blood to free others from their domestic tyrannies.

As to this last point -- namely, America's willingness to strive for freedom on behalf of other nations -- those on the Left who sneer at our "imperialist ventures" are implicitly siding with Hitler, with the North Koreans, with the Communist North Vietnamese, and with Saddam Hussein (mass murderer of his own people). While ordinary Americans have died so that others on foreign shores can live free, the Left lauds those who would deny their own citizens (or the citizens of conquered nations) the same freedoms we unthinkingly enjoy.

Our American essence, therefore, can be defined as follows: American individuals are free from control by, and fear of, their own government, and the American nation is free from control by other nations.

Barack Obama stands out as the first American president whose every instinct is contrary to America's essence. At home, every single one of his initiatives is directed at increasing government control in every area, with a corresponding decrease in individual liberty. Here's an incomplete bullet-point list of his anti-liberty goals on the home front:

He wants to deny individuals access to the marketplace --where they can make their own decisions about their own health care -- and instead put the government entirely in charge.

He's willing to give government control over American businesses (e.g., the bank takeovers and Government Motors).

His administration, while on record as opposing the Fairness Doctrine, is aggressively exploring a backdoor regulatory scheme that would have precisely the same practical effect as the Fairness Doctrine: it would impose government restrictions on content, rather than allowing the market (that means us, the consumers) to control content.

His FCC wants to control the internet, a humming beehive of free speech (much of it critical of Obama).

As his loud battles with Rush Limbaugh and Fox News illustrate, he desires a single-party press, not a free one.

He believes that now that he is in power, the opposition should shut up and "get out of the way," a notion that runs directly counter to the First Amendment.

Click on the link for the rest - a must read for members of Joshua's Army.