Which Americans Are Soft and Why?

Most Americans have heard that in a TV interview our self-righteous President said:

..the way I think about it is, you know, this is, you know a great great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades.

The video clip seen on TV and the Internet is only 22 seconds and ends in the middle of a sentence raising the possibility that it may not be an accurate representation of what the President meant.  The full six minute interview is on the web site of WESH-NBC Orlando.  A transcript of the relevant exchange, beginning with the interviewer’s question is at the bottom of this article.

However, it turns out that added context is Obama’s standard, continuously repeated boiler-plate and doesn’t change the apparent meaning or make “gotten a little soft” any less offensive.

This is yet another installment in Barack Obama’s self vendication opera, the continuous effort to deflect blame away from himself, hoping the buck to stop elsewhere.  As always, it’s “the last decade” (blame Bush) or “the last couple of decades” (blame Bush, or  Clinton, or whoever you want.  Just don’t blame me.  That was the hazy past I don’t talk about, when I was an organizer or something in Chicago politics.)

Are Americans soft?

Some are.  The Hollywood celebrities who helped propel this appallingly inexperienced and petty man into the Presidency disclose their softness as they sashay across the screen to be pampered at their silly awards shows.  The authoritarian agenda of the progressive movement they support encourages the softness of dependence and disdains the virtues of self-reliance and tenacity.

Obama’s progressive supporters are too soft of character to step up and offer direct, in person help or even donations to the needy and the distressed.  Instead they demand more of government’s impersonal “programs” to shield their soft psyches from any pang of conscience they might feel for callously turning away.

Soft indeed are the political hacks endlessly chattering about “fairness” and demanding that government support their causes by seizing the earnings of others, mostly entrepreneurial business owners.  If they were more sturdy they’d try to earn support in the free market, either by producing and exchanging value for value or by presenting a case persuasive enough to elicit voluntary donations.

On the other hand, there are no soft entrepreneurs.  These men and women have proven themselves through hard work, determination and risk taking.  Many have come back from failures that made them even stronger.  These virtuous men and women earn honest profits by meeting the needs and desires of voluntary customers while providing employment opportunities so that others can experience the self-esteem that comes from working, earning and supporting their families.

Perhaps Obama has forgotten that he supported Wisconsin’s egocentric union mobs.  Theses softies continue to demand limitless coddling, funded by taxpayers who generally receive lower wages for comparable work, make do with far less generous benefits and have no retirement fund except what they can accumulate through their own effort and gratification-postponing discipline.

At the other end of the socio economic spectrum are the politically connected Wall Street softies.  They massaged political connections to secure bailouts that spared them from the hard landings they deserved as consequences of their own mistakes and malfeasance.  As a Presidential candidate Barack Obama enthusiastically supported the bailouts when they were launched by the Bush Administration and as President he expanded them.

The latest example of wretched, parasitic softness was on display at Solyndra, the symbol of Obamanomics.  At the expense of taxpayers who had to earn whatever they have, this company’s executives indulged themselves in luxury and compensated themselves lavishly while producing nothing of value to voluntary buyers in the marketplace.

Last week the men of Solyndra were too soft to accept accountability and answer questions in a Congressional hearing.  Instead they ducked behind their right to silence, a right enshrined in the Constitution by brave men who took enormous personal risk to launch this greatest of all nations.

At the end of the Declaration of Independence the founders added a pledge that today’s politically supported softies would not understand and would never join:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Many of them did lose their lives and/or their fortunes but none surrendered their sacred honor.  Through the centuries the Solyndra softies’ right to silence has been preserved by the blood of tough and morally superior soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.

Fortunately, most Americans are not soft.    How can we tell?  There are lots of indicators including:

• Americans with real grit who, while the Wall Street and Fannie/Freddie softies were bailed out, have quietly accepted the loss of their homes as the consequence of overextending and/or not realizing that rising house prices were the product of a government induced bubble.
• Tough men and women who have had to accept the loss of promising careers, and have gone to work at menial, lower paying jobs to faithfully meet their responsibilities and provide for their families.
• Our phenomenal, volunteer military is still the finest, most dedicated, most awe inspiring in all human history;
• Millions of tough, nimble, innovative and tenacious small businesses have managed to survive the financial catastrophe with no political connections to secure government money extracted from involuntary taxpayers
• Hundreds of millions of solid, determined men, women and children with stiff spines who are consistently honest and virtuous and always do the best they can with whatever hand they are dealt.
• Obama’s sinking poll numbers indicate that more and more Americans realize how much we have lost by falling for his exhortations to be soft and depend on him and his ever expanding government instead of on ourselves and each other.  Even those who still support his ideas have come to realize that he is merely a small man of limited ability, not the majestic leader or messiah of his campaign hype.

Here’s the transcript:

Interviewer Jim Payne: “My [23 year old] son just moved back in to our house…I’m starting to worry that maybe our kids aren’t going to have the same opportunities that we did when we were younger.  Do you share those concerns?”

President Obama: Absolutely.  First of all this is the worst financial crisis and recession that has existed in our lifetimes…so it’s challenging for young people who are coming up…But even before the financial crisis, one of the reasons I ran for President was wages, incomes had flat-lined at the same time costs we’re going up.  I think people felt that opportunities were becoming more constricted for the next generation.  And that’s why making sure that we’re revamping our education system, making sure we’ve got world class infrastructure, investing in basic science, research and technology, making sure that we are moving manufacturing back to the united states and that we’re being tough with our trading partners, and I mean there are a lot of things we can do.  And the way I think about it is, you know, this is, you know a great great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track. But i still wouldn’t trade our position with any other country. we still have the best universities, the best scientists, and best workers in the world.  We still have the most dynamic economic system in the world.  So we just need to bring all those things together.