5.56X45mm
Milforum Mac Daddy
It’s always amused me when leftists try to run on “personality”—witness the latest attempt—when in fact socialism makes no bones about its disdain for personality compared to the “appeal” of its doctrine.
In fact, one or the other of the seminal Marxists (Marx, Lenin, Mao, Trotsky, whoever—can’t be bothered to look it up) actually condemned the “cult of personality”—it’s a Marxist perjorative—and the old Soviet Union suppressed it with might and main.
This is why American socialists who would seek power have tended to be boring, didactic drones like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry or George McGovern, and it’s therefore small wonder that the Left is now energized by having a candidate who has “charisma”. (I should point out that Obama’s so-called charisma is, like his record, about a millimeter deep, but we can discuss that some other time.)
As a standard-bearer for the Socialist Ideal, therefore, Obama is horribly lacking. His flip-flopping “moderation” of earlier extremist stances is anathema to the doctrinaire types, and his “record” (if an empty book can be called thus) is non-existent. A blank slate may make your candidate less prone to attacks by the opposition, but it also forces said candidate to have to make up positions on the fly (which is what Obama does all the time).
To make the parallel even more striking, compare a couple of erstwhile standard-bearers from the Right—Reagan and Thatcher—with any random four Leftists of recent times, and the difference becomes even more striking.
But even with this issue, the Left gets it wrong. There is a real difference between character and personality, and one of the deciding factors for any U.S. president should be character. The last time America chose personality over character, we got… Bill Clinton.
Obama doesn’t even have that degree of personality, and of his character we need not speak.
In fact, one or the other of the seminal Marxists (Marx, Lenin, Mao, Trotsky, whoever—can’t be bothered to look it up) actually condemned the “cult of personality”—it’s a Marxist perjorative—and the old Soviet Union suppressed it with might and main.
This is why American socialists who would seek power have tended to be boring, didactic drones like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry or George McGovern, and it’s therefore small wonder that the Left is now energized by having a candidate who has “charisma”. (I should point out that Obama’s so-called charisma is, like his record, about a millimeter deep, but we can discuss that some other time.)
As a standard-bearer for the Socialist Ideal, therefore, Obama is horribly lacking. His flip-flopping “moderation” of earlier extremist stances is anathema to the doctrinaire types, and his “record” (if an empty book can be called thus) is non-existent. A blank slate may make your candidate less prone to attacks by the opposition, but it also forces said candidate to have to make up positions on the fly (which is what Obama does all the time).
To make the parallel even more striking, compare a couple of erstwhile standard-bearers from the Right—Reagan and Thatcher—with any random four Leftists of recent times, and the difference becomes even more striking.
But even with this issue, the Left gets it wrong. There is a real difference between character and personality, and one of the deciding factors for any U.S. president should be character. The last time America chose personality over character, we got… Bill Clinton.
Obama doesn’t even have that degree of personality, and of his character we need not speak.
