Obama Graduation Address at Ohio State: Damn, I Love Government

Apologies for lifting the "Damn,..." joke from Hot Air.

The era of Big Government is wonderful.

: Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted.

We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems. We shouldn't want to. But we don't think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. And as citizens, we understand that it's not about what America can do for us, it's about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. And class of 2013, you have to be involved in that process.

I seem to remember a lot of concern expressed by the Founders who gave ups this "unique experiment in self-rule" about the omnipresent threat of tyranny and a government that rules a people rather than the other way 'round.

It should be noted that the government isn't much in the business anymore of acting as a collective pool for national accomplishment. By which I mean: Going to the Moon is obviously something none of us could have achieved ourselves, but we authorized the government, with our dollars, to make that happen.

Obama talks in vague terms which seem to suggest such matters but his chief concern is using government as a catspaw by which to extract money from Citizen A and give those dollars (minus the bureaucrats' vig) to Citizen B.

posted by Ace at 03:29 PM

| Access Comments