Thursday, February 26, 2015

Where post-American right meets post-American left

Jeb Bush wants to be the President but he has no connection with hard-working Americans. He claims that immigrants are more entrepreneurial and family oriented than American citizens. Jeb's attitude is no different than Hillary Clinton or any other progressive. ~ TheMarkLevinShow, 2/25/15
As the last Bush opened the gates for Obama, now Obama forges a post-American path for yet another, but of his own desires...
NRO: Kevin is self-evidently correct in endorsing Giuliani’s assertion that President Obama doesn’t love America. But that is likely to be misunderstood by lefties as a claim that Obama is anti-American, which is not correct. Instead, he is our first post-American president. A post-American may like his country just fine, but that feeling is akin to the attitude one might have for a suburb you might live in — it’s a nice enough place, but if you got a better job or found a more suitable house, you’d leave without too much anguish. Love of country, on the other hand, is an emotion, and post-Americans (and post-nationals in general) simply do not experience that emotion. ...

But if Barack Obama is our first post-American president, Jeb Bush wants to be the second. David Frum had an insightful piece at The Atlantic a couple weeks back on the parallels between Obama and Jeb, and their shared post-Americanism is at the center of this similarity.
Both Jeb Bush and Barack Obama are men who have openly and publicly struggled with their ambivalence about their family inheritance. Both responded by leaving the place of their youth to create new identities for themselves...Both chose wives who would more deeply connect them to their new chosen identity. Both derived from their new identity a sharp critique of their nation as it is. Both have built their campaign for president upon a deep commitment to fundamental transformation of their nation into what they believe it should be.
Jeb’s dissatisfaction with America, and desire to change it to be more to his liking, is a theme he returns to often. Jeb’s enthusiasm for immigration (“the public-policy issue he cares about by far the most,” as Frum puts it) is “not only a positive judgment on the immigrants themselves,” Frum notes, but “it is also a negative judgment on native-born Americans.” Some examples:
  • “They’re more entrepreneurial, they set up more business, they buy more homes, they’re more family-oriented, they work in jobs that in many cases are jobs that have gone unfilled” (@ 39:40)
  • “The one way that we can rebuild the demographic pyramid is to fix a broken immigration system... If we do this, we will rebuild our country in a way that will allow us to grow. If we don’t do it, we will be in decline, because the productivity of this country is dependent on young people that are equipped to be able to work hard... Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans over the last 20 years. Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families and they have more intact families.” (@ 12:25)

The truth or falsity of these claims is almost beside the point, because Jeb’s preference for immigrants over Americans is based on emotion, not reason.

Despite what some might say, the problem here is not that Jeb’s wife is from Mexico, their kids grew up speaking Spanish, and they live in a Latin American cultural enclave in the U.S. — it’s that he wants to use government policy to “fix” America by making it more like Miami. If Jeb had so little affection for and grounding in his own heritage that he wanted to assimilate into a Latin-American milieu, that’s a perfectly legitimate choice; I know a number of non-Armenians who’ve basically chosen to assimilate into Armenian life. But to try to impose that personal choice on the nation as a whole is beyond the pale. We don’t need another president who thinks Americans are defective and need to be fixed by the State.
In 2008, liberal Republicans, like Frum, like scores of the GOP misguided, believed (and still do to much extent) that Barack Obama transcended party, politics and even Americanism. Now, these same misguided have allowed this wrecking-ball of a president to accelerate their demise in the guise of finding 'its own candidate for the age of fluidity.' And this is the guy who the Republican Establishment have all but convinced themselves is their hope in 2016. What consummate failures.
We have a new governing model in America - elections only matter when Democrats win. When Democrats win elections they get to govern, saying they act on the behalf of the people, but when Republicans win they don't know how or don't care to govern. President Obama is doing more destruction to America now that the GOP controls Congress because of a complete disconnect between Republican oligarchs and We The People. Like the oligarchs of Soviet Russia, they benefit from big government because that's where they make their money. ~ TheMarkLevinShow, 2/25/15
So, if you want another loser to keep Boehner or McConnell company, go right ahead and wheel in Jeb Bush. Somebody else for even dingy Harry to run circles around.

Related links: Jeb Bush Discusses Immigration Reform
Jeb Bush discusses immigration on Uncommon Knowledge
Levin reads 8 rules for RINOs
LEVIN: 'We have the worst group of Republicans in Congress in modern American history'