Comments on: HOLDING OBAMA ACCOUNTABLE

By: Reuben

Reuben — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:47:52 +0000

Dan,
Given the obvious assumption that many, of not most, of Obama’s policies will ultimately conclude as you have described (helthcare, energy, etc.), how do we effectively hold him accountable in a culture that places so much more value on the absolution of guilt than upon the concrete and tangible results of one’s actions? It seems to me that the de-facto assumption that “failure is acceptable so long as one’s intentions were honorable” is the mindset we will need to alter before anyone becomes accountable for any of the myriad of failures that you could (and furthermore should) list here.

We see this most evidently in the tendancy of politicians to “duck & cover” until the storm of public scrutiny passes on to the next scandal, and then continue on as before. Only in extreme cases do the waves get high enough to sink anyone, and even then they never seem to tangibly alter the knee-jerk collectivist mindset. The argument for collectivism is simple; it is an immediate emotional argument, whereas individualism is more subtle, indirect, and less appealing.

I believe that the only thing that would seriously damage the influence of socialist policies so popular today would be for the Obama administration to fail so spectacularly so as to at least damage the naïve trust in the good intentions of our elected officials, and again make RESULTS (and smaller Government) not only attractive but truly necessary.

By: Buzz VanDyke

Buzz VanDyke — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:44:19 +0000

Dan, I just read your book “Gardeners of Eden.” Enjoyed it very much. I quoted it in an article I’d like to publish somewhere on the American land-based, “agrarian tradition.”
I’ve been agrarian or land-based in outlook for over 20 years. I was deeply depressed about the outright prejudice in liberalism (I considered myself liberal) and didn’t swallow big-business conservatism. It seemed everybody just wanted to bludgeon each other.
Then I read Henry Bamford Parkes’ “The American Experience” (1959 edition). He said that America was in danger of losing itself due to European ideological conceptions. America wasn’t on the left-right-center line. American culture was not formed in a struggle between the economic resources of labor and capital. American culture and values developed in an environment of inexpensive land.
Anyway, I want to make a difference before it’s too late. If you know where I can publish this article on the American land-based tradition, please let me know. Also, I’m interested in any strategy (holistic) that can get the message out ASAP. Thanks for your work!

By: OLE MAN RIVER

OLE MAN RIVER — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:53:49 +0000

Dan, it appears that one must open the “comments” in order to comment. Not all are aware of that.

By: Sierra

Sierra — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:22:16 +0000

I wonder if President Obama might not be the person that could finally bring Conservative Environmentalism into mainstream consciousness. As I understand(though like everyone else, I know very little about him), he is a capable listener and focused on results. If Liberals don’t have to have the copyright on Environmentalism, do Conservatives have to have the copyright on Conservative Environmentalism? My impression is that President Obama is a liberal and a socialist, but I did not get the impression that he had a lot of emotional investment in Big Green aside from the normal, background warm fuzzies, unlike, to pick a name totally at random, Al Gore. If it was possible to speak to him, to show him examples, to convince him that an issue really exists… he has a lot of visibility and, as you point out, a rather fanactic following. However, I fear he might turn out to be like the editor in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, permitted invincibility only so long as he never strayed from the prescribed path.