Barack Obama – George Washington Comparisons

America celebrates President George Washington’s 277th birthday on February 22, 2009, or at least we did at one time – before the recognition of President’s Day on the third Monday of February. President Barack Obama enjoys frequent comparisons to his hero, President Lincoln, but without the leadership of America’s first President, George Washington, Lincoln may not have had the opportunity to lead the country out of the immorality and obscenity of slavery. See photos and video below.

President George Washington gave America it’s greatest gift, the peaceful transfer of power – an unprecedented happening anywhere in the world. The significance of the handshake between Washington and the Nation’s second President, John Adams, was the beginning of America’s road to generations of liberty.

Among all the discussions of the importance of Lincoln’s fight to free the Africans of America, must be the knowledge that it could not have happened without the first, magnificent peaceful transfer of power rooted in the founding document of the U.S. Constitution and following Bill of Rights.

Yes we had slaves, yes slavery was abhorrent, but as history marched on, monarchies still freed no one. Our Founders, choosing liberty above all freedoms, left out a portion of our citizenry. It is the great shame of this Nation, and the rightful criticism of our first President..but we eventually righted that inherently evil principle after George Washington denied the tenets of absolute power.

When the war for independence ended, and the Treaty of Paris was signed, some of Washington’s victorious Army wanted their enormously popular and beloved leader to grasp power and become King. One sovereign power – the only way of life known by people all over the world. Washington’s exact response is debatable, but one fact is not debated: he said no. He disbanded the Army and went home to the solitude of Mt. Vernon.

We cannot ignore the possibility of the offer being made to anyone other than George Washington, and what the temptation and outcome might have been.

The defeated King George III of England, said “…if Washington went back to his farm after his public career, he would be the greatest character of the age.” And so he was.

It is a long history of powerful leaders betraying the people by whom they gained power. Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, and then there was Vladimir Lenin and Adolph Hitler. To the current, great consternation of many today, we can include Saddam Hussein in this incomplete list.

The man who could have been King had a vision of America that transcended common thought, and fortunately, our Continental Congress did not suffer from common thought, either. While Washington is not considered to have been actively involved in choosing the words of the Constitution, his leadership and integrity must have provided a bright beacon of respect for life and liberty.

Centuries later, the people of the world know all too well that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But not George Washington. Along with the great patriots of Washington’s time, who were brave enough to stand against the King in thought and action, George Washington’s personal demonstrations of the idea of freedom and liberty is the model for individuals in both the free and the oppressed world.

It was for good reason that Henry Lee eulogized General George Washington as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Without that first war, which Washington offered to recruit and pay for, there would be no United States of America. Without that first war, and the selection of George Washington to lead the fledgling republic, we may have been many things on this continent, but a republic may not have been one of them.

George Washington made us all Americans. Without his deep devotion to liberty, saying “I am an American” could mean something very different than the meaning we know today.

Comparing Barack Obama to George Washington can be done, even though Barack Obama has barely one month in office on the day George Washington turns 277-years old. We have thousands of pages of Obama rhetoric, including his own published the books.

We know that unlike George Washington, Barack Obama views himself more a citizen of the world than a citizen of the U.S. After all, he is a well-traveled, worldy man. In his Berlin speech titled “A World that Stands as One,” he ignored the obvious that much of the world, including his ancestral home of Africa is dominated by cruel war lords and dictators – where millions suffer unspeakable tortures; ignoring the obvious that the fall of Saddam Hussein freed millions – he made promises of what the World, “Standing as One” would do together. It’s quite a list: lifting the child in Bangladesh from poverty, sheltering the refugee in Chad, standing for human rights everywhere, including the rights of the blogger in Iran or the voter in Zimbabwe,” etc. “People of the world,” he said “this is our moment. This is our time.”

George Washington set into motion the freedoms that the Europeans of his time took as their model… and the very principles rising out of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, gave the later generations of Europeans the “hope” of “change,” that Obama is now destroying in our own country. Here are a few examples:

Obama on Free Speech:
President Obama supports the Union card check legislation. In indeed, he said “I will make it the law of the land when I’m President of the United States.”

(1) Under the guise of the deceptive name of the Employee Free Choice Act, Obama and a Democrat Congress plans to takes away the right of an employee to cast a secret, private ballot when voting whether or not he/she wants to be unionized. Barack Obama, the community organizer, uses the best learned practice he has at this disposal: removing the legal rights of some to give illegal rights to others. How can it be sensibly argued that an employee’s vote must be a public vote? How can it sensibly be argued that the employee should have no option to an unfettered right to privacy?

(2) Barack Obama directed his minions to flood a radio talk show protesting an investigator’s report on Obama’s time as CEO of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). What happened that night, on behalf of the Obama campaign, was pure thugery by his followers who likely had no clue what happened during the years of the CAC. Throughout the campaign, the man showed a blatant disregard for news that Americans had a right to receive, and he had the power of the mainstream media protecting him.

(3) This week, press secretary Robert Gibbs stated that Barack Obama was not interested in re-instituting the Fairness Doctrine, and while there is plenty to be said about that, suffice it to say that Congress is not needed to bring a “fairness doctrine” down upon us.

When we think of the Fairness Doctrine, we think of the routing or lessening of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levine and others on the radio – but there is more than just the loss of these successful shows. We lose the rights to free enterprise, the right to sell an idea for a show to a station or syndicator, and then perform well, have sponsors vie for a ad spot, enjoy a reciprocal income from the listeners through their support of the advertised product, and continue down the road to capitalism.

The fact is, we do not need Congress to impose a Fairness Doctrine. The FCC Commissioner can be the “imposer,” with nary a word from the Executive or Legislative branches of our government.

One of Obama’s first appointees was Henry Rivera to the Commissioner of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Rivera is a strong believer in “media justice,” which means, in his opinion, that FCC licenses are now in the hands of too few ethnicities and minorities: too few women, too few Blacks, too few Hispanics, etc.

In the Media Contract of 2007, a goal is to have radio stations that “strengthen our democracy,” and stations that actually “look and sound” like America. The roiling question: who makes that decision? Whose opinion clarifies what America looks and sounds like? In this case, America will look and sound like Liberals, even if no one listens, even if sponsors are not interested in advertising. With no capital behind these new minority licenses, the taxpayer will end up subsidizing, as we do the very liberal NPR.

There is not a shred of proof of Obama’s reverence for the right of free speech. Make no mistake about it, if the American flag was a symbol of socialism, there would be no burning, cutting, stomping and other defiling of the flag. That is reserved only for the flag of a free country who understands that freedom of speech is our most important liberty.

Obama on the Second Amendment:
Our new President says he supports the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right for citizens to own and bear arms, meaning the right of individuals, not just militias, to do so, yet he upholds the right of the community (those in power within the community) to exercise “common sense” restriction on that ownership.

(1) At a campaign rally, Obama told us this:

We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objective that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’sjust as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

There has been extended conversation about what this means, and some do not believe this security force is intended to be a security force. Their thoughts run along the lines of expanding the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, etc., but what our new President actually said is, we cannot rely on our military to achieve our security goals. That fairly clear. He said it. Why would we not believe him? And when we fund this Civilian National Security Force at the same level we do our military, well…that’s extraordinary. Do we want civilians armed, under the authority of the government, at the same level as our military?

At present, since October 12, 2008, the use has one Brigade tasked to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

This was an astonishing event, virtually flying under the radar of public scrutiny. This Brigade has the assignment through September 2009. After the Brigade’s mission is completed, the Army says “…the response force requirement will be an enduring mission.” So a replacement force will take up the mission.

Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president’s ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.

This entire progression of the possibility of using American arms against Americans, and such arms being funded at the level of our U.S. Military, should leave us speechless, just before propelling us into action to quell the tide racing out to sea with every right the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the Bill of Grants granted.

(2) Obama’s campaign smoothly massaged the message that Barack Obama supports the second amendment. Yet…yet, there are several instances of just the opposite coming to light. Mid-2008, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Washington, D.C.’s 32-year ban on handguns for the citizens of the city. So far, the city fathers and mothers (the chief of police is a woman) have denied the ruling and have refused to let residents register their legal guns.

Obama supported a ban on handguns in 1996. The evidence is written in his own hand. The campaign “flatly denied” it, but the media revealed copies of the documents showing Obama’s own handwriting. He told a local Washington, D.C. ABC anchor, that he believed the D.C. ban was constitutional and he supported it. In November 2008 an Obama staffer told the Chicago Tribune that “Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.” The staffer was then thrown under bus as having made an “inartful attempt” to characterize Obama’s position.

Denying his previous positions, Obama insists that he has never supported a ban on gun ownership. As the Washington Times points out, he cut his teeth on the John Kerry campaign, and learned that opposing gun owners is not a wise campaign tactic.

One last example is important to note: If the Founding Father’s could be morphed into today with their integrity and wisdom intact, they would have viewed with horror the stimulus bill being passing with so few in Congress aware of what it contained. We can forget what was in the bill, its the handling of the bill, and the method of it’s passage that would be unthinkable to these men who placed inordinate value on the humility of the public servant.