From today’s American Spectator:
Isn't It Reich?
By Ralph R. Reiland on 2.5.09 @ 6:06AM
The biodegradable celebratory balloons at the parties marking the election of the nation’s first black (or half-black) president weren’t even half-deflated before Robert Reich, economic adviser to Barack Obama, took a direct shot at white males and their allegedly overprivileged and overly snug and comfy position in the America economy.
More specifically, Reich took aim at “white male construction workers,” warning that they might be positioned to be on the receiving end of a disproportionate share of the government’s stimulus package and the ensuing jobs.
“I am concerned, as I’m sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professional or to white male construction workers,” said Reich, labor secretary under Bill Clinton and currently a public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley. [Oh, Berkeley. There's a surprise!]
Saying he has “nothing against white male construction workers,” Reich warned that “if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the most—women, minorities and the poor—will be shut out.” [...]
Sounds like Mr. Reich has been taking lessons from President Golden Calf, who famously told Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher “It’s not that I want to punish your success, …”
In both cases, both men are full of crap:
Barack Obama clearly does want to punish the success of Americans like Joe Wurzelbacher. His entire platform is based on punishing the success of productive Americans.
Similarly, Robert Reich has everything against white male construction workers. His entire political existence is based on getting back at Whitey. (Himself excepted; isn’t that always interesting!?)
To ensure that white male construction workers don’t pocket a disproportionate amount of the bailout money, advises Reich, “Criteria can be set, so the money does go to others, the long-term unemployed, minorities, women.” In other words, the long-term unemployed and government-defined perpetual victims will be up on the bridges and levees, patching and constructing, while the guys who know how to do the work will be sent off to join the ranks of the long-term unemployed, all for the purpose of leveling.
In Reich’s worldview, it’s groups that matter and individualism that’s the enemy. “The American myth of the Triumphant Individual may have outlasted its time,” Reich has explained. “The story of the little guy who works hard, takes risks, believes in himself and eventually earns wealth, fame and honor” is outmoded.
Instead, “we must begin to celebrate collective entrepreneurship,” states Reich. In place of individuals who “buck the odds” with “drive and guts,” Reich argues for a world where the central planners right the wrongs, determine the production, distribute the rewards in a “fair” manner, i.e., with “only modest differences in income,” and knock the rough edges off anyone who doesn’t demonstrate sufficient obedience to the collective.
“Success can be measured only in reference to collective results,” Reich asserts, warning against an economic system that encourages “individualistic endeavor.”
The correct ideology, according to Reich: “We need to honor our teams more, our aggressive and maverick geniuses less.” In short, it’s not unlike the Cuban model—a nice photo of Fidel goes to the top cane-cutting team and any Bill Gates types are sent off on an inner tube to Key West.
I’m glad Reiland brought up this individual vs. collective thing. This statement alone should make your blood run cold. To liberals like Reich, you are not an individual. You are a simply a member of a race group, a sex group, an ethnicity group, a wealth group. You are faceless, a number, to Robert Reich. Didn't they tell you that part of project Hope&Change was to strip you of your individualism. You're just part of a group now. So shut up and do what you're told--in the name of tolerance and hope and compassion and hope and change and hope. (Robert Mgrdechian’s great book How the Left Was Won devotes an entire chapter to how the left strives to disparage the individual and elevate the collective. It’s among the cornerstones of Marxism-socialism, and so much of the American people are utterly clueless.)
How dreadfully sad it is that a powerful member of our current administration overtly admits he wants to discriminate against Americans based on those two features, over which they had absolutely no control.
Don’t we have constitutional amendments, or at least laws on the books, preventing the government from doing this?
I don’t know if this is what they mean about “the post-racial era” but I can you one thing: It is impossible for the post-racial era to be not be ushered in by guilty white liberals.
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An interesting post-script: Just last night I posted on how the hopelessly left-wing Reform synagogue at which I teach brought in a global warming hysteric to indoctrinate our religious school students. Well, the Union for Reform Judaism, the national organization of which this synagogue is a member, invited Reich to speak at its national biennial convention in 2005. In fact, there were two Clintonistas invited to the convention; the other was Madeleine Albright.
How many Bush administration members were invited to speak? Zero.
Oh, and did I mention the URJ’s 2005 Biennial was in then-President Bush’s home state of Texas?
Nope, no politics going on here.
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P.P.S. Reader "IrishMike," who caught this posted on Free Republic and says:
OBAMA TO TAX ASPIRIN I JUST HEARD THAT OBAMA IS GOING TO IMPOSE A 40% TAX ON ASPIRIN BECAUSE IT IS WHITE AND IT WORKS.
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