When Time, Newsweek, The Huffington Post and the balance of America’s left-wing scribes hailed Barack Obama as the smartest man ever to enter the Oval Office, they may have been underselling him. Furthermore, I retract every critique I’ve ever made of our 44th president, hail him as a genius of the first order, and humbly bow my head in awe at his singular accomplishment. I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me so long to understand the intellectual majesty behind Obama’s actions as our nation’s commander-in-chief.
Over the past 39 months, the presidency of Barack Obama has exhaustively and comprehensively proven — once, for all and forever — that socialism does not work.
I know. It’s sublime. It’s counterintuitive. I know. Take it in. His message is stunning in its simple, elemental beauty. Take a step back and marvel. Recognize Obama for the artist he truly is.
Most called Barack a progressive. Many thought he was a Marxist. Privately, some even suspected that he was a communist. All were wrong. Barack Obama is a free market capitalist to his very marrow. And his actions prove it.
Over the years, the one argument that has kept leftist ideology afloat in America is that our big-government attempts at social justice were too meager and unambitious. Every program, from Head Start to affirmative action to the War on Poverty, was “underfunded” according to the liberal establishment. Thus, their failures could always be excused because the left could argue that the programs were never given a legitimate chance to succeed. In less than four years, Barack Obama has decimated that final argument.
After gathering them all — every progressive extremist, every hardline Maoist throwback, every reptilian, leftist Krugmaniac academia had to offer — in Washington, after spending $5 trillion fully funding each and every one of their wildest big-government fantasies, Barack Obama has, at long last, laid the leftist ideal of social justice to rest. Redistribution does not work. Our president has provided a proof.
It was an expensive lesson to learn (or, for Barack, to teach). But, I’m certain, history will heap honors and praise on President Obama for saving our nation’s treasure in the long run. By debunking Keynesian economics, exposing the buffoonery of fiat currency and turning socialized medicine into a laughingstock, one son of Chicago has cracked the left’s foundational belief that government can fix society’s ills.
Capitalism may be unfair. With its booms and busts and often unrewarded risk-taking, it may even be unjust. But, for all of its faults, it remains the best system we have. And, from Edmund Burke to Milton Friedman, conservatives have struggled to convey that truth for centuries. In less than one full term, our misunderstood president has managed to illustrate beautifully what an irredeemable disaster socialism is.
Certainly, it is great governance, but it is also a work of art.
Thank you, Mr. President. And, brava! Bravissimo!
Yates Walker is a conservative activist and writer. Before becoming involved in politics, he served honorably as a paratrooper and a medic in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. He can be reached at yateswalker@gmail.com. Follow Yates on Twitter @yateswalker.