Alan Keyes
Obama wants America too stupid to be free
By Alan Keyes
"Stupéfiant" is a French word for "drug." It is a compound word with roots that literally mean "to put someone into a stupor," to induce a state of mental numbness in which you are unable to think normally. More pungently put, it describes things that make you stupid.
I thought of this recently as I read a report of Obama's indulgent attitude toward marijuana. He claimed that it's less dangerous than alcohol. The salient question is, "Dangerous to whom or in what way?" With respect to individuals, his nonchalance is certainly debatable. As WND's Art Moore has pointed out, data from "an extensive four-decade study published in 2012 by the National Academy of Sciences showed marijuana can lower the IQ of young teenagers and may cause permanent mental impairment" – "a neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife."
Moore points out evidence that lends support to the conclusion that Obama himself may be an instance of this kind of long-term individual damage. But given the office he presently occupies, this compels us to remember that in America, such damage to individuals has grave implications for the welfare of the nation as a whole. After all, the person who occupies the office of president is supposed, among other things, to represent the sovereign interests of the American people.
As chief executive officer, the president of the United States has a particular responsibility to be mindful of anything that poses a grave danger to the nation, anything that damages the American people as a whole. As an official sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, he should know this certainly includes anything that impairs the ability of the people to carry out their duties as citizens – i.e., as members of the sovereign body of the people.
This requires a very practical kind of intelligence. When Tocqueville sought to fathom the factors that contributed to the success of democratic self-government in the early United States, he was particularly impressed that ordinary Americans had the ability to understand and navigate a complex, decentralized political and administrative environment. Indeed, their capacity to do so had become, as it were, a second nature.
In this regard, America's prevalent founders were particularly careful of what they called the "genius of the American people." They weren't referring to Einsteinian genius (though some say that in our era even such geniuses may be an endangered species). They meant the common-sense intelligence of people with sufficient character, will, and ability to care not only for themselves, but also for their families and the communities in which they live. The founders' concern for this kind of intelligence is what led the founding generation to make sure the U.S. Constitution included provisions to protect the people's sources and methods of information, including the exercise of religion, free speech, and the media.
In this respect, contemporary U.S. politicos like Obama have little or nothing in common with the leading lights of America's founding generation. In fact, everything they do seems aimed at destroying this "genius of the American people." Obama's nonchalant attitude toward things that make people stupid has its counterpart in other matters of policy, and other insistent demands from the elitist elements of American society today.
These elitists insistently aid and abet practices (like abortion) that repress the people's natural will and inclination to safeguard the lives of their offspring. They also promote a patently false understanding of right as the licentious freedom to do what we please, rather than the decent liberty that we may claim when we act in accord with our God-endowed nature as human beings. As an excuse for rendering the people defenseless against these elitists' abuses of power, they even seek to deny them access to the means of self-defense.
Yet the TV shows, movies, and games massively promoted by these very elites are increasingly saturated with themes (zombies, vampires, beastly human-animal hybrids, amoral thugs, and anti-heroes who shadow forth every conceivable variety of conscienceless evil) that preoccupy the soul with evil. They focus on concepts, tools, and stratagems for the wholesale violation and degradation of human beings. Rejecting the Christian challenge ("Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good"), their preferred depictions of supposedly humanitarian heroes are often molded according to the treacherous maxim "It takes evil to fight evil."
Thus, righteous indignation is made to flow in channels of wickedness, as if there is no weapon in the arsenal of God's creation potent enough to overcome the power of every imaginable evil. Such "entertainments" may be the most insidious kind of disinformation. And they may yet prove more destructively potent than the Nuremburg rallies, or the Hitlerjugend, as factors for producing virtually soulless, self-glorifying perpetrators of atrocity.
But even in the educational institutions we more formally recognize as such, the leading lights of the elitist faction not only promote, they insist upon, an understanding of humanity (the God-denying version of the theory of evolution) that tendentiously abuses the rubric of science. Indeed, it suppresses the very idea of humanity as such (human nature), in order to discredit the moral and spiritual dimensions of the human condition. Yet these are the very aspects of humanity that inform the practical wisdom required to justify and sustain decent liberty.
Why would an individual sworn to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States show such little concern respecting things that assault the practical basis for the form of government it establishes? There is no answer consistent with his oath. Instead, such nonchalance is solid evidence that Obama targets America's liberty, as do all those who belittle the significance of issues that affect the moral judgment and character of the American people.
Much like the terrorists who targeted the Towers in New York, which symbolized America's material commerce, these scornful elitists target the pillars of moral and spiritual commerce that uphold our political constitution. But when liberty's pillars fail, the smoke that rises from their crater will signify the fatal triumph of our stupefaction, courtesy of those, like Obama, who are working hard to make us too stupid to be free.
January 28, 2014
"Stupéfiant" is a French word for "drug." It is a compound word with roots that literally mean "to put someone into a stupor," to induce a state of mental numbness in which you are unable to think normally. More pungently put, it describes things that make you stupid.
I thought of this recently as I read a report of Obama's indulgent attitude toward marijuana. He claimed that it's less dangerous than alcohol. The salient question is, "Dangerous to whom or in what way?" With respect to individuals, his nonchalance is certainly debatable. As WND's Art Moore has pointed out, data from "an extensive four-decade study published in 2012 by the National Academy of Sciences showed marijuana can lower the IQ of young teenagers and may cause permanent mental impairment" – "a neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife."
Moore points out evidence that lends support to the conclusion that Obama himself may be an instance of this kind of long-term individual damage. But given the office he presently occupies, this compels us to remember that in America, such damage to individuals has grave implications for the welfare of the nation as a whole. After all, the person who occupies the office of president is supposed, among other things, to represent the sovereign interests of the American people.
As chief executive officer, the president of the United States has a particular responsibility to be mindful of anything that poses a grave danger to the nation, anything that damages the American people as a whole. As an official sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, he should know this certainly includes anything that impairs the ability of the people to carry out their duties as citizens – i.e., as members of the sovereign body of the people.
This requires a very practical kind of intelligence. When Tocqueville sought to fathom the factors that contributed to the success of democratic self-government in the early United States, he was particularly impressed that ordinary Americans had the ability to understand and navigate a complex, decentralized political and administrative environment. Indeed, their capacity to do so had become, as it were, a second nature.
In this regard, America's prevalent founders were particularly careful of what they called the "genius of the American people." They weren't referring to Einsteinian genius (though some say that in our era even such geniuses may be an endangered species). They meant the common-sense intelligence of people with sufficient character, will, and ability to care not only for themselves, but also for their families and the communities in which they live. The founders' concern for this kind of intelligence is what led the founding generation to make sure the U.S. Constitution included provisions to protect the people's sources and methods of information, including the exercise of religion, free speech, and the media.
In this respect, contemporary U.S. politicos like Obama have little or nothing in common with the leading lights of America's founding generation. In fact, everything they do seems aimed at destroying this "genius of the American people." Obama's nonchalant attitude toward things that make people stupid has its counterpart in other matters of policy, and other insistent demands from the elitist elements of American society today.
These elitists insistently aid and abet practices (like abortion) that repress the people's natural will and inclination to safeguard the lives of their offspring. They also promote a patently false understanding of right as the licentious freedom to do what we please, rather than the decent liberty that we may claim when we act in accord with our God-endowed nature as human beings. As an excuse for rendering the people defenseless against these elitists' abuses of power, they even seek to deny them access to the means of self-defense.
Yet the TV shows, movies, and games massively promoted by these very elites are increasingly saturated with themes (zombies, vampires, beastly human-animal hybrids, amoral thugs, and anti-heroes who shadow forth every conceivable variety of conscienceless evil) that preoccupy the soul with evil. They focus on concepts, tools, and stratagems for the wholesale violation and degradation of human beings. Rejecting the Christian challenge ("Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good"), their preferred depictions of supposedly humanitarian heroes are often molded according to the treacherous maxim "It takes evil to fight evil."
Thus, righteous indignation is made to flow in channels of wickedness, as if there is no weapon in the arsenal of God's creation potent enough to overcome the power of every imaginable evil. Such "entertainments" may be the most insidious kind of disinformation. And they may yet prove more destructively potent than the Nuremburg rallies, or the Hitlerjugend, as factors for producing virtually soulless, self-glorifying perpetrators of atrocity.
But even in the educational institutions we more formally recognize as such, the leading lights of the elitist faction not only promote, they insist upon, an understanding of humanity (the God-denying version of the theory of evolution) that tendentiously abuses the rubric of science. Indeed, it suppresses the very idea of humanity as such (human nature), in order to discredit the moral and spiritual dimensions of the human condition. Yet these are the very aspects of humanity that inform the practical wisdom required to justify and sustain decent liberty.
Why would an individual sworn to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States show such little concern respecting things that assault the practical basis for the form of government it establishes? There is no answer consistent with his oath. Instead, such nonchalance is solid evidence that Obama targets America's liberty, as do all those who belittle the significance of issues that affect the moral judgment and character of the American people.
Much like the terrorists who targeted the Towers in New York, which symbolized America's material commerce, these scornful elitists target the pillars of moral and spiritual commerce that uphold our political constitution. But when liberty's pillars fail, the smoke that rises from their crater will signify the fatal triumph of our stupefaction, courtesy of those, like Obama, who are working hard to make us too stupid to be free.
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
