President Obama's latest "town hall" revealed a disturbing attitude toward the attendees and, thus, toward everyday Americans. The word "elitism" seems insufficient to describe this attitude.
"There are a whole host of things that we've put in place that do make your life better."
Let's think about this:
"..a whole host of things..." = government legislation, spending, and regulation
"...we've..." = the people holding legislative and executive power that have acted
"...put in place..." = placed with foresight to determine some economic and social purpose--what classical liberal economists call central planning.
"...to make your life better." And there is the punchline.
Is the president of the U.S. in a postition to know what makes our individual and respective millions of lives good, let alone "better"? Who has the privilege of making that determination, us or him and his circle of advisers? And even if he could somehow ascend to this omniscient position, is it his place to make our lives better--as he sees it--through the coercive force of the federal government?
How free is a society if its constitutionally elected president assumes this responsibility and then acts upon it?
Thomas Sowell’s excellent book The Vision of The Anointed
explains why the “elites” in academia, government, and the media try again and again to implement bad social and economic policy in spite of the fact history teaches such policies have failed and will continue to fail. In short, they are infatuated with an elevated and delusional sense of their own intelligence and see fixing the world and everyone in it to their liking as their mission in life. Some samples:“[T]here is, as the bottom line, a power agenda by which the vision of the anointed is to be imposed on the masses.”
