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Even given the state of American education today you must still have heard about young George Washington and his inability to lie in the instance of chopping down the cherry tree. But the real story is that of our first president’s example of servant leadership…
There was a bleak and cold day in which George Washington stepped out of his headquarters. It was cold so he drew on his great coat, turned up his collar and pulled his hat down to shield his face from the cold, blowing wind. He walked down the road to where the soldiers were fortifying a camp and no one recognized this tall muffled man who was in fact the commander of the army. He came across a group of soldiers who were under the command of a corporal. They were building a breast work of logs and the corporal, all filled with himself as being important and superior, kept on barking orders. “Up with it,” he cried. “Now altogether push!” They were trying desperately to push this final log up on top of the crest. Each time they tried just at the last moment, the thing would fall back. They were exhausted. The corporal would again say, “ Up with it! What ails you? Up with it!” The men would tug again and again and the log came crashing down because they weren’t quite strong enough to do it. Finally, the third time when he starts barking at them, Washington himself goes up to them and exerts all his strength to push the log and it falls into place. The exhausted men were about to thank this unknown soldier and at that point he turned to the corporal and said, “ Why don’t you help your men with the heavy lifting when they need another hand?” The corporal replied, “Don’t you see that I’m a corporal?” Washington said, “Indeed,” as he opened up his coat and revealed his uniform, “ I’m the Commander-in Chief. The next time you have a log too heavy for your men to lift, send for me!”[1]
American political leadership is based on humility and the acceptance of subservience to the founding principle of our Nation; that the only legitimate reason for government to exist is for the protection and advancement of individual human rights as assigned by our Creator. [2] As a servant to that idea the President of the United States is obligated to limit government and his actions to those allowed under the Constitution of these United States as amended. The weakness being exploited by Obama and his cronies is that those Creator endowed rights and the Constitution that enshrines them are only as strong as our leaders’ belief in and dedication to that idea of human equality and societal cooperation.
Mr. Obama is dedicated to and believes in neither.
This president has things reversed. He acts and speaks as if arrogance was a virtue and we existed to service him and as if the Constitution was a quaint laundry list of revocable privileges, suggestions actually, subject to arbitrary application according to his personal wishes. [3] Rather than insist on lifting the log in humble solidarity with his men, he instead metaphorically barks orders that the log be moved then puffs his chest with ruthless self-aggrandizement at his superhuman accomplishment and takes another vacation to recover from his Herculean effort.
We have seen that play out with Mr. Obama many times, perhaps most
famously in the Bright Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil blow out. In a series of actions that if not real would have been excellent satire mocking former President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” gaffe, Obama’s barking of orders to “JUST PLUG THE DAMN HOLE!” was mindful of the corporal, “all filled with himself as being important and superior”. President Obama’s infantile outburst was followed (as is typical of this president) weeks later by equally arrogant boasts that he fixed the leak, which was soon followed by a presidential declaration that the Gulf had been “cleaned up.” It was, fixed that is, despite the instrumental role that the Obama Administration played in blocking an effective response for almost 2 months. [4] And while far from “clean”, Nature not Obama may lay claim to that eventual end result. [5]
If Mr. Obama understood the concepts of servant leadership or even of humility he wouldn’t like either. Both involve sacrificing ones own ego to a higher good or yielding to legitimate authority, in this case the Constitution and by extension the Creator. Quite often it means doing what you don’t want to do and Barack Hussein Obama Jr. is simply not wired that way.
“We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.” Thomas Jefferson [6]
We seriously doubt that our president is familiar with Mr. Jefferson’s above quote any more than he is with the concepts of servant leadership and humility set by George Washington and we are certain beyond any reasonable doubt that if he is familiar with it he distains the very concepts which support those ideas.
As just one example, estimates of the total debt that this president has obligated us to pay range as high as $202 trillion! [7] That is roughly $300 for every man woman and child alive on Earth right now, $300 per person for the entire population of the planet. But it is only we Americans who will pay and our numbers are far fewer.
The total value of all of the gold held in Fort Knox is less than $200 billion. [8]
If we cleaned out the vault at our national gold repository, that would leave an unpaid balance of $201,800,000,000,000.00. To pay that off would take the total amount of all goods and services that this nation produces from now until sometime in 2024 or 2025 . [9] That is without any of us seeing a single dime for any of our work… not for food, not for clothes, not for a roof over our heads… not a single penny in our paycheck for the next 14+ years.
Neither would there be money in government coffers at any level. No town or city money for parks, roads and police and fire; no money in the state treasury for welfare, disaster response, highways, or environment. The federal pockets would likewise be absolutely empty so we would have no national defense, no courts, no congress, and no way to pay a president or so much as somebody to mow the grass on the South Lawn at the White House.
Of course that is not going to happen because you are skipping out on the tab and leaving us stuck with it. You will slink off and be long dead when we yet to be born Americans are working as indentured servants or worse to those to whom you sold us into that servitude in order to pay for your condescending and foolish arrogance.
Signed, Children of Publius
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Footnotes:
- Servant Leadership, Part II by Boa, Kenneth Th.M.;PhD.; D.Phil. Published March 3, 2007. Retreived August 28, 2010 from http://borg.sabda.org/servant_leadership_part_2
- Declaration of Independence, 2nd ¶. By Thomas Jefferson, published July 4, 1776. Retreived August 28, 2010 from http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
- Barack Hussein Obama Jr. on WBEZ Public Radio; Chicago, Ill. 2001 interview. Retreived (with audio) August 28, 2010 fromhttp://www.wnd.com/?pageId=79225
- “Obama Administration Blocks Clean-Up of Oil Spill” by Hans Bader, Global Warming.org. Published June 18,2010. Retreived August 28, 2010 from http://www.globalwarming.org/2010/06/18/obama-administration-blocks-clean-up-of-oil-spill-by-louisiana-and-foreign-allies-by-imposing-red-tape/
- BP Oil Spill: Clean Up Crews Can’t Find Crude in the Gulf. ABC News, July 26, 2010. Retreived August 28, 2010 fromhttp://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-crude-mother-nature-breaks-slick/story?id=11254252
- Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4, Thomas Jefferson Author, Randolph, Thomas Jefferson, 1792-1875 editor.
- Laurence Kotlikoff, Boston University. Quoted in Bloomberg.com, Aug 10, 2010. Retreived August 28, 2010 from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/u-s-is-bankrupt-and-we-don-t-even-know-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html
- Wikipedia. Retreived August 28, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bullion_Depository “Gold and Coins” section.
- United States Bureau of Economic Affairs National Economic Report Current-dollar and “real” GDP section (gross domestic product). Retreived August 28, 2010 from http://www.bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp
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