The Programmed President

Good piece in Human Events by Daniel J. Flynn:

Only in the bizarro world of liberalism is a program’s inefficacy considered a compelling argument to expand that program....

Reality is a rude affront to grand ideas.

Friedman, one of the Blue Collar Intellectuals included in my forthcoming book, waited tables, sold fireworks by the roadside, and peddled encyclopedias door-to-door before winning a Nobel Prize in economics. Obama collected signatures for Ralph Nader’s NYPIRG and taught in a law school before becoming president. Notice a difference?

The real world grounds ideas. Ideological fantasies send minds into the ether.

People armed with programs have usually been programmed. What they lack in ideas they make up in ideology. Ideologues don’t think. Their ideologies do this for them. Like a robot, the ideologue’s mental circuits overheat when confronted with a situation he hasn’t been programmed for.

Read it all...