OPINION:
The nation’s first Facebook president is at it again. At George Washington University on Wednesday, President Obama managed to insult just about everyone in America who thinks about things. As for the Obamaphants in the media and on the federal dole, I can’t speak for them.
On Wednesday, the “fortunate” members of society who already give so much, were told to cough up more by the most fortunate and least giving, most self-centered man ever to occupy the Oval Office.
We’ve had fortunate sons in the White House before. Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, the Bushes, but each gave back to America before becoming president - Kennedy and George H.W. Bush most profoundly, by nearly sacrificing their lives in the Pacific in World War II. Both men also were known for their exceptional personal charity.
FDR was assistant secretary for the Navy and George W. Bush was in the reserves before becoming president. Both of these men also exhibited a strong sense of personal charity and acted on it often.
There is no evidence that Mr. Obama has ever been generous about anything except with other people’s money and other people’s time. This is the definition of modern “intellectual” liberalism.
Gimme, Gimme, Gimme.
His sophisticated definition of charity is how much money and time we give him and the government. In his view, the president and his cronies are not the public servants. We are.
For what - so he can spend hundreds of thousands of our dollars taking his wife to New York on a “date” while the rest of us sacrifice? I’ve been married 30 years, and my wife and I don’t date. We live.
Mr. Obama, in the words of the sanctimonious sophisticates, you don’t understand.
The “fortunate” people in society you attack already give a lot more back than you do or ever did. These owners and operators of “subchapter S” corporations - aka entrepreneurs - not only pay excessive federal, state and local taxes; some of us also have to deal with thieving and corrupt liberals running the People’s Republic of Alexandria, where they have their own foreign policy with an expensive program to fund political refugees from other parts of the world.
These small-business owners also pay an uncapped 2.5 percent Medicare tax. They also pay their employees’ Medicare tax and have to match their employees’ Social Security tax on top of their own.
Give back? For more than 200 years, a member of our family has put on a uniform for this country. My uncle was shot down in the Pacific on his 20th birthday in 1945. My father died of injuries sustained in the line of duty as a Syracuse firefighter in 1977. That was after serving in the Army during the Korean War. Both of them have their names engraved on walls in that city and other places around America.
A third brother served in the Marine Corps. We had a brother who served for 20 years on that same fire department as our father, saving many before his death. We have a nephew who was a tank commander in the Marine Corps in the first wave into Iraq who is also now a Syracuse firefighter. We have a son who was a corpsman in the Navy.
We had a grandfather who, in his 40s, blind as a bat and with dependents, tried repeatedly to enlist after Pearl Harbor.
For nearly 100 years, members of our family have owned and operated their own businesses, creating wealth for others, paying more than their fair share, but giving back more, much more.
Through their churches, neighborhood services, local youth sports, they gave back to their communities. You might even have called them “community organizers.”
Real community organizing comes from raking leaves at the church or lining the fields of youth sports fields or working in Neighborhood Watch groups, without benefit of a television camera.
There are millions of families who have done more for their country than mine. The Obama family just doesn’t happen to be one of them.
Unlike Mr. Obama, they and millions like them around the country did more than preen for the cameras. But to the elites, they are just the “little people.”
Mr. Obama? No one in American needs his lectures about giving, charity, kindness and sacrifice. To Mr. Obama, these words are simply weapons. To millions of others, they are a way of life.
Craig Shirley is president and CEO of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs.
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