Friday, June 19, 2009

Being Blunt on Obama

Lou Pritchett is the renowned former VP at Proctor and Gamble and author of Stop Paddling and Start Rocking the Boat. Here is his open letter to the President. (Both Snopes and Urban Legends say it is authentic.)

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett


Read Jonah Goldberg's nod of qualified approval here.

2 comments:

Elena said...

David--I'm in the process of reading Plato's Republic for the (gasp) first time with a Great Conversation group online. Do you think Obama sees himself as a philosopher king, able to create Socrates' "ideal" totalitarian state?

David C. Innes said...

The philosopher king is an ideal that conceals an absurdity, if that isn't putting it too strongly. Perfect rule is the empowerment of wisdom. Wisdom requires philosophy. But as the philosopher is interested in the never ending quest for understanding, taking on the responsibility for rule doesn't interest him and it would be the greatest injustice, as Glaucon says, to force him to rule. Nonetheless, for the sake of political justice, he must be forced to rule. The further irony is that people are unlikely to make him rule because either they do not recognize him as wise or they jealously guard power for themselves.

Plato does not offer his City in Speech as a blueprint to be put into practice. Socrates himself openly recognizes its absurdities. He uses it to show the features of justice and why it is so elusive in this world.

I recommend The City and Man by Leo Strauss. Also Allan Bloom's "Interpretive Essay" in his edition of the work.

As for President Obama, he is too post-modern to think of himself as a philosopher king. he does not bring right reason to the White House, but right feelings. If anything, he is the Pappa King. He watches over us, provides for us as a good provider, child-proofs our world, and he mediates playground scuffles worldwide. He is wiser than us children down here (and we just have to trust that), but, most fathers, not because he can give a rational account of things, i.e. not because he has knowledge, but because he has right opinion. His heart has been formed in the right way by his upbringing in diversity and by his experience as a community organizer. Beyond that, I don't know where he gets his enormous self-confidence (which by the way every effective President must have).