I was astonished to hear Barack Obama admit, on Thursday, that genuine economic growth will have to come from the private sector. He actually stated that there's only so much the government can do, and that if America is to have the kind of economy it wants, it must look to the private sector. And yet look at all he seeks to do to the private sector: dramatically raise income and capital gains taxes; force individuals and companies to buy health insurance made more expensive by the government; force employees to unionize whether they want to or not, and then to make public their votes in elections of union officials; and, worst of all, to require industrial civilization to keep producing while drastically reducing the carbon-based energy that makes it all happen.

Obama lecturing us to look towards the private sector makes me think of a criminal who has his victim at gunpoint, telling that victim, "You have what I need. Now give it to me!" There's certainly an evil irrationality in this unjust throttling of the one upon whom you depend. There's also a foolhardy evasiveness behind it, as well. It's not the kind of evasiveness in which intellectual giants and heroic leaders engage; yet, Obama was supposed to be both of these things. Is it really any wonder that "President Obama" has shrunk so drastically and so quickly in the polls, and in the minds of people who once thought he was "cool" and worth supporting? This is because Obama is really nothing more than the voice of the parasite: The one who depends on those he crushes to get his way. He's never going to get it. That's why he looks weaker and weaker, in the process.