Hanging out with Big Al de Tocqueville

In response to White House, Press Corps Cover up Obama’s ‘Alex de Tocqueville’ Gaffe:

I’d be inclined to write this off as a simple verbal stumble – I suspect Obama knows that de Tocqueville did not go by “Alex” or “Big Al” or any such name – except, of course, for the two points you made: the media would pay much more attention to a comparable Republican gaffe, and Obama’s toadies edited the transcript to cover up the mistake.

Let me add a third point: what the heck is King Barack I doing, bringing up A-Toke at all?  That’s like Dracula quoting the wit and wisdom of Abraham van Helsing.  De Tocqueville made his famous observations about a nation that revolted against Obama-style imperial government, and that comparison might even be unkind to King George, who would never have dreamed up a nightmare like ObamaCare, and might have hesitated to rewrite the law as arbitrarily as King Barack does.  I don’t think he sent the struggling colonists any pictures of his dogs eating off fine china, either.

Barack Obama is the nightmare scenario Lexy D warned about.  No sooner had the absurdity of that situation hit me than I heard Rush Limbaugh say the same thing on the air; you can read the transcript here.  I won’t try to steal El Rushbo’s thunder, but let me quote the passage from old Alex that prodded at my memory, which Rush related verbatim:

Thus, taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting.

It’s like he had a crystal ball tuned to 2014!  De Tocqueville warned about the tendency of the overbearing State to infantilize its citizens (“it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood.)  Barack Obama just got finished burbling to his infantile followers that his disastrous health-care scheme will free them from the responsibility to work for a living.  

Alexis de Tocqueville would have been your implacable enemy, Mr. Obama.  He belongs to the tradition of freedom, not your lust for power.