Speaking yesterday at a fundraiser after the Virginia Tech massacre, Barak Obama had this to say on the subject of violence:
“There’s also another kind of violence that we’re going to have to think about. It’s not necessarily the physical violence, but the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways,” he said, and goes on to catalogue other forms of “violence.”
There’s the “verbal violence” of Imus.
There’s “the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job is moved to another country.”
There’s “the violence of children whose voices are not heard in communities that are ignored,”
Yea, Barak, but the difference is that those people weren’t barricaded in a lecture hall and shot at point blank range until dead. They are all still alive.
In addition to being incredibly offensive, inane political rhetoric like this reveals just how much of an amateur Obama still is. It’s the kind of fake sentimentality that may work if you’re running for State Senate, but won’t work if you’re running for President. Hillary is going to roll right over him and he won’t even know what hit him.
Radley Balko put it this way:
No one has the “right” to be paid by someone else for their labor. Employment in a free market is peaceful and voluntary, on both sides. So is the decision to stop that agreement, both for the laborer, who may find a better job, or for the employer, who may find someone who can do the job better, or cheaper, or both. There’s nothing remotely violent about any of it. To compare a business decision to employ cheaper labor to the senseless slaughter of innocents–even if by way of tortured, nonsensical metaphor–is really reprehensible. It reeks of exploitation. “See, the people who are really upset about this massacre, the people who really care about the victims, they vote for me, and take the same position I do on controversial issues.”
And if you don’t support him, then you’re no better than a mass murderer. Yea, that’s the kind of guy I want to see in the White House all right.
