Investor’s Business Daily | Jun. 2, 2008
In a commencement speech at Wesleyan University, Barack Obama advised graduates not to pursue the American dream of success. Ivy League graduates who live in big homes can be selfish, you know.
President Kennedy once spoke of a rising tide that would lift all boats. Obama wants us to pull into shore and tie them to a dock. Worse than that, a disturbing pattern of rhetoric indicates he will not only counsel a draconian lifestyle, but also mandate it.
The man who made over $4 million last year, who lives in a $1.65 million house and who probably doesn’t get his great suits off the rack, advised graduates: “You can take your diploma, walk off this stage and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should. But I hope you don’t.” I got mine.
He hopes you don’t walk off the job and do something greedy like finding a way to economically retrieve the 2 trillion barrels of oil locked up in North American shale, lowering fuel and transportation costs, and helping America achieve energy independence.
Don’t be another Bill Gates and amass a fortune making people more productive and, uh, successful in their daily lives and giving your countrymen a standard of living the world will envy. Exchange your cap and gown for sackcloth and ashes. Leave your possessions behind and come follow Obama.
“Fulfilling your immediate wants and needs betrays a poverty of ambition,” he opined.
Shame on us for being selfish and buying that SUV built by an autoworker trying to fulfill his family’s immediate wants and needs. “Our collective service can shape the destiny of this generation,” he said. “Individual salvation depends on collective salvation.”
So far, Obama’s idea of hope and change sounds an awful lot like the Marxian vision of taking from each according to his ability and giving to each according to his needs. Though we’re already the most charitable and giving nation in history, Obama doesn’t seem to think volunteerism is part of it.
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