by Bruce Thornton<\/p>\n
Frontpage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n The Democrats have announced that Massachusetts Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren and Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke will be on hand at the Democratic National Convention to hype the alleged Republican \u201cWar on Women\u201d and promote \u201cJulia,\u201d the cartoon character that touts the numerous boons Democrats supposedly provide women. The Dems\u2019 showcasing of these three women highlights what\u2019s at stake in November if Obama wins \u2014 even more expansion of government power that will further entangle women and men alike in dependency and servitude.<\/p>\n Fluke, you remember, appeared before some Congressmen last February and claimed that birth control cost $3000, arguing that making women bear this fiscal burden is a sexist crime against humanity as well as an assault on \u201cwomen\u2019s health.\u201d Leave aside the creepiness of treating pregnancy as a disease. Given the numerous clinics that offer free birth control, Fluke\u2019s claims were patently absurd. And making a student at a prestigious law school a spokesman for those women without Fluke\u2019s options, opportunities, and resources was even more ridiculous. It revealed once again the hypocrisy of affluent feminists who advance their own careers by exploiting the misery of poor and working-class women. By every standard of well-being \u2014 health, leisure, education, disposable income, or economic opportunity \u2014 the average middle class American woman today, let alone a college graduate heading for a lucrative law career, enjoys a better life than most of the men who ever existed. And the problems of poor and working-class women have less to do with their sex, and more to do with the lack of economic opportunity exacerbated by progressive policies that enable big government interference rather than creating the conditions for economic growth.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s Elizabeth Warren, or \u201cFauxcahontas\u201d as she came to be called after she was exposed as having exploited an alleged 1\/32 Cherokee heritage in order to get a leg up in her academic career by passing herself off as a \u201cwoman of color.\u201d The spectacle of a blonde, blue-eyed Harvard Law professor getting special consideration because of a tenuous connection to a \u201cprotected group\u201d was equally revealing of progressive hypocrisy. Once again, intrusive government policies designed to benefit those presumably victimized by past discrimination are more often the vehicles of careerist advancement for a white woman more privileged than most white males.<\/p>\n But even worse are Warren\u2019s economic views. Don\u2019t forget, she was the source of Obama\u2019s now infamous \u201cyou didn\u2019t build that\u201d put-down of entrepreneurs and business builders. Last September Warren said, \u201cYou built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn\u2019t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory \u2014 and hire someone to protect against this \u2014 because of the work the rest of us did.\u201d So factory-builders pay nothing for roads, public colleges, firemen, and police? In fact, they pay much, much more than their fair share of these public resources, because their tax payments have to make up for all the freeloaders \u2014 nearly half of taxpayers \u2014 who pay nothing. Like Obama, Warren wants to demonize the \u201cmakers\u201d in order to justify appropriating more of their wealth to finance government programs that buy political support from the \u201ctakers.\u201d It\u2019s about power, the power of government agencies, government bureaucrats, and elite government \u201cexperts\u201d to manage and control our lives and further their own careers \u2014 all financed by revenues expropriated from those who actually do create wealth and jobs.<\/p>\n Finally there\u2019s the cartoon character Julia, featured in an Obama campaign slide show \u201cThe Life of Julia\u201d touting how much big government does for women with the programs Republicans allegedly want to \u201cgut.\u201d Its purpose is to show \u201chow President Obama\u2019s policies help one woman over her lifetime \u2014 and how Mitt Romney would change her story.\u201d From Head Start to Medicare, Julia\u2019s life is defined by her utter dependence on the federal government. The whole production is so silly that even the liberal\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0panned it: \u201c\u2019The Life of Julia\u2019 borrows its aesthetic from\u00a0USA Today<\/em>\u00a0and its narrative logic from Chutes and Ladders. It is a very bad place to begin a campaign. As a story, \u2018The Life of Julia\u2019 is a mess; it\u2019s got the verisimilitude of a string of paper dolls. As an argument, it\u2019s worse. Better public education and affordable healthcare are worth fighting for, urgently, and they matter to everyone, but the heart of the fight is not over whether Julia, a fictitious college-educated Web entrepreneur, can one day plant Brussels sprouts.\u201d<\/p>\n Julia illustrates better than anything all the dangers of \u201cdemocratic despotism\u201d analyzed by Tocqueville 150 years ago. Rather than self-reliant individuals who rely on family, church, and civil society for support in negotiating the challenges of their lives, Obama champions the all powerful state that marginalizes and weakens these resources, and justifies ever greater interference in personal life by providing goods paid for by somebody else. Rather than the Founders\u2019 vision of limited government allowing free people to pursue their happiness, Obama champions for women the \u201chubby state\u201d that erodes their freedom and dignity by taking responsibility for their choices and actions, infantilizing them as much as a sugar daddy does a trophy wife.<\/p>\n That dependence and diminishment of women\u2019s agency and freedom by intrusive big government is what connects Warren, Fluke, and Julia. Warren discounts the hard-work and talent of individuals and privileges instead the policies of government, which of course will always need more intrusive power and more money in order to continue providing these collective boons that allegedly help people to succeed. Fluke wants government-coerced payments for birth control so that women are less accountable for their sexual behavior, since the big brother state will coerce insurers to provide birth-control pills and, when she forgets to take them, a free abortion to undo the consequences of her actions. And Julia illustrates how thoroughly dependent women are under the \u201csoft despotism\u201d of big government, which replaces her personal relationships and resources with the bureaucratic functionaries armed with what Tocqueville called a \u201cnetwork of petty regulations \u2014 complicated, minute, and uniform,\u201d until eventually women and men alike become \u201ca herd of timid and industrious animals, of which government is the shepherd.\u201d<\/p>\n So who is conducting a \u201cwar on women?\u201d The Dems, who want women dependent, their freedom restricted by the rules and regulations of big government, their independence and self-reliance sold for transient benefits? Or the Republicans, who want women and men left alone to make their own choices, take their own risks, accept the consequences of their own actions, pursue their own happiness, and thus achieve the dignity of free people who, as Tocqueville wrote, consider freedom \u201ca good so precious and so necessary that no other good could console them for its loss,\u201d and who \u201cfind, in tasting it, consolation for everything that occurs\u201d?<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine The Democrats have announced that Massachusetts Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren and Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke will be on hand at the Democratic National Convention to hype the alleged Republican \u201cWar on Women\u201d and promote \u201cJulia,\u201d the cartoon character that touts the numerous boons Democrats supposedly provide women. The Dems\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[33,22,187],"tags":[12,165,243,156],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-80","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":928,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-real-point-of-the-lefts-uproar-over-limbaugh\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":0},"title":"The Real Point of the Left’s Uproar over Limbaugh","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Frontpage Magazine Rush Limbaugh has got the progressives pitching a fit over some remarks on his radio show about a Georgetown University law student named Sandra Fluke. Fluke had made the preposterous claim, while addressing House Democrats over President Obama\u2019s rule forcing Catholic institutions to pay\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Women"","block_context":{"text":"Women","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/women\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7051,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fat-cats-and-deomcrats\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":1},"title":"Fat Cats and Democrats","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 26, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 The progressive mind functions by means of mythic narratives that have tenuous connections to reality. Cops shoot a black man, and Eugene Robinson of\u00a0The Washington Post\u00a0begs \u201cplease don\u2019t shoot me,\u201d indulging the myth of a lethal American racism endangering black people\u2019s lives, even though\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/800px-Democratic_donkey_cuff_links-300x204.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2545,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-libya-venture-and-double-standards\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":2},"title":"Obama’s Libya Venture and Double Standards","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The champion of shameless chutzpah has always been the guy who murders his parents then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he\u2019s an orphan. But White House spokesman Jay Carney might be the new champ, given his response to the House\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2534,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/its-the-philosophy-stupid\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":3},"title":"It’s the Philosophy, Stupid","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The Democrats\u2019 position in the negotiations to raise the debt limit and deal with runaway government debt can be summarized in one mantric phrase: the rich must \u201cpay their fair share\u201d in taxes. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, for example, said\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7985,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-democrats-waterloo\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":4},"title":"The Democrats\u2019 Waterloo","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Their refusal to acknowledge the administration\u2019s failures did not make them go away. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The Duke of Wellington said of his close-run victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo that the French \u201ccame on in the same old way, and we sent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(Pool Image\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/pic_giant_110614_SM_Barack-Obama-Waterloo-G-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":335,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/explaining-the-democrats-success\/","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":5},"title":"Explaining the Democrats’ Success","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine The election postmortem has identified all manner of causes for the Republicans\u2019 defeat, from the \u201cwoman problem\u201d and the \u201cHispanic problem,\u201d as Peggy Noonan put it, to Romney\u2019s fatcat persona and his inept campaign. But there\u2019s a simpler reason, one consistent with the critics of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":554,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}