Okay, I’m no lawyer. But we’ve long suspected, as Legal Insurrection notes, Obama’s “not really into that rule of law stuff.” Hershel Smith’s “Captainsjournal” quotes an Althouse commentor who sees Obama “at his core, the anti-John Adams.” Smith’s rifts make me smile – its nice to remember those witty, self-deprecating, stubborn old guys.
And their priorities were broad and integrated. It is we who have become not only small but dissociated. Foster often reminds us that the big picture includes commerce, business, economics. Discussing Abigail Adams
, Woody Holton emphasizes her role as canny businesswoman – as her descendants noted long ago. She wants, she tells John, to match his statesmanship with her prowess as “farmeress.” His proud rejoinder was her foresight about matters of state matched her business skills – both arising from her understanding of human nature. That understanding grew as her shouldering of responsibility did: their partnership freed both to do more for family & nation. Holton admires her courage and wisdom – in land dealing, in farming, in speculating. She understood the importance for a family and for a nation of a solid financial footing. His discussion of prenups (her sisters took that unusual but legal path) and her ways of distributing money to give responsibility and freedom to her female relatives came from her own personal growth. She understood fulfillment was the base of prosperity and felicity. She understood productivity – intellectual, personal, economic, societal – as the context for “the pursuit of happiness.”
Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, our respect for the Scots beliefs all led to a sense that businesses need independence; they should be supported by as much as restrained by our laws. The Adams must have discussed, argued & formulated these concepts in “curtain talks” like those of the HBO series Smith admires. But this is often misunderstood by our more fragmented modern society (and often fragmented selves). When Obama patronizes careers in business he is signaling his alienation from the values of our forefathers as much as when he speaks of taking action against the Supreme Court. But all is connected in ways those like the Adams understood.
They would understand what we see: an obvious correlation between the rule of law and the use of rebar. Predictable, structurally sound rebar doesn’t intrude itself in our lives but supports walls between which we can live freely, expecting the laws that stood yesterday to stand tomorrow. And we can build a rich life, expecting that our family, in a predictable fashion, will be enriched by our work – intellectual, social, material. But a society without rebar is always on the verge of catastrophe: by a whim, walls may stand or fall. And when a catastrophe comes, the walls will fall hard and fast.
(Meanwhile, Instapundit links to Jammie Wearing Fool, who tells us that only 77% of Investors see Obama as anti-business.)
