Topic: Liberal Fascism
One of the entries in Barack Obama’s curriculum vita is “community organizer”—in Chicago during the 1980s. Those tiresome people who decide that their mission in life is to make the world a better place have to start somewhere. For Obama, it all began in the Windy City.
Now I lived in Chicago for seven years. As big cities go, it’s not a bad place. But I shed no tears when the time came to pack my bags and flee the People’s Republic of Illinois for the relative sanity of Granger, Indiana. Even in genteel Hyde Park where I had my apartment, there was no escape from the annoyances of city life: screaming arguments in the parking lot directly under my window at two in the morning, loud music blasting away in the adjoining apartment, crazy street people and panhandlers all over the place, the ever-present threat of crime (e.g. a murder in my building).
Every weekend in Chicago people are killed in drive-by shootings, stabbed, beaten to death, etc. Not infrequently, the victim is some little girl or boy who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The police department is corrupt and not very efficient. The mayor and city council are more interested in playing race-based politics than they are in suppressing crime. The bureaucracy is bloated. The school system reeks. Despite state, county and city taxes on everything in sight, Chicago is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
So I’m wondering: What kind of a mark did Barack Obama make on Chicago? What problems did he solve? Did he leave the city a better place than he found it? Nah—Chicago simply shrugged Barry off. And a good thing, too. “From bad to worse,” perhaps translated into Latin, would make a fine motto for the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Community Organizers.