By Rick Manning
Yakov Smirnoff, the Russian ex-patriot, has a comedy routine where many of the punch lines ended with the signature line, “Whatta country!”
I couldn’t agree with him more. Americans truly are blessed to have been born in the first nation that was conceived with the presumption and guarantee that individuals shall be free from government tyranny.
Now, however, there are those on the left who have begun the refrain that criticism of our current, lame duck president is the equivalent to not “loving the country.”
Dissent is American. It is built into the fabric of our Constitution. It is the basis of both the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution.
Now, many of the same people who viewed the burning of the American flag as a valid expression of protected protest, are castigating those who proudly wave the stars and stripes as being anti-American.
It is not anti-American to criticize President Obama. In fact, shining a light on an increasingly avaricious government is not just a right, it is a responsibility.
A president who was reported to have skipped more than half of his intelligence briefings prior to the killing of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on 9/11/12, should be criticized for failing to do his job.
A president who claims not to have been aware that his own Justice Department was spying on Associate Press reporters, should be criticized for failing to protect basic freedom of the press.
How can you not criticize a president who has spent the last five years campaigning for Obamacare, but never bothered to find out if the $600 million website that his wife’s college buddy was building actually worked?
In fact, it is a duty to criticize a president who had his National Security Agency spying both on American citizens and world leaders, doing harm to America’s standing with allies around the world, yet claims that he knew nothing, nothing at all.
And a president who still claims in 2013 that people could “keep their health insurance if they liked it,” whose own Administration’s memos from 2010 revealed that this was not true is deserving of condemnation as either a liar or an out of touch shill.
Even left wing comedy news provider Jon Stewart is now criticizing the first “know nothing” president in his half hour weekend update-style segments on Comedy Central.
It is enough to make one wonder if those who are supposed to work for the current occupant of the White House have any respect for him at all, or do they just view him as the actor who reads the lines?
In any other Administration heads would roll in places like the NSA, HHS, IRS and the State Department, but with this White House, it is reasonable to assume that no one wrote the briefing memo putting the blame on anyone not named Bush, Cruz or the Tea Party.
In some respects, it is better if this president is just completely disconnected from reality, because the alternative is that he is plugged in and approves of the activities being undertaken in his name.
And that is a thought with implications that should make America shudder.
Rick Manning (@rmanning957) is vice president of public policy and communications for Americans for Limited Government.
