he, or whoever writes the words on his teleprompter for him is a gifted sophist and revels in deceptive language, manipulation and dishonesty... it's a game, as it is with so many of the smug progressives, they think it makes them smart but what it does is make them evil
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this is excellent, you should read the whole thing
American Liberty, But…
By Charles C. W. Cooke
January 23, 2013
Drawing on their boundless linguistic ingenuity, the British have worked out a neat little trick to take the edge off when endorsing restrictions on individual liberty. “I believe in freedom of speech,” members of parliament or representatives of advocacy groups will say with real poise. And then they will add the word “but” and explain disjointedly why they don’t. For some inexplicable reason, this is startlingly effective. Human ears, it seems, couch the truthful second statement in the more people-pleasing first. The preamble to the “but” makes what follows all the more persuasive, even when the statements are contradictory. It’s quite brilliant...................
Apparently, The Trick has now found its way across the Atlantic. Witness yesterday’s inaugural speech, in which President Obama regularly lionized the Republic’s axiological philosophical principles just moments before articulating his own, antithetical, ideology. A lovely example:
Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character.
“These are constants in our character” seems a pretty straightforward proposition. Yet then, as if by clockwork, came the “but”:
But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.
Those “constants” in our character, then, “must change.” And our “individual freedoms” require “collective actions.”
In other words, black is white, up is down, and left is right. Individualism is collectivism if you’ll only use the magic word “but.”
Within reason, the president is entitled to advocate for whatever philosophy he chooses.
But “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” as the Declaration puts it, would dictate that he do so honestly and without confusion. However one couches it, individualism is not collectivism; guaranteeing free speech is not restricting speech; constants cannot be changed to suit the times. Were progressivism popular enough on its own, it would not need to be swaddled in the idioms of liberty. But it is not, and, for now at least, that means we’ll likely be stuck with that dastardly little conjunction whenever progressive salesmen are at work.
American Liberty, But? - National Review Online
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