Happy Birthday, Dear Leader

From Reuters:

People gather in front of the World's Largest Beaded Photo Mosaic of U.S. President Barack Obama on display in front of the White House in Washington, August 3, 2009. The project, created with over 372,600 beads by 1000 fourth grade students from across the U.S., was made in honor of Obama's 48th birthday which will be celebrated tomorrow.

Rather than muse about how those 1000 fourth graders could have made better use of their school days, I'll just leave you with a passage from the book I'm currently reading:

"Historically, fascism is of necessity and by design a form of youth movement, and all youth movements have more than a whiff of fascism about them. The exaltation of passion over reason, action over deliberation, is a naturally youthful impulse. Treating young people as equals, 'privileging' their opinions precisely because they lack experience and knowledge, is an inherently fascist tendency, because at its heart lies the urge to throw off 'old ways' and 'old dogmas' in favor of what the Nazis called the 'idealism of the deed.' Youth politics--like populism generally--is the politics of the tantrum and the hissy fit. The indulgence of so-called youth politics is one face of the sort of cowardice and insecurity that leads to the triumph of barbarism."

I'd love to restore those old ways and old dogmas so I guess that makes me what the marxists would call a 'reactionary.' Fine. But after reading this online the other day, I found it a statement I could sign up to: "I believe in the free speech liberals used to believe in, the economic freedom conservatives used to believe in, and the personal freedom America used to believe in."

I'll give Obama this: for those willing to notice, he is finally bringing into focus the convergence of a number of trends many have been warning about for years: concentration of power, runaway deficit spending, and the cult of personality that now clings to whomever resides in the White House. There were those who warned about similar developments in Italy, Germany and post-Czarist Russia, too... and were ignored until it was too late.