Men in Green
I Googled Obama-Robin Hood and got 10,400,000 links . Obama-Peter Pan brought 1,800,000. Obama-Fantasy was good for 51,600,000.
I’m guessing he’s one of the men in green.
The popular Robin Hood story is that he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Except the real Robin Hood – the legend anyway- stole from the Sheriff of Nottingham who taxed the poor.
In that story President Obama wouldn’t be Robin Hood. He’d be the Sheriff of Nottingham, except he taxes the rich. Well, the poor too if you want to get into the Obama Care weeds.
He’s obsessed with fairness. In 2008 Charlie Gibson pointed out that when Clinton and Bush cut the capital gains tax, revenues increased. He asked Obama if he would increase the capital gains tax even if it meant less revenue to the government. The future president said he would – in the interest of fairness.
Dan Henninger in Thursday’s WSJ Wonder Land column wondered about fairness:
Other than the president, the one other slice of the American population that obsesses over fairness everywhere is children. Every parent knows that about the age of four, kids in groups start saying, “That’s not fair.”
If you have a birthday party and cut pieces of the cake for all, one of them will say, “Her piece is bigger than mine. Why is she getting a bigger piece? That’s not fair.”
And parents, ever since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, have felt obliged to instruct their children on the reality. Life isn’t going to be “fair.” And the path into the future requires more than envy, tantrums and grabbing what belongs to others.
Cradle-to-grave fairness may be infantile, but the idea lives on, especially in politics and most of all in Mr. Obama’s mind.
Even Jimmy Carter knows life’s not fair.
Anyway, in President Obama’s mind it doesn’t matter if he’s Robin Hood or Peter Pan. We’ll always be the serfs.
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