Graduates Should Focus On Clarence Thomas's Address @ Hillsdale - Not BO's @ Rutgers

Earlier this month BO & Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas gave commencement addresses @ Rutgers (May 15) & Hillsdale College (May 14) respectively & there couldn’t have been a bigger contrast in messages to the graduating classes.

Click here to hear BO’s address @ Rutgers – it was very reminiscent of Owl Gore’s address to the class of 2000 @ West Point that Carol & I attended for the graduation of our nephew.  After all the extraordinary work the graduates had done @ the United States Military Academy the Gore speech did not focus on them @ all but rather presented political points that Gore thought would enhance his chances of election in the fall.  How rude.

BO doubled down on this type of approach @ Rutgers in thinly veiled attacks on Donald Trump saying, to applause from the students & faculty, that building a wall is not inclusive - without mentioning that the people Trump wants to keep out are the poorest, least educated, lowest skilled people in the world who are taking advantage of America’s 126 welfare programs identified by the Cato Institute.

There was plenty of pandering by BO who brought up income inequality, raising the minimum wage, & making college more affordable.  People did not rack up college debt @ Rutgers to get minimum wage jobs so they could complain about income inequality – & yet you would not have noticed that any one in this enthusiastic audience had thought of this.  One day the audience may wake up to ask themselves if they had accumulated tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt so that they could get a minimum wage job.

BO got in the groove to the point that he told the graduates that the good old days weren’t that good saying that by almost every measure America & the world are better off than they were even eight years ago.  Of course this ignores that since 2008 employer business startups have been exceeded by business failures (400,000 new business startups & 470,000 business failures in 2011 according to Gallup), the April U-6 unemployment rate is still 9.7%, the GDP is growing @ a weak 2% rate (0.5% first quarter of 2016), wages are not growing & those who return to the employed ranks are working for a fraction of their former pay, the highest percent of 18 to 34 year olds in decades are moving back into their parents’ basements thereby not contributing to the growth of the economy let alone improving their own standard of living, BO’s approval of handling the war on terror with Islamic Fascists is underwater, & the great majority of Americans say race relations are worse than ever & deteriorating further every day.  In brief if the graduates bought it @ the commencement ceremony they won’t be buying it after measuring drapes in their parents’ basement.  In fact a recent FNC poll reported that only 26% of respondents feel they are better off then when BO took office.

Just like millenials do not know the devastating features of socialism under Sanders they also have no idea that in cheering BO’s comments against Trump wanting to ban Muslims from entering America they were supporting Islamic principles like American women never driving cars again & dressing in Muslim garb where only their eyes are visible – all in accordance with Sharia law that many poorly educated graduates never heard of.

BO did throw a few bones to decency regarding his remarks about disagreeing with Rutgers disinviting Condi Rice to make the commencement address two years ago but as we all know if the enemies of America never make it look like they are for America their hatred for our way of life will be even too obvious for people like Bill O’Reilly to ignore.

Click here to hear Clarence Thomas’s address @ Hillsdale College – it focused on freedom, patriotism, reverence for the Constitution, admiration for religious faith, & the graduates going forward making contributions to preserve liberty.  Justice Thomas demonstrated why he is the most consistent “originalist” on the Supreme Court believing that the Constitution’s meaning (like any other legal text) is fixed as of the time of enactment. 

Some selected quotes from the Thomas address:

“At the risk of understating what is necessary to preserve liberty and our form of government, I think more and more that it depends on good citizens, discharging their daily duties and their daily obligations.  In addressing your own obligations and responsibilities in the right way, you actually help to ensure our liberties and form of government.”

“Today, we rarely hear of our personal responsibilities in discussions of broad notions such as freedom or liberty. . .there is much more of a focus on our rights as citizens and what we are owed. . . not often [does] one hear of our obligation or duties as citizens, unless of course there’s talk of our duty to submit to yet another new policy being suggested or proposed.”

And making the connection between liberty & personal responsibility - “. . .hallmarks of my youth, such as patriotism and religion, seem more like outliers, if not afterthoughts. . .of a bygone era.”  When the great justice asked the graduates to bring back that bygone era he was asking them to return the United States to excellence & world leadership.