There is a most interesting post on Big Hollywood Blog that analyzes President Obama’s inauguration speech, and the whole lefty point of view, in terms of Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote.  It’s a long piece but I found it well worth the time.  Picture Don Quixote not as an idealistic standard-bearer of chivalry but an aristocrat railing against an emerging social order that frees people from the old feudal system, and you will be on the way to Cracking the Obama Code: Don Quixote vs. the Windmill Owners

Four hundred years ago, Miguel Cervantes described an archetypal delirious fruitcake who wanted to change the world by turning the clock back to the idealized Utopian times that never really existed. Imagine what Cervantes would write today about the futility of his satirical effort, if he were to learn that four centuries later, a whole movement would arise that emulated his loony character and elected one of their kind as the leader of the free world.

The author likens the philosophical premises, stated and implied in the speech and Obama’s record, to the windmills Don Quixote attacked, and proceeds to take a few whacks at them himself, from the point of view of a man of freedom.  Some of them:

Windmill #1: Greed is bad for the economy.
Greed is a known “progressive” code word for the freedom to keep what you earn – the sort of freedom that made the United States the economic wonder of the world. To be fair, during the presidential debates McCain also attacked greed in rather quixotic terms, although next to Obama he sounded more like the simple-minded Sancho Panza.

Windmill #3: Partisan discord must give way to “unity of purpose.”
A debate between political parties is healthy for a democracy. The trouble is, the debate itself became toxic when Obama’s own party was hijacked by leftist radicals whose idea of unity is the suppression of dissent. If we unite with them for that purpose, it will be the end of American democracy. Observe examples of political unity in Cuba, North Korea, and Hollywood. One-party rule was stipulated in the Article 6 of the Soviet Constitution that singled out the Communist Party as the leading and inspiring force of the Soviet people. We know how that ended.

Speaking of his responses to these lefty talking points, he goes on to say,

These are the facts that Americans, of all people, should be able to recognize as obvious. How did it happen that the usually realistically-minded Americans not only elected a man who is withdrawn from reality, but overwhelmingly wish him to succeed in carrying out his fallacies?

The answer is probably in the changing nature of our age and its heroes. How it is changing and why is being increasingly determined by those who set the tone in the American popular culture.

Obama’s popularity indicates that a new archetypal American hero has emerged – a sentimental, selfless idealist, preoccupied with perceived crises and injustices – real or imaginary – and is determined to fight the cynics for the people’s right to have good intentions – consequences be damned.

And he and his gang won’t ride off into the sunset, either.  Where’s the Man With No Name when you need him?

There’s a lot more worth reading at the link.

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