Barack And The Beanstalk

     This weekend as I was reading my four year old granddaughter Jack And The Beanstalk for the sixth time in as many hours, I realized that the tale was custom made for our current President. Barack Obama would of course play the protagonist role of Jack. The giant represents corporate America and the wealthy. The magic beans are the empty promises of socialism and the cow Jack traded away for them is Capitalism.
     The story would have us believe that the giant's nefarious nature is a result of his rather large size. But the reader is never shown any evidence that the giant actually did anything particularly wrong or evil. By contrast, Jack and his mother are suppose to be considered virtuous by the sheer fact that they are poor. One day the giant is minding his own business and Jack comes into his neighborhood and steals from him. First two sacks of gold, then his hen that lays golden eggs and finally a golden harp that sings. When the giant pursues Jack, he attempts to murder the giant by chopping down the beanstalk while he is descending it.
     As an alternative to supporting themselves with criminal activity executed at the giant's expense, Jack and his mother could have kept their cow and used it to plow their land and plant crops. Or Jack could have used the beanstalk as a pathway to a more prosperous neighborhood where he might secure employment. Jack's mother could have taken in laundry or darned socks between milking the cow and selling the milk to their neighbors. But Jack and his mother decided not to help themselves and depended on redistributing the giants wealth to survive and live happily ever after.
     Barack Obama believes that capitalism is an old cow that he intends on trading for the magic beans of socialism. He has partially succeeded in convincing many Americans that the giants in our country are bad because they are big. He uses the hatred from class warfare to grow his beanstalk of federal regulations high enough to reach all the wealth of this nation's giants. But what is not understood by people who think as Jack and his mother, is that once the giants' wealth has been depleted, leaders like Barack Obama will come after the little bit that they have. Then there will be no beanstalk to climb, and no giant to support them or even an old cow to produce them milk or pull a plow. This is the pure folly of people like Barack Obama who would trade the dependable cow of the morally superior system of capitalism, for the magic beans of the corrupt and immoral system of socialism.