Emery: Obama needs better friends

In his latest capitol report, Rep. Ed Emery, R-Lamar, says that President Barack Obama needs to choose better friends:

As parents we want our children to be wise, and we try to warn them about picking the wrong friends. They may follow our sage advice or they may not and learn at their own expense that wrong friends will give a bad impression to others and often send them in a wrong direction. Even wise King Solomon warned "He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed."

Public service is an arena where our choice of friends is continually under review by constituents, the press, and political activists. A question I have about those in authority is with whom do they surround themselves? If I do not expect to meet a political figure, I can accurately conclude a great deal if I know to whom they look for counsel or friendship.

I am very disappointed in the Obama administration’s abject lack of historical perspective which is visibly reflected in Barrack Obama’s choice of friends during his adult life. His associations with friends like Bill Ayers, Bernadine Rae Dohrn, Jeremian Wright, Tony Rezko, James Johnson, Franklin Raines, Kwame Kilpatrick, Alexi Giannoulias, Marilyn Katz, or Valerie Jarrett force me to question what he looks for in a friend. These are men and women whose public motivations and private lives are generally the kind my parents would caution or warn me against, not encourage.

This president has appointed 32 or more “czars” to direct government oversight and intrusion into everything from the auto industry to manufacturing to healthcare to wages. Both the titles and résumé's of the czars indicate either willful ignorance of history or embrace of the failed philosophies and policies of men such as Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. History records the foolishness and human tragedy of these men’s ideas.

Wisdom can be defined as “seeing and responding to life situations from a perspective that transcends my current circumstances.” Applied wisdom is choosing a path out of difficult circumstances that does not lead into proven peril. It is checking the map before charting the journey. Undoubtedly the most trustworthy map for the future is an accurate record of the past – a historic perspective. As Edmund Burke wrote in the 1700’s, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."

Missouri is not an island, and we will rise or fall with the success or failure of these United States. Even federalism as codified by the U.S. Constitution cannot fully protect us from national politics and policies. That same document weaves our fate inextricably into the fate of our nation. As a state official, I will expose and oppose federal policies that threaten liberty or Missouri’s future prosperity. As your representative I can do no less.