OBAMA ON SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS: “SOCIETY HAS NOT PASSED THIS EXAM WITH GOOD GRADES,” the semi-retired president observed after he “walked in late Sunday on a moment of silence being held by world leaders in Turkey to honor the victims of Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris,” the Washington Times reports.

Why do we keep letting this great man down time and time and time again?

As the late Kenneth Minogue wrote in the New Criterion in the summer of 2010:

My concern with democracy is highly specific. It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us.

I’d insert the Brecht quote about the government simply dissolving the people and electing another here, but of course, Obama is in the process doing just that. Fortunately for Michigan residents at least, in the wake of the terrorist attack on Paris, their GOP governor is putting “refugee acceptance efforts on hold,” AP reports.