The other day, a boxing student of mine, Phil – who also happens to be a judge and an amateur scholar of Shakespeare – recited to me a line by Calpurnia in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Alas, my lord, / Your wisdom is consumed in confidence.”

We were putting on our head gear and cups to do a little light sparring.

“I am not Obama,” I answered.  “My confidence is consumed in my wisdom.  I do not aim at false results; I do not shoot arrows of ideology when I am the bull’s-eye of a magnanimous, multi-faceted man.”

“You sound like Shakespeare,” Phil says.

“I am.”

“Remember.  No discussion of politics.”

“Even though I started it, mum’s the word.”

Phil is a dyed-in-the wool liberal.  He hates my conservatism.  I couldn't care less about his politics, but liberals can’t tolerate anything that is not them.  They are intolerant of our tolerance and label us fascists to hide from the fascism of their own radical liberalism.

“Shakespeare is above politics,” Phil says.

“Well, in that case, you know you could burn every book in the world and just save Shakespeare.  He’s all that matters.”

“Do you read him?”

“No.  Although I did read everything he ever wrote when I was young,” I say.

“That’s a long time ago,” Phil says.

“It’s a drop in the bucket.  I am sixty-six.  When I am dead, there will be no time.  I am the world that is disappearing.”

“You’re a jolly one.”

 “I do remember when Caesar told Calpurnia that he would go out: ‘Caesar shall forth.  The things that threatened me / Ne’er looked but on my back.  When they shall see / The face of Caesar, they are vanished.’”

“You do remember a lot.”

“Dribs and drabs.  I got hit too much in the head.  I admire blankness, numbness, and forgetfulness.  But excuse me for mentioning Obama.  Unlike Caesar, no one is afraid of him.  He is an embarrassment to himself and the word 'embarrassment.'  The only thing he shares with Caesar is his arrogance, not his courage.  Putin wrestles bears, while he strangles the neck of a putter in Bermuda shorts.”

“Courage is in negotiation,” Phil says.

“Negotiation is fear of taking a stance.  Death affirms the will to live.  Caesar said, 'It seems to me most strange that men should fear, / Seeing that death, a necessary end, / Will come when it will come.”

“And you haven’t read this in thirty years?”

“Truth be told, when you told me that you were reading Julius Caesar, I couldn’t help but bone up on it a little.  And what will come when it will come with Obama?  He mistakes vicissitudes for dictums and regards the Democratic talking points as Senate speeches.  He is a rhetorical mouth speaking over an empty mind.  He has a teleprompter in his mouth like corn on the cob.”

“Let’s get in the ring.  I’ve had enough of your conservatism.”

“Don’t hit me in the head.  I have brain damage.”

“I can sure tell that.”

“At least I have a brain that can distinguish variables rather than spit the old left-wing drivel into the spit bucket.”

We both climb into the ring.  The sparring is uneventful.  We don’t try to hurt each other, despite Obama’s creating a wind of divisiveness through the gym.  I once was a liberal.  I never hated them until Obama stirred the hurricanes of separation.

Obama came to office promising to unite the country.  That was one of his earlier lies.  It was almost as hurtful as his promise that people could keep their doctors and their insurance plans.

How does Sloan Kettering turn away a patient who has ObamaCare?  How does Obama sleep at night as the cancer patients are in their homes, awake, in pain?  Do his groupies throw confetti on the dying?