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The Obama Watch
Simply a Statist
Figuring out Barack Obama’s place on the political spectrum.
One of the simplest ways of measuring political ideology is the famous baseball diamond. The bottom corner is labeled “Statist” while the other vertices, going clockwise, are “Left,” “Libertarian,” and “Right.” The lower-left and lower-right sides of the diamond measure Personal Freedom and Economic Freedom respectively. Bill Kristol is about halfway up the first base line, Lindsey Graham is somewhere near the pitcher’s mound, Tom Coburn is hugging the Green Monster, Ron Paul is in far center field, and so forth.
Where does that put Barack Obama?
I found myself asking that question the other day after reading something mind-bending. The Obama Administration wants to add e-mails to the list of records the FBI can peruse without a warrant or court approval. In fairness, the content of the e-mails would supposedly remain private. But the feds could access information like the name of the sender, the time of the sending, and other information like Google searches.
All this is curious because, as leftists gleefully sang in the streets for most of 2009, this isn’t the Bush Administration anymore. According to the MoveOn.org storybook, George W. Bush was a psychotic fascist who rode roughshod over our civil rights in the name of prosecuting an endless war. Barack Obama was supposed to be the savior who would dissolve the mortar of the police state with hope and change on day one of his presidency. Instead, it looks more like he’s riding roughshod over our civil rights in the name of prosecuting a different war.
The great civil liberties revolution that Barack Obama promised during the campaign died shortly after Barack Obama was inaugurated. Early on, the Department of Justice went to court and fought to continue the Bush Administration’s practice of indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without a trial. The DOJ also asserted a “states’ secrets” doctrine that allowed the government to withhold national security information for virtually any reason. Guantanamo Bay, considered a scab on the American spirit by most progressives, remains open for business. Oh, and a little resolution called the Patriot Act was renewed this year.
Civil libertarians spent most of the Bush Administration conjuring up images of government spooks listening in on phone conversations and FBI agents kicking down library doors. Obama seems determined to extend that power to the internet as well, the final frontier of unfettered capitalism. The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 gave the president power to shut down portions of the internet and the secretary of commerce unrestricted access to internet communications. The FCC is hammering out a way to give itself regulatory power over the web. It’s statism for the digital age.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In March, 2008, New York Times columnist Jeffrey Rosen wrote a column called “A Card-Carrying Civil Libertarian.” Cooed Rosen, “If Barack Obama wins in November, we could have not only our first president who is an African-American, but also our first president who is a civil libertarian.”
For those of us on the right who had grown jittery about the Bush Administration’s vast claims of executive power, Obama’s election had a (very slim) silver lining. If nothing else, we thought, an Obama Administration would pay more heed to our civil liberties. What a naïve and fatuous assumption.
Back to the baseball diamond. Where do we place Barack Obama? The answer seems to be squarely in the statist corner, perhaps somewhere behind the catcher, so far back that the fans seated in the first row behind home plate could touch him. The man doesn’t seem to have an ounce of economic or personal freedom in his body.
It’s sometimes hard to understand the philosophy of someone like Dennis Kucinich, who lovingly trusts the government with his money but not his civil liberties. But with Obama, it’s coldly, calculatedly, simplistically logical. He trusts the state over the individual in every aspect of American life. Period.
This administration just rammed through a bill forcing everyone to purchase health insurance. Its bureaucrats are hard at work on a campaign to make Americans less fat. Its ideological peers in Congress just passed a financial reform bill requiring government diversity czars at every major private bank. Its Department of Justice has gone after, among other targets, a school district in New York because a male student was being bullied for dressing like a girl.
The president doesn’t seem to believe the private sector deserves any breathing room. There’s no nook or cranny of American life that’s beyond regulation.
It’s been written that we live in a post-constitutional age where serious checks on the federal government, like the Tenth Amendment, aren’t respected. That’s not entirely true, but to the extent that it is, our only defense is leaders with limits. If the Constitution doesn’t check the growth of government, then our statesmen must check their desires to grow government.
Barack Obama doesn’t have those restraints. That’s why it’s so crucial we elect leaders who will limit his statism.
About the Author
Matt Purple is The American Spectator’s assistant managing editor.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (90) | Leave a comment
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Brian Mc| 8.5.10 @ 7:42AM
The allegations are tremendous. But, impeachment would lead to civil/class/race war? Yes, let's keep the alien in check and at some point in the future he'll just go away.
gypsy| 8.5.10 @ 8:23AM
Yup, we'll "manage" that cancerous tumour: its way too "controversial" to simply tear it out root and branch
Amber Stains| 8.5.10 @ 1:16PM
"...But, impeachment would lead to civil/class/race war?..."
Whatever it will take to permanently change the course of American politics so someone like this will never hold public office again.
Al Adab| 8.5.10 @ 1:39PM
Impeachment would lead to: President Biden.
Mojo Risin| 8.5.10 @ 2:24PM
So the flip-what!!! Biden wouldn't be half as bad as Obama and likewise wouldn't warrant re-election himself. Getting rid of Obama should be a top priority, with the thought of his re-election being death-inducing laughable...
Impeach Don't Wait| 8.6.10 @ 12:19AM
I sign myself "Impeach Don't Wait" half jokingly. But only half... I initially feared that removing Obama would just lead to more of the same. But I have changed my mind. I don't think Biden would be nearly as destructive as Obama because it's not Biden's personal mission to destroy Americanism. Every day Obama remains in office something goes bye-bye. And he looks way too happy about it.
Impeach Don't Wait| 8.6.10 @ 12:25AM
Well on second thought, I don't really know Biden well enough to say he wouldn't purposely destroy Americanism. Guess I'm just convinced no one could be as purposeful at it as Obama.
Mojo Risin| 8.6.10 @ 10:02AM
If Biden destroyed America it would be purely accidental and would warrant a "God loves ya" moment, a "Oh I didn't see ya there, 234 years of freedom, my gosh we'll have to fix that!!!"
Tim H.| 8.5.10 @ 8:13AM
"It's been written that we live in a post-constitutional age where serious checks on the federal government, like the Tenth Amendment, aren't respected. That's not entirely true, but to the extent that it is, our only defense is leaders with limits."
Excellent point, Mr. Purple. Even "minor" infringement on the Tenth Amendment is destructive. It's a matter of being "sort of pregnant" or, as my father has analogized, "If you put crap in a pot, you have a pot of crap. It you take a drop of crap and put it in a pot of soup, you have a pot of crap." Crude, granted, but applicable. Minimal usurpation of states rights, even for the all powerful "greater good", is a slippery slope to tyranny. We need to plug this hole and quickly.
Ken (Old Texican)| 8.5.10 @ 8:30AM
Mr. Purple,
He is a Bolshevik wannabe. Did you see the article over at NRO this morning where a czar is trying to outlaw lead in bullets and fishing weights?
Boy that's a great way to disarm the people isn't it?
Yeah, I'll give up my lead...at about 3200 feet per second.
Walking Horse| 8.5.10 @ 9:28AM
At 3200 ft/sec that lead should be encapsulated in gilding metal or copper, lest you foul your barrel, sir :-)
Remember the Alamo!
Al Adab| 8.5.10 @ 11:17AM
FMJ, but I understand they are hazardous to the health of Elk.
Al Adab| 8.5.10 @ 11:45AM
Hey Ken,
Do you suppose Mr. Purple blogs as Purpleguy?
JmsA| 8.9.10 @ 12:29AM
Sounds like an AR-15 to me.
Bob Miller| 8.5.10 @ 8:50AM
Exactly which part of Obama's oath of office was meant sincerely and carried out afterward?
SpiralArchitect| 8.5.10 @ 4:05PM
The Campainger in Cheif (aka Fundraiser in Cheif )has two things to be proud of...
His wife is now, "for the first time" pround to be an American...
and
He has a dog.
I seriously doubt Biden wants to see this nation turned into a socialist realm. Time to take out the trash and take back our country.
RWinks| 8.5.10 @ 10:01AM
If the Constitution is a dead letter, we must depend upon the men who lead to restrain themselves? That's always worked out well , hasn't it. The whole thrust of the Constitution is that men cannot not be trusted to restrain themselves. They never have in history and never will.
The delicate balance that kept us a free self-governing republic for so long was destroyed by despotic lawyers turning the SCOTUS into a permanent constitutional convention answerable to no one. That we would descend into the lawlessness of the Marxist Obama administration was inevitable once the Law began "living" (read "Arbitrary").
Who on Earth could have been so dense as to believe Obama---a committed Marxist revolutionary---would protect civil liberties. His Marxist proclivities were perfectly obvious to anyone with the ability to read long before the election.
Nancy in NC| 8.5.10 @ 11:41AM
RWinks, excellent post.
The problem with the Marxist, et al, is they have ono concept of good and evil. Their elitist little minds think all would be utopia if we would just do as they say. They know exactly how it all should be...what we should eat, think and say. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking is 100% opposed to human nature, especially the nature of Americans. Many of our forefathers left a place with that kind of thinking for freedom and liberty. We don't believe in collective salvation of collective anything...we believe in the freedom of the individual. These two trains of thought are as opposite as day and night, black and white.
I will never be convinced they are right. It's been tried...it has always failed.
jstwndring| 8.6.10 @ 7:14PM
Yes. I thought that Obama had maybe a snowball's chance in hell of being elected when he very publicly declared himself a Marxist in his answer to Joe the Plumber's question about wealth re-distribution. I was naive only in thinking that America would still reject such an afront to private property rights. Sadly, no-one was listening, or, no-one knew what the heck "fair and equitable redistribution of wealth" meant.
Ron Schulz| 8.9.10 @ 1:55PM
At this point I'm more angry with the American people. If we were so collectively stupid as a country to ellect this guy, then we deserve everything he has given us (or taken away). How did Obama fool us? The writing was on the wall. I'm no genius (just ask my wife), but I had this guy figured out three months before the ellection.
Louis Jenkins| 8.5.10 @ 10:26AM
"but also our first president who is a civil libertarian."
Gag me with a spoon why don't you Mr. Purple! I realize you're quoting someone, but for heaven's sake. Those of us with any know how realized that the Pretender n Chief was exactly that- a pretentious man. We saw behind his lying, his facade, his hollier than thou ways. 57 states my butt and all the other countless lies. And remember Mr. Miller (above), Obama had to take the Oath twice just to get it right. I knew then and there that we would be up the creek.
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 8.5.10 @ 10:29AM
"Where do we place Barack Obama?,.. perhaps somewhere behind the catcher, so far back that the fans seated in the first row behind home plate could touch him".
Isn't that about the same spot where they buried Jimmy Hoffa at Shea Stadium? I know most people think he was buried at Giants Stadium, but he wasn't, and that's why they've never found him. I've got my sources!! And Old Jimmy, he was another good Union Commie, so he's in good company back there behind home plate.
johnb| 8.8.10 @ 4:12PM
i like to think of him leading off third base.
i'm in a rundown between first and second base.
Al Adab| 8.5.10 @ 11:21AM
Statist is the correct word. All too many of our fellow citizens think first of "the government should do something" and fail to look to their own resources. Then when AZ turns to its own to enforce existing law they get sued by our centalizer in chief. Has he considered what happens when AZ just ignores what the feds say or when MO says quite clearly, "we won't play"?
State by state something is beginning; where it will lead we don't yet know. Drink a toast to "The Undiscovered Country" and stay alert.
darcy| 8.5.10 @ 9:27PM
De facto seccession, inch by inch. Make sure you're where you want to be when the dust settles.
And, can someone please tell me what "hugging the green monster" means?
Von| 8.6.10 @ 1:45AM
The Green Monster is the nickname for the left field wall at Fenway Park in Boston.
darcy| 8.6.10 @ 2:18AM
Thank you, Von. But then, Coburn is less of a man than I thought he was, more accurately, as I feared he was.
Nancy in NC| 8.5.10 @ 11:33AM
As someone who has studied the Constitution and our Founders, I can honestly say that the Constitution has been dead for over 100 years.
Our Founders pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to establish a country based on the best governments that had ever been known...the law of the ancient Israelites and the Anglo Saxons. They worked for years to reach a place, while not perfect, was the best that had ever been devised. Our nation flourished under that government.
But human nature being what it is, evil entities entered government, and it's been on a down hill slide.
There has always been evil, and always will be. The only way a republic will work is an educated citizenry that is actively involved in assuring that our trusted servants remain just that...trusted and servants. Once they have the slightest inkling that they are above the law or the citizens are not keeping the appropriate oversight, it's all going to go to hell in a hand basket.
I'm afraid we as citizens must see our part in what has happened. Our forefathers were bought off by this or that "prize" from the government, and the balance was skewed. The list is endless: farmers got subsidies, roads were built by the feds, education paid for by the feds, food stamps, social security...the list goes on. Personal responsibility was replaced by the big brother of the federal government.
Until we can change how citizens see their responsibility and duty to their country, I can't fathom much change except to the worse.
We are tiny steps from Communism, Fascism, Marxism or a Dictatorship.
God help us all.
John Galt | 8.5.10 @ 1:46PM
Very quickly, Nancy in NC,
Personally, I would exempt "roads built by the feds" from your list. The Interstate Highway System makes sense even up against the most strict reading of the Constitution, as it falls within the enumerated power to "regulate Commerce... among the several states...", and may even be construed to support the defense of the Nation.
In practice, the Interstate Highway System made sense Constitutionally, and became one of the catalysts of greater production, GDP, and standard of living.
Other than taking out the reference to federal roads, I agree wholeheartedly with everything else you wrote.
Nancy in NC| 8.5.10 @ 2:18PM
If you would look at the earmarks (aka The Big Kahuna) you will find that federal dollars are used to build roads in cities all over the US. Also water towers in specific towns are paid with earmarks (federal dollars). (Last years all of you that paid taxes funded a water tower in Ada, OK.)
I think the Constitution says Post office and post roads, so I grant that you are probably right. However why are some roads designated as state roads? They are still used by the postal service. If that were the only problem I wouldn't be so upset. Unfortunately, it's only the tip of the iceberg.
If anyone wants to see how earmarks are spent, you can find that at Taxpayers for Common Sense. I guarantee you will see red.
Al Adab| 8.5.10 @ 4:41PM
When Eisenhower pushed the interstate highway system, he and Congress used the national defense act not the commerce clause to justify it.
RacerJim| 8.6.10 @ 10:29AM
Right you are Al Adab. As Supreme Allied Commander in the European Theater of Operations during WWII General Eisenhower became all too well aware of the strategic importance of Germany's Autobahn (national highway system), the construction of which Hitler initiated in the early 1930's as a public works project to reduced serious unemployment.
A| 8.6.10 @ 12:06PM
National security was the rationale for highway system.
MOdawg| 8.5.10 @ 11:43AM
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." ~ Thomas Jefferson
"Which government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves." ~ Goethe
Ned| 8.5.10 @ 12:01PM
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
- Mark Twain
Mark James| 8.5.10 @ 12:08PM
Statism = Fascism Read about the rise of Hitler. The similarities are remarkable and scary.
RacerJim| 8.6.10 @ 10:36AM
Statism, Fascism, Marxism, Communism...call it what you will...the similarities are indeed remarkable and scary.
"When the people fear the government there is tyranny; When the government fears the people there is liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson
Bill Carson| 8.5.10 @ 12:36PM
Well, yeah, he's bad, but the American people gave him and the other Democrats virtually dictatorial power over every aspect of our lives. The American people, including the people who knew the danger of Obama prior to the 2008 election, will have to suffer as well. And the suffering will go beyond 2012 because I'd guess the American people will shrug their shoulders at this opinion piece. He's their little messiah, after all.
RCV| 8.5.10 @ 7:42PM
What is most striking about this site is the level of unbridled overstatement that permeates the postings. We're told that th US Constitution "has been dead for over 100 years" and that President Obama has "virtually dictatorial power over every aspect of our lives.". Stop this nonsense! We live in a free and prosperous democratic republic, one in which liberty is more widespread and power more dispersed than at any time in history! In the 19th century, even in America, 3.5 million human beings were OWNED by other human beings; women had no right to participate in the political life of our country, and the same was even true for many white males who didn't own enough property. People of different races did not have the freedom to marry one another, or even to live in the same neighborhoods as one another. Our ability to travel and to communicate with each other was limited. Today each of you can convey your political thoughts instantly to millions of others all over the world. You can organize effectively, elect whomever you want, travel to the seats of government and speak your minds.
Stop acting as if you are oppressed, middle age serfs, people, and recognize the power and freedom and blessings each one of us has. Then, thank God for the blessings of liberty, power and autonomy you do have.
darcy| 8.5.10 @ 9:49PM
What? You mean you missed the July 23, 2010 WSJ interview ("A Commandeering of the People") by James Taranto of Georgetown's Randy Barnett, noted Libertarian law professor? Here's a snippet:
"I became sort of pulled into the constitutional law world," he says, an area of study to which he was initially cool. "I was trained in law school to believe that all the good parts of the Constitution were gone. And if they're not going to respect the good parts, I'm not really all that concerned about the remaining parts."
It's that "all the good parts of the Constitution were gone" part to which I seek to draw your attention. Let's be clear here RCV, 7 million jews ignored the warning signs and sat tight while the Nazis closed the circle around them; I'm sure they, like you (?), could never imagine how ruthless and murderous their fellow Germans could be, or how successful Goebbels could be in propagandizing the nation. But some German Jews got the message and emigrated, the Kissinger family, to note one example.
While Rome burns RCV pulls out his violin and urges us to do the same; and why should he not? His side is winning, and they need us around to continue their looting of us for their statist programs.
RCV| 8.6.10 @ 12:52AM
You've got the analogy a little backwards, Darcy. The right sat on its ass when blacks were being denied their rights, lynched and when Japanese Americans were marched off to concentration camps. "Well, we whites are free!". That's the analogy to Nazi Germany. Whichnare the "good parts of the Constitution that are gone? The slavery part? The states' rights part that allowed subjugation of non-whites? The part where women couldn't vote? Oh, I know - the part where the wealthy didn't have to pay any income taxes!
We'Ve never had more freedom and more rights to participate in government in our history. Youndisgrace the memory of the Jews slaughtered in Germany to even suggest that health care reform is somehow like marching someone off to Dachau.
darcy| 8.6.10 @ 2:39AM
Oh yes, this participatory democracy thing is really working well: Judge Walker overturns the will of the CA voters; Obama's DOJ sues AZ because the FEDS won't enforce laws the people's representatives passed.
Oh yes, and the slavery thing. We fought a war to rectify that situation. You still trying to place a guilt trip on us for that? Shame on you.
Excuse me. Health care REFORM? I never mentioned it. But since you did, it is no reform at all, but merely a statist's dream of controlling your life and mine, all cloaked in the most saccharine sounding nonsense. Oh, but pardon me, maybe you're in one of the several "stakeholder" groups who make out like a bandit when the law is implemented.
We will never agree, RCV.
Oh yes. Japanese concentration camps. Where the Japanese Americans were carted off and never heard from again. Moral equivalence tripe.
RSTERN| 8.8.10 @ 12:45PM
As a first generation, immigrant, non-hypenated American born in a post-war DP camp, I have some insights into this subject. We are not free if much of our income is taxed away and the rest dissoved by inflating fiat money. Inflation being the weapon of choice of FDR and his big government successors. We are serfs with a recollection of freedom (if we are conservatives), we are wannabe masters of the hive if we are leftist government officials and mindless children if we believe the state is capable of disinterested kindness. It may be too little, it may be too late, but better to stand and fight than surrender to the left. Go Galt! Freedom! Darcy is correct.
Alan Brooks| 8.5.10 @ 3:09PM
Obama is the only person standing between us and another dreary Rove-type administration.
Go Barry!
RDN in Houston| 8.5.10 @ 6:36PM
Alan, sounds like you have a vested interest in totalitarianism. Perhaps you work in the public sector or are just ignorant? In either case, it is a crying shame that your kind vote.
RCV| 8.5.10 @ 8:55PM
Not only do "our kind" vote, but we were the majority of those who did in2008, and we won the election. Get over it.
RacerJim| 8.6.10 @ 10:53AM
The trend-line of any major poll you want to reference proves that an ever-increasing number of "your kind" who voted for NOBama in 2008 have since realized they made a big mistake, so many in fact that our majority is now 5% greater than your majority was.
RCV| 8.7.10 @ 2:18AM
The only poll that matters is then polling place.
Tim*| 8.5.10 @ 7:28PM
Brooks wants "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," Rahm Emanuel
Yeah , Barry Go .......Away .
purpleputz| 8.5.10 @ 9:35PM
9.5% and going up
Long Ben| 8.5.10 @ 3:28PM
Here,s a wish. Would that Obama were disqualified for not being a natural born citizen .
Then every agenda item he ever put his sclerotic pen to were unraveled as duly illegitimate. The peoples substance eaten out by all the bailouts returned to them that earned it , GM & Chrysler bond holders made as whole as the bankruptcy courts could make them , all shares clawed back from the UAW, Obamacare outta there , Sotomayer outta there , Kagan outta there and for icing , Obama sitting on a dungheap scraping the boils on his chiseled pecs until such time as he were granted the grace to find repentance .
RacerJim| 8.6.10 @ 11:03AM
I second your wish and, of course, wish that the dungheap "OneBigAssMistakeAmerica" is sitting on is in Kenya...his home country according to his wife, his paternal grandmother and several members of Kenyan's government.
martin j smith| 8.5.10 @ 3:42PM
A lot of people did not like Bush after eightn years. A lot more people dislike Obama after 18 months
This does not mean that Bush wins a medal. It means we went to a far worse situation in this country.
Now as for Obama's political status: He is a LIAR.
The Big Lie that is. But to be fair, for those who payed close attention, you should have known that he is a radical,Socialist or Marxist--to me it does not matter, ideologue with a distinct totalitarian bent.
What is fascinating is the more Obama talks, the more people walk away from him They are paying attention now.
Appleby| 8.6.10 @ 7:13AM
We are showing the Hippie Scum exactly what happens when the stupid ideas they were bleating about in 1968 are actually implemented. As we told them in 1968, they were rubbish then and they will be rubbish forever.
The one thing this whole massive 25 car pile-up will do for America is finally put an end to the Sixties. Perhaps in the end that will prove to be worth the whole mess.
jstwndring| 8.6.10 @ 7:34PM
"The one thing this whole massive 25 car pile-up will do for America is finally put an end to the Sixties. Perhaps in the end that will prove to be worth the whole mess."
-----------------------------
Oh, how I wish this to be true.....but, I doubt it. The one thing about these liars is that they never give up. Gotta give 'em that. They are persistent. The problem is that we on the political right just want to be left alone by the government. However, those who seek political power, especially on the left, never stop. So, as our founders warned, we have a huge responsibility to monitor the activities of our government to make sure they aren't taking away our civil liberties, because they will always try to. It's really our own fault. Evil never sleeps.
Radioman777| 8.5.10 @ 6:35PM
I'm waiting for the "loyalty oaths" to Vladimir Josef Adolf Obama.
Nate| 8.5.10 @ 10:36PM
Mr. Purple's "article" above is simply nonsense.
The term "statist" is fairly useless. I realize its rhetorical purpose is to attempt to collapse the differences between the extreme right and the extreme left, thus associating people further onto the left (relatively innocuous democratic socialists, like our allies and friends in Europe) with Nazis.
It's freakishly moronic and ignorant of political science, but it's a very popular line of argument, to use that word loosely, on the right these days.
Why people on the political right attempt to revise the political spectrum as it is used by historians, political scientists, and political philosophers is obvious. They know the fascistic tendencies in their own ranks, if properly identified, would terrify the valuable support of those towards the political center -- the demographic, that is, that actually moves elections.
O and Mr. Purple? I have a sacred custom of telling people who try to insinuate that people like me -- basically liberal Democrats, in the finest American tradition of FDR and JFK -- are either communists or fascists -- or, more lamely, "statists" -- to go fuck themselves, and so I kindly make that request of you now, douche bag.
Tom Osterman| 8.5.10 @ 11:22PM
If the jackboot fits, wear it! Your claim that you're a "liberal [Democrat], in the finest American tradition of FDR and JFK" only means that you view yourself as a benign, harmless statist, who respects things like the First Amendment even if it gives nasty right-wingers like myself a chance to spout off. People like you claim to be, if they ever existed, are a shrinking species, long since replaced by the hard-core statists who go after anyone who challenges either their beliefs ("political correctness") or their power. As for the latter, witness the thuggishness of groups like SEIU and ACORN.
Liberals, progressives, leftists or whatever have made no secret of their contempt for any notion of limits to their power once they get it ("Are you serious? Are you serious?"). I'm not insinuating that you're a statist, I'm saying it flat out, whether you know it or not, whether you admit it or not.
Nate| 8.6.10 @ 1:28AM
Tom --
"Statist" as a term is meaningless. You can fling it around all you like, but it has no heuristic, analytic, or descriptive value that I can see. Until someone shows how the word clarifies anything, I'll continue to insist that it is simply rhetorical obfuscation by people who are either attempting to distort these political categories deliberately or are just too dumb to know what they're doing. (I'm going to go ahead and count you in the latter group.)
jstwndring| 8.6.10 @ 7:49PM
"Why people on the political right attempt to revise the political spectrum as it is used by historians, political scientists, and political philosophers is obvious. They know the fascistic tendencies in their own ranks, if properly identified, would terrify the valuable support of those towards the political center -- the demographic, that is, that actually moves elections."
-----------------------------------------
I'm sorry, but, this is classic. You claim that those of us on the right are revisionists and then you go on to point out fields of study dominated by those of you on left safely housed in institutions dominated absolutely and completely by those of you on the left as, what, objective observers? Please. Look at the policies in place during Nazi Germany. They supported the same types of government programs that Democrats of FDR's day did on up to the present.
And just to clear up any confusing terms for you, a statist is someone who advocates the power of the state over and at the expense of the individual. If you paid any attention to ANY of the arguments made by those of us on the political right, you wouldn't need to have that pointed out to you. Your dismissive attitude only makes you look arrogant and ignorant. In other words, you fit in with the political left that have so dominated political discourse in this country until about 22 years ago. Those days are gone.
And as far as your last remark, take some of your own advice.
Tom Osterman| 8.5.10 @ 11:20PM
If the jackboot fits, wear it! Your claim that you're a "liberal [Democrat], in the finest American tradition of FDR and JFK" only means that you view yourself as a benign, harmless statist, who respects things like the First Amendment even if it gives nasty right-wingers like myself a chance to spout off. People like you claim to be, if they ever existed, are a shrinking species, long since replaced by the hard-core statists who go after anyone who challenges either their beliefs ("political correctness") or their power. As for the latter, witness the thuggishness of groups like SEIU and ACORN.
Liberals, progressives, leftists or whatever have made no secret of their contempt for any notion of limits to their power once they get it ("Are you serious? Are you serious?"). I'm not insinuating that you're a statist, I'm saying it flat out, whether you know it or not, whether you admit it or not.
FeralCat| 8.5.10 @ 11:26PM
The audacity of hope was for his campaign
Tyranny, thuggery and demonization are for his reign
His candidacy was rather like that of a Harry Houdini
His presidency is shaping up to be much more like that of a Benito Mussolini
Although he tries to slip it all in under another guise
To all his fascist action most foul we must still be wise
In spite of all the Harry Houdini lies
Dancing in Obama’s evermore Benito Mussolini eyes!
Sigmund| 8.5.10 @ 11:30PM
The Strange Case of Professor Obama and Herr Hussein is a real life drama playing out in the aftermath of the Presidential election of 2008. It is about the dilemma of the American citizen who sees strange dissonances between the new found Messiah, Professor Obama, and the vicious Herr Hussein. It is a vivid portrayal of a split personality, split in the sense that within the same person there is both an apparently good and an evil personality each being quite distinct from the other. In mainstream culture the very phrase “Obama and Hussein” will come to mean a person who’s fine words are vastly different in moral character from his actions.
After drinking a potion of Saul Alinsky's, Jeremiah Wright's, Rahm Emanuel's, David Axelrod's, Bill Ayers', Adolf Hitler's, King George III, King Louis XVI and his own creation, Professor Obama is transformed into the cruel, remorseless, pathological, misanthropic, pyromaniac Herr Hussein, representing the hidden side of his dual nature brought to the fore. As Professor Obama he has many friends and a pleasing personality, but as Herr Hussein he becomes more and more dictatorial, more and more scape goating, makes ever longer enemies lists, encourages demonization and dehumanizing of political opponents and becomes ever more fascist like as time goes by as Herr Hussein grows in dominance. After taking this potion repetitively, he no longer needs to rely upon it to unleash his inner fascist demons.
Nate| 8.6.10 @ 1:31AM
Sigmund --
You are a stupid bigot. I have a question: Do you know that you're a stupid bigot, or do you go through life thinking you have some special kind of enlightenment the vast majority of your fellow citizens lack? I always wonder about this.
Sam| 8.6.10 @ 12:50AM
It is all good and well, hoping to restrict or limit Obama, but I would like to slap the snot out of the people who voted him. With that many of "them" in this country, it may be too late anyway.
Jeff Perren | 8.6.10 @ 12:55AM
"The man doesn't seem to have an ounce of economic or personal freedom in his body."
Given that his every belief is an amalgam of Rousseau, Hegel, and Dewey it could hardly be otherwise.
Nate| 8.6.10 @ 1:34AM
"An amalgam of Rousseau, Hegel, and Dewey."
That's a strange animal you're describing Jeff. How do you come up with it?
I'd say you're an amalgam of Tony the Tiger, Dick Morris, and some guy I saw roller skating through the park carrying a pinwheel in each hand and wearing a tinfoil hat.
darcy| 8.6.10 @ 2:45AM
Only a blockhead, a supercillious twit, would not understand what is implied in Jeff Perren's reference to Rousseau, Hegel, and Dewey.
You win the prize, Nate.
Nate| 8.6.10 @ 10:23AM
You sound to me like an amalgam of Pat Nixon, Michelle Malkin, and Ronda Sue Treblearing.
RacerJim| 8.6.10 @ 11:14AM
I'd say you're too Kool-Aid impaired to opine on anything.
Jeff Perren | 8.6.10 @ 11:09AM
Nate,
Please read carefully. I referred not to Obama as an amalgam, but to his beliefs. That said, to give the shortest clarifying answer possible:
Rousseau: the noble savage (i.e. civilzation is bad, emotion over reason), environmentalism, and collectivism;
Hegel: subjectivism, collectivism, and State worship;
Dewey: collectivism, Pragmatism, and Progressivism
All these ideas - which are tightly related - informed Obama's philosophy.
All lead to less individual and economic freedom.
I hope that's a little less cryptic.
Nate| 8.6.10 @ 3:29PM
Jeff --
I don't know where you come by these three word synopses of these philosophers, but your understanding of them is deficient.
Rousseau's political philosophy was hardly consistent enough to be condensed to this barbaric precis you've offered. Dewey was hardly a collectivist, and as for your understanding of Hegel -- let's just forget about it. You haven't come close.
Instead of straying into territory where you clearly have not been educated to operate competently, why not just state as clearly as you can what specically you disagree with about Obama's policies and why.
Obama is a slightly left of center Democrat. (That is, he's left of the center of the Democratic Party, where Clinton was much closer to the center.) How that makes him a "collectivist" is truly difficult to understand.
The liberalism of the Democratic Party, on the other hand, has no such goal. While it acknowledges, as even thoughtful conservatives will, that sharp rises in inequality like we've experienced in recent decades strains the social fabric and causes problems, and while it believes that the government has some role in narrowing the gap between the working middle classes and the most affluent, it thinks mostly in terms of equality of OPPORTUNITY, not material equality.
Anyway, you should actually read Rousseau. He had a powerful influence on Jefferson as well as Hegel and Marx; he's certainly one of the most important political philosophers of the modern era. But please, spare us your reductions and simplifications.
Nate| 8.6.10 @ 3:32PM
I accidentally edited out an important sentence:
Socialism holds that a just society establishes material equality among its citizens. The liberalism of the Democratic party on the oteher hand....
Nate| 8.6.10 @ 8:04PM
Then again....
I suppose it's refreshing to see that you guys aren't comparing Obama to Hitler, Mao, and Stalin. Perhaps Hegel, Rousseau, and Dewey isn't such a bad thing ....
I see Obama as an amalgam of John Paul George and Ringo with a dash of JFK, RFK, FDR, MLK, and LSD thrown in.
Jeff Perren | 8.6.10 @ 6:25PM
"Instead of straying into territory where you clearly have not been educated to operate competently"
Nice insult, but too bad for you it isn't close to true. BA, Philosophy, UCLA (Rated in the top five in that field during my years there) + 40 years of studying philosophy (starting at 14, on my own and continuing on to today). But enough of my biography.
I won't take the time now to debate with you the nature of Obama's political philosophy or policies, nor those of the Democratic party, nor the nature of socialism, since I've too little to gain by the effort.
I was merely making a brief comment about why Obama is the way he is.
I'll just make this one response to your claim about the liberalism of the Democrats: to believe that equality of opportunity can be practically, much less ethically achieved through coercion via legislation is at best fantasy.
Finally, To assert that the Left is NOT collectivist, I think, shows which of us understands what. It simply denies what even thoughtful leftists will (usually with pride) acknowledge. That goes a fortiori for Dewey.
Nate| 8.6.10 @ 8:09PM
No ... You won't "take the time to debate" about Obama and the Democrats.
You'll simply make assertions about them and refuse to explain your reasoning, spicing it all up with a few random labels ("collectivist," etc.) you read in a Ayn Rand novel -- or, more probably -- on a website written by someone who read an Ayn Rand novel.
As for studying philosophy, you've got to be aware, at least, that attributing Obama's "beliefs" to Hegel is just absurd. And EVERYONE who thinks about political philosophy in the modern world has a little Rousseau in him. You can't even talk about your childhood -- when you began studying philosophy -- without at least briefly tipping your hat towards Geneva out of respect for the fruits of intellectual history you've been handed gratis.
Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains!
Nate| 8.6.10 @ 9:15PM
Your one argumentative claim is that "equality of opportunity" cannot be "practically" or "ethically achieved through coercion via legislation."
This is just simply false. Do you call the civil rights acts of 64 and 65 or Brown v. Board a "fantasy"? They certainly -- and certainly coercivelly -- achieved more equality of opportunity for blacks in this country who were being denied the right to VOTE all over the south.
Were these laws "practical"? I suppose it depends upon whom you ask. A black man who is suddenly able to enjoy the liberties guaranteed him by the Constitution would certainly have found them practical, but the racists who resisted them probably would not. They certainly were ethical.
John DuBose| 8.6.10 @ 7:32PM
Back in the day we had a short-crude saying.
He is a "control freak" meaning simply that he
thinks he knows way more than anyone else and should thus control everyone else.
I think that describes the attitude. In the end it will make most Americans mad and wreck his presidency.
Nate| 8.6.10 @ 9:17PM
For once I agree with someone around here, a little.
But I would add something important: Obama's actual policies are not nearly as unpopular as the tea party right believes.
He does, however, have a "style" problem and comes off as someone who believes the federal government can solve many more problems than they probably can.
Jeff Perren | 8.8.10 @ 1:20AM
"as for your understanding of Hegel -- let's just forget about it."
Just a couple of short examples, then I have to let the subject drop.
Hegel:
"It must further be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses - all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State."
The Philosophy of History, page 54.
"The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth."
The Philosophy of History, page 54.
"As high as spirit stands above nature, so high does the state stand above physical life. One must venerate the state as an earthly divinity..."
Philosophy of Right Sec. 272, page 258.
--
That sounds a lot like collectivism and State worship to me.
Adieu.
Jeff
Nate| 8.8.10 @ 9:25PM
It may "sound like" that to you, but that's because you're rifling through Hegel's text and snipping out sentences that support the thesis you've brought to it.
Your professors tried to teach you to do this sort of thing better, I'm assuming, but you craved an easier, simpler way, requiring less work. Which is how you found right wing reactionary causes.
Not telling | 8.8.10 @ 7:32AM
This post is correct, the government is effectively exempt from common moral law.
http://libertarianirsagent.blo.....ality.html