Tarnished eloquence: Obama’s new ideas turn out to be the same old same old

WORLD ^ | 5-3-08 | Marvin Olasky

[Caleb1411]

I've been cheering for Barack Obama in his Democratic war with Hillary Clinton for both positive and negative reasons. Positive: He's a terrific talker, he didn't seem antagonistic toward Christianity, and we could use a president who inspires college students and twentysomethings not to be so cynical. Negative: A been-there, done-that feeling concerning the Clintons.

But now I have that déjà vu sense concerning Obama as well. For 25 years I've taught at the University of Texas and seen the arrogance of academia and the belittling of the purportedly benighted masses. Obama's San Francisco comment about small-town (and small-minded) people clinging to religion out of bitterness does not indicate any change from standard-issue college liberal thought—or from the attitudes of most Democratic nominees since 1972.

Obama has publicly regretted his wording—"I didn't say it as well as I could have"—while standing by the substance of his indictment of non-Obama America. As a result the picture is becoming clearer. Pieces of the puzzle include the Rev. Wright's jeremiads about "the U.S. of K.K.K.," Michelle Obama's critique of a broken-souled, "just downright mean" America, and Obama's voting record that, according to National Journal, shows him to be the furthest to the left among 100 U.S. senators.

I originally thought (or hoped) that Obama had something new to say, but all he is offering are imprecations familiar on any major college campus. He is channeling Herbert Marcuse, who saw Americans in the throes of "false consciousness"; John Kenneth Galbraith, who saw middle-class Americans as preyed upon by corporate advertising; and historian Richard Hofstadter, who saw non-liberals as paranoid.

Obama is also emerging as a more eloquent version of four recent Democratic presidential candidates—Mondale (1984), Dukakis (1988), Gore (2000), and Kerry (2004)—all of whom polled well early in their campaigns but faltered as they failed to understand and convey the truth that the United States is a country founded on ideals rather than tribal ethnicity or simple economic interests.

That idealism moves some millionaires to vote Democratic for environmental reasons and some poor folks to vote Republican for pro-life reasons. And those voters who do put economics first often think long-term. William McKinley beat William Jennings Bryan in 1896 and 1900 because many workers cared more about opportunity for their children than maximization of current income. George McGovern in 1972 was surprised to find the working poor opposing his guaranteed income proposal because they saw themselves as upwardly mobile and wanted others to compete as well.

Many academic liberals see themselves as eminently rational and others as warped or dumb. Some conservatives readily grasp the importance of worldviews because, surrounded as they are by generally hostile big media, they come to see how people look at the same facts and come to different conclusions. Many liberals aren't forced daily to think presuppositionally, so it's easy for them to view dissenters as psychologically or intellectually inferior.

I was in Ethiopia as the story of Obama's San Francisco declaration rolled through the press, and from the vantage point of Addis Ababa's slums it's hard to accept. The homes of the American poor are not pressed-together shanties of cardboard, mud, and corrugated metal that sit precariously perched on slopes of mud and feces. Our health system can be frustrating but people with fractures don't wait for days in dark corridors without medical attention.

The audacious part of Obama's hopefulness is now clear: He wants all Americans to move to the liberal side, and then we'll have unity. He audaciously characterizes millions of contemporary Americans as crippled individuals whose only hope is the nanny state. He will bring us together not with new ideas but with eloquent repackaging of the same old same old.

The sad part of this saga is that young people excited by Obama's eloquence may slide all the way to bitterness if Hillary Clinton somehow grabs the nomination or, as is more likely, John McCain plays the Electoral College map well and wins in November. Four years of Barack Obama would educate those who have been following this season's Pied Piper, but the tuition cost would be more than this nation should bear.

[PetroniusMaximus]

“...he didn’t seem antagonistic toward Christianity...”

This person is a dolt.

[Always Right]

Obama is nothing but an old style far-left ACLU liberal type. The only thing new about it is the skin color.

[SpaceBar]

The first sentence is reason enough to move on to another thread.

[FunkyZero]

I just watched this idiots speech in Indiana how he is going to fix gas prices etc etc... he basically just gave the standard evil big oil speech, not realizing the “windfall profits” he is going to tax is the very profit that props up the 401k accounts of many idiot democrats who don’t even know that’s where their growth is coming from.
Hey Obama, here’s a idea.. instead of punishing the oil industry who operates on about 8% profits, how about you force futures traders to hold their oil for a min of 180 days when they buy?
I bet that would put a screeching stop to this volatility inside a week. These idiots really torque me off.. and average Joe liberal is sitting there in front of his TV yelling “rabble rabble, stick it to them, yea!”
Good God in heaven, why do we have to live with liberals, completely void of any ability to reason or think in realistic terms?

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

To Quote the famous Chauncey Gardner

Reporter...Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives?

Chauncey...As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.

Sounds familiar enough to me.

[L98Fiero]

“This person is a dolt.”

Didn’t read the article, huh? He goes on to explain how he was mistaken.

[tennteacher]

I liked it. Bravo.

The last sentence trumps the first.

[L98Fiero]

“The first sentence is reason enough to move on to another thread.”

Just can’t make it thorough an article if it doesn’t make your little bobble-head start nodding in agreement at he first sentence, huh?

Shame, you missed a decent article.

[PetroniusMaximus]

“Didn’t read the article, huh? “

Oh, I read it. He was a dolt for even being taken in to begin with.

[Veto!]

The sight of Obama standing in front of a gas pump made me gag. Couldn’t watch. I wonder what he drives...probably some as guzzler, or perhaps he doesn’t know how to drive. Limos all the way.

[DuncanWaring]

Read the whole article.

...he didn't seem antagonistic toward Christianity ...

He's certainly antagonistic toward "Thou shalt not murder" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods".

[6SJ7]

The sight of Obama standing in front of a gas pump made me gag. Couldn’t watch. I wonder what he drives...probably some as guzzler, or perhaps he doesn’t know how to drive. Limos all the way.

I'm betting he operates a gas pump as well as he bowls.

[Wuli]

ALL Obama’s actual “ideas” are 1960’s retreads, as are the leftists in the shadows behind him

[Reeses]

What’s new is the Democrat nomination is still in play so late in the election. That’s forced the Democrat candidates to keep their sales pitches dark and envious. That doesn’t sell so well with swing voters. The MSM is preoccupied so McCain is not taking the usual sniper fire. McCain has a good chance to win this. It’s sad we didn’t get a conservative into that spot.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"I originally thought (or hoped) that Obama had something new to say, but all he is offering are imprecations familiar on any major college campus. He is channeling Herbert Marcuse, who saw Americans in the throes of "false consciousness"; John Kenneth Galbraith, who saw middle-class Americans as preyed upon by corporate advertising; and historian Richard Hofstadter, who saw non-liberals as paranoid. "

In 2006 someone on talkleft.com actually suggested that Obama needed to read and study Richard Hofstadter's theories: What Barack Obama Needs to Learn from Richard Hofstadter (posted July 13, 2006).

It's surprising this has not received more attention about Obama and where his ideas come from. Oabama's comments about bitter, confused voters in small towns clinging to guns and religion is essentially Hofstadter's theory of alienated, discontented "pseudo-conservatives" as spelled out in Richard Hofstadter's "The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt," The American Scholar, Winter 1954-55 and The Paranoid Style. Either Obama read that stuff or the writer who wrote his "bitter" San Francisco talking points did. Hofstadter actually used the language of "bitter" feelings and personal "frustrations" being the cause of opposition to liberalism.

[coffee260]

Why I Stopped Wearing My Wedding Ring

I'm writing this letter today to let you know that I stopped wearing my wedding ring, and to tell you why.

 

I stopped wearing my wedding ring shortly after the wedding. Instead I hoped to show my loving devotion to my wife by explaining my love and devotion through acts and deeds.

 

The truth is that right after the wedding I wore my wedding ring. But shortly after the wedding, particularly because as we’re talking about fidelity and faithfulness, that became a substitute for I think true love, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to my marriage.

 

I decided I won’t wear that wedding ring on my finger. Instead, I’m going to try to tell my wife what I believe will make this marriage great, and hopefully that will be a testament to my love.

 

But for some reason, I still get questions about my love and devotion to my wife. People tell me that it’s not that they believe I’m unfaithful. But that they don’t understand my reasoning for not wearing my wedding ring. They wonder why I don’t wear my wedding ring as well as show my love and devotion? The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

 

So maybe, dear reader, you can help explain to me why people keep questioning my fidelity?

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Opposition to liberalism based on "bitter" feelings and "frustrations" from Professor Richard Hofstadter:

"He is the most bitter of all our citizens....

Political life is not simply an arena in which the conflicting interests of various social groups in concrete material gains are fought out; it is also an arena into which status aspirations and frustrations are, as the psychologists would say, projected. It is at this point that the issues of politics, or the pretended issues of politics, become interwoven with and dependent upon the personal problems of individuals. We have, at all times, two kinds of processes going on in inextricable connection with each other: interest politics, the clash of material aims and needs among various groups and blocs; and status politics, the clash of various projective rationalizations arising from status aspirations and other personal motives."

"Such status-strivings may help us to understand some of the otherwise unintelligible figments of the pseudo-conservative ideology — the incredibly bitter feeling against the United Nations, for instance." - Richard Hofstadter, "The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt," The American Scholar, Winter 1954-55.

This is the ideology behind Obama's San Francisco comments.

[FastCoyote]

Yup, this is a rehash of stuff I saw at Stanford in the early 70’s, Bobby Seal and the Black Panther baloney warmed over. elitist revolutionary maoist drivel

[phillyfanatic]

The Messiah is simply another pacifist socialist McGovern Ayer Alinsky type of Democrat. If he can sell this slop to the nation, then we are doomed as a free enterprise capitalist republican democracy.