Obama: the real radical (Will Finally Gets It)

Four years ago, Barack Obama was America’s Rorschach test, upon whom voters could project their disparate yearnings. To govern, however, is to choose, and now his choices have clarified him. He is a conviction politician determined to complete the progressive project of emancipating government from the Founders’ constraining premises, a project Woodrow Wilson embarked on 100 Novembers ago.

Progress, as progressives understand it, means advancing away from, up from, something. But from what?

From the Constitution’s constricting anachronisms. In 1912, Wilson said, “The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of governmental power.” But as Kesler notes, Wilson never said the future of liberty consisted of such limitation.

Instead, he said, “every means . . . by which society may be perfected through the instrumentality of government” should be used so that “individual rights can be fitly adjusted and harmonized with public duties.” Rights “adjusted and harmonized” by government necessarily are defined and apportioned by it. Wilson, the first transformative progressive, called this the “New Freedom.” The old kind was the Founders’ kind — government existing to “secure” natural rights (see the Declaration) that preexist government. Wilson thought this had become an impediment to progress. The pedigree of Obama’s thought runs straight to Wilson.

Thanks, Mojito.

From Clinton, and tonight, from President Obama, America will have heard tired old ideas all dressed up in new words, but they are still the ideas tyrants always have used to fool "the People" into turning over their liberties--all in the guise of "helping" them (did everybody hear, 'We're all in this together'?)

Well, there is that reliance on "Divine Providence," "Nature's God," "Creator," and "Supreme Judge of the World," as asserted and celebrated by America's Declaration of Independence from government's regulation, taxation and oversight in 1776 by King George III.

Then, there is this assertion of some common dependency on government, as declared by so-called "progressives" Clinton, Obama, and their "believers."

Which view leads to individual freedom, opportunity, prosperity and plenty?

Will we take the words of two arrogant and defiant 20th Century men whose philosophy sounds more Marxian than Jeffersonian?

Or, will we take the 200+-year history of American liberty under a "People's" Constitution to limit the potential misuse of power by such men over their fellow citizens?

In a recent interview with Charlie Rose (CBS), the current President, responding to a question regarding what he might have done differently: “The nature of this office is … to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism,” not just “to [think] about getting the policy right” said President Obama.

To the youth of America: please contrast that silly statement from the current President with a truly meaningful one from one of your nation's former Presidents whose intelligence, accomplishments, and renown as Author of our Declaration of Independence qualify him to concisely describe the role of an American President:

In his own words:

1801 Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson

(Excerpt) "Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. . . possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?

"Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
= Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
- peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;
- the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies;
- the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;
- a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided;
- absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;
- a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
- the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
- economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened;
- the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;
- encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid;
- the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
- freedom of religion;
- freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and
- trial by juries impartially selected.
These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety." - Thomas Jefferson

Tonight’s speech is Obama’s last chance to take a first step toward accommodation with a country increasingly concerned about his unmasked determination to “transform” what the Founders considered “fundamentals.”

Will still doesn't get it. The idea that Obama is going to offer any "accommodation" is pure fantasy and naivete. Obama is a hard core Marxist who uses Alinsky's Rules for Radicals as his operating manual. Idiots like Will still do not understand what drives and motivates our Community Organizer-in-Chief who hates this country.

Will, you ignorant jerk. Don't you recognize Evil and the existential threat Obama represents to this country. This isn't about a difference in politicial philosophy and lumping in Obama with Wilson, FDR, and LBJ. Obama is unlike anyone we have ever had occupy the WH. This is about tyranny versus freedom.

Obama's executive orders are manifestations of the kind of control he is already exerting over this nation. He is circumventing Congress and no one has the guts to challenge him. The prime example is the backdoor amnesty that legalizes the state of 1.8 million illegal aliens and gives them work permits. We have the unprecedented case of border patrol agents challenging Obama in court because they refuse to violate the law. Will is AWOL on this naked power grab. HE DOESN'T GET IT.

Wilson, FDR, LBJ.. and BJ! BJ brought us the Third Way.

Bill Clinton has long been identified with the Third Way -- and I might add, the 1960s Marxist-Alinsky campus radicals (psycho spoiled brats) that took over the traditional, patriotic Democratic Party in the 1970s. Obama is of course an ideological issue of 1960s Marxist-Alinsky radicals.

Copied from an Internet source, Third Way is

"...Something different and distinct from liberal capitalism with its unswerving belief in the merits of the free market and democratic socialism with its demand management and obsession with the state. The Third Way is in favour of growth, entrepreneurship, enterprise and wealth creation but it is also in favour of greater social justice and it sees the state playing a major role in bringing this about. So in the words of... Anthony Giddens of the LSE the Third Way rejects top down socialism as it rejects traditional neo liberalism. —Report from the BBC, 1999"

Third Way means that ultra liberals finally! realize that communism cannot build wealth and thus cannot not work until there is wealth to snatch; and despite the BBC, Third Way does not totally reject neo liberalism; Third Way supports free trade and the market economy -- at least until those mechanisms have created the worldwide wealth that the Third Way ideologues wish to rule.

I have described Third Way as a Marxist revolution from the top down combined with Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) where the capitalists (useful idiots) are used to build wealth worldwide and then are discarded by the ideologues.

Obama marches with BJ and his useful idiots.

I agree with you that Will seems determined to view 0bama as a product of the “progressive” strain in American politics, rather than motivated primarily by something outside it and even more sinister. 0bama adopts the mantle of an American “progressive” when it suits his purpose, but he's really far closer to a Herbert Marcuse type of figure than he is to Wilson.

This quote from Marcuse sure sounds like the ultimate goal of the 0bama agenda to me:

“Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.”[4]

“Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse

But the mere fact that Will is now calling 0bama a “radical” is something. That is was allowed in the pages of the Washington Compost is even more astonishing.

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