Obama makes ridiculous assertions all over the place. he takes the classical liberal ideas that underpin our constitution and turns them inside out and upside down to fit his modern liberal / progressive world view. He claims his project is “to bridge the meaning of those words [i.e. the words in the preamble] with the realities of our time.” What he means is that those words mean whatever we say they mean. rubbish.
Thanks to the American liberal movement we now have to distinguish between classical liberals and modern liberals or just plain liberals if we are in America. Modern liberals literally hijacked the name “liberal” because they liked the connotation it held in the general public’s consciousness. Liberal originally meant someone who espoused universal concepts including such new and innovative ideas (up to that point in human history) as freedom, liberty and equality.
The insane thing about modern liberals is that their definition of these universal ideas is radically opposed to the underlying assumptions of the classical liberals. And to make things even crazier, modern liberals believed in using any means to deliver the newly defined ends they just made up out of whole cloth to justify their utopian interventionist agenda.
Classical liberals believed in concepts that are completely and utterly ridiculed by modern liberals. take for instance a concept like Adam Smith’s invisible hand, which is the idea that self interest (NOT SELFISHNESS!) leads naturally to socially desirable ends. It is not from the benevolence of the baker, butcher or brewer that we get our bread, meat and beer! Markets deliver amazing results DESPITE the fact no one is micro managing them with arbitrary rules and despite the fact there is no common purpose required by society nor any thoughts of the good of society by individuals. Or consider other related classical liberal ideas like spontaneous order and the law of unintended consequences. Adam Ferguson (contemporary of Adam Smith) noticed that institutions like markets and money were the result of human action but NOT the result of human design. This insight is a precursor to more modern ideas of spontaneous order developed by F. Hayek in 1960s and 70s.
Modern liberals have turned the meaning of freedom, liberty and equality upside down and inside out. reading Obama’s speech reminds me what George Orwell warned about in his novel 1984 about how government uses language to manipulate the public and accumulate power.
Equality to classical liberals meant equality under the law and the impartial rule of law. Equality didn’t mean equal outcomes – and where it did mean this, for example in the French Revolution, the result was Robespierre and his reign of terror which resulted in mass murder of tens of thousands of bourgiose elites. Equality was the goal and if it took murder to accomplish this, so be it. The ends justify the means is the mantra of progressives. As long as the ends are desirable, then any means are justified. Classical liberals believe that basic concepts like equality under the law and private property and liberty can’t be compromised without compromising results. The means are the way to positive ends for classical liberals. Free exchange and free speech and private property and other negative rights (ensured by government – yes we need governemtn to ensure negative rights BUT NOT positive rights). government can’t inject positive outcomes into society. whenever it tries to do so, it must compromise one value for another. More equality in incomes requires coercion or public acquiescence to government knows best. either way it means direct or indirect coercion by government, which is the opposite of individual liberty.
Classical liberals believe that certain principles are inviolate and should not be conveniently ignored based on the expedience of end goals assumed by government (or public) to take social priority. No matter who sets the goals, it is tyranny.
Obama argues in so many words that the welfare and entitlement state doesn’t drain individual motivation; in fact he argues it makes us all stronger. This is just one more example where Obama pulls utopian claims out of his ass with no basis in reality.
Obama makes similar bogus claims about things like equality. He says equality makes an economy stronger. He wants equal or at least more equal outcomes – and he is determined to use government to deliver the results. While it is true that excessive wealth inequality leads to bad economic outcomes, it is also true that the most unequal societies are also the least “free.” The market doesn’t lead naturally to counter productive inequality. Of course all markets by definition must lead to inequality. How could it be otherwise. But it is just plain wrong and a lie to claim that free markets lead to the big always getting bigger. The way the big get bigger is by influencing government to pass favorable laws and rules that prevent competition.
Well intended (or more often arbitrary or self serving) government policies lead to inequality. Look at Latin America. The countries there are among the most unequal in the world thanks to heavy handed governments and unequal treatment under the law for the population. the same goes for Africa and China and increasingly the United States. The attempt to deliver Equal outcomes or a level playing field in society a utopian dream. Europe has lower income inequality, but they also have higher structural unemployment and unaffordable entitlement systems that are leading to financial ruin.
Obama claims everyone who works hard should have a chance to go to college. Why? who says life is ever fair? life isn’t fair. the sooner we learn that painful lesson the better. life might be fair in Obama’s bureaucratic utopia, but it will also be stagnant and unproductive.
Liberty originally meant freedom FROM government coercion. Rights entailed personal responsibility. Obama pays lip service to concepts like personal responsibility and hard work and american exceptionalism and rights and free markets, but he uses these concepts in ways (like I already said) that are diametrically opposed to the original intention of our founding fathers. Rights to obama are positive rights to health care and a decent house and decent wage and education and entitlement cradle to grave safety net. This notion of rights is a positive notion of rights, exactly upside down from the meaning of rights considered by the founding fathers. The founding fathers had negative rights in mind when they talked about rights. Like the right to free speech and to private property for example. These rights were rights to freedom from governmetn infringement. The notion of positive rights guaranteed by government is radically at odds with the Constitution. Obama has created his own reality by redefining words in a way that serves his revised narrative that he conveniently plugs into our founding history.
Up to now, I’ve noticed that most progressives argue like you argue John in the case of the second amendment: that (in so many words) the constitution doesn’t matter because it is an old story made up by a bunch of racist white guys who owned slaves and wanted to rig the game for themselves by denying suffrage to women. Obama’s genius is that he doesn’t cede the constitution to the Tea Party. Instead he just completely re-writes the history of the constitution and brazenly plugs it into his utopian progressive world view.
In the process he turns the classical liberal ideas underpinning the Constitution totally upside down. Progressives now claim that freedom is something that only government can offer to citizens. Obama says that “preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.” That is complete and utter rubbish. This nonsense could have come right out of George Orwells 1984. You can’t make this shit up except that Orwell actually did and now we are seeing how prescient he was with what we are witnessing today in modern politics.
Like I mentioned above, Obama claims that freedom requires collective action. IF that isn’t an Orwellian turn of phrase, I don’t know what is.
The sign entering Auschwitz says “Work Makes you Free.” We are increasingly in government designed and micro managed “work camps” (aka “the US economy”) and we are told this makes us free. John do you really believe we are free? we are free as long as we all agree to come together in common purpose according to the marching orders of government. that is Obama’s dystopian vision for society. NO THANKS.
Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:
Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.
For more than two hundred years, we have.
Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.
Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers.
Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.
Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.
Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character.
But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.
This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun. America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it – so long as we seize it together.
For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.
We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher. But while the means will change, our purpose endures: a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American. That is what this moment requires. That is what will give real meaning to our creed.
We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn. We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.
We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.
We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war. Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage. Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty. The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm. But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.
We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law. We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully – not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear. America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe; and we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation. We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom. And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice – not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.
We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.
That is our generation’s task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time.
For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial, and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.
My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction – and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service. But the words I spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty, or an immigrant realizes her dream. My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride.
They are the words of citizens, and they represent our greatest hope.
You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course.
You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.
Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.
Thank you, God Bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America.
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