OBAMA IMPLANTS HIS POLITICAL VISION FOR AMERICA — BUT WILL IT TAKE?
My latest at PJ Media is up and instead of examining what the president said in his speech before Congress on Wednesday night, I sought to examine his underlying political philosophy — something he shared with us toward the end of his address.
It is not often that a president opens his mind and allows us to see its inner workings, to view the philosophy that animates his actions and drives him to achieve a vision formed from personal experience and thoughtful contemplation.
I believe Barack Obama is indeed a thoughtful man. Not a scholar or intellectual, but someone who has an interest in living what the philosophers refer to as “an examined life.” Perhaps no modern president has spent as much time nor traveled so far in an effort to discover meaning and place as far as the threads of his life are concerned. This much was evident before he became president. Dreams from My Father was, if nothing else, a dissertation on one man’s journey of self-discovery and his drive for self-actualization.
What made that autobiography unique was not so much Obama’s age when he wrote it (33), but rather his almost melancholy realization that he really didn’t fit in anywhere and that he must create his own community in order to feel as if he belonged.
If one word could describe the president’s political philosophy it would be “community.” Not perhaps the way we commonly understand it, but rather a more personal community he himself wishes to create. Michael Powell of the New York Times refers to him as a “communitarian.”
The communitarian strain in Mr. Obama’s thinking often surprises liberal supporters. Roughly put, communitarianism holds that individual rights must be circumscribed by the communal, with all the cross-generational, religious and patriotic obligations that implies. Sweeping change must be approached slowly; when government enforces individual responsibilities, a moral crisis looms.
Communitarians also hold that government and corporations are bound by obligations to citizens, like a clean environment, education and health care.
That crisis is upon us as the president is seeking to impose individual mandates on all to buy health insurance. The president sees this as simply an entry fee in order to join his personal idea of a community, one that if you are not willing to ante up, government will force you to fulfill your obligation.
Needless to say, any outrage against personal liberty can be justified with this kind of a philosophy. The president sought union when he first got to office, hoping that by imparting this vision of community, we could raise ourselves up and defeat the forces of partisanship and excessive ideology that has so tainted our politics these last decades.
Alas, it was not to be. And it was the president’s own vision of community that proved the biggest stumbling block.
It is this vision that has gotten in the way of Mr. Obama’s “post-partisan” personae. One can immediately see that it is impossible to reconcile his admiration for our “rugged individualism” with what he sees as the needs of the community. Those who fail to recognize those needs must be coerced and “obligations” enforced. Who but government can fulfill the president’s desire to form this “more perfect” community?
I admire the presidents desire “to seriously examine the skein of his thinking to discover a rational and coherent political philosophy.” Perhaps no president since Reagan has thought more deeply about government and its relationship to its citizens.
The irony is, both men started from roughly the same place and ended up with wildly different notions of “community” and “individual rights.”
And I think that is something to celebrate.
regardless of various definitions of communitarianism, it is rightly understood and executed (if it ever is) once the actual definition of “community” is achieved. Is it the family? Township? Region? State? Country? Clearly, all are forms of community. But the suppression of the desires of the individual for the good of the whole works only when the individual has the right of voluntary association with the community. This is why communitarianism worked for the early Christians, the Pilgrims, the Amish and some ’60s-style communes. To try and enact this on the state level is in no real way different from the statist Communism found behind the Iron Curtain.
In this, I am not suggesting for a moment that B.O. is Communist. And he IS to be applauded for being at least some form of thinker.
But if his goal is Statist Communitarianism, the road to ruin is straightly paved.
Comment by hoody — 9/11/2009 @ 8:00 am
Rick, I was with you right up to your last sentence. What is worth celebrating about an American leader arriving at essentially un-American conclusions?
Obama is truthful when he says that he wants to “shape the future”. Unfortunately, he wants a future shaped like something that 200+ years of American thought rejects. Individual freedom and communitarianism are polar opposites. I don’t feel celebratory about anyone who wants to take this country in the opposite direction to that of our founders.
Comment by MochaLite — 9/11/2009 @ 7:44 pm
Thank you for your PJ Media column, Rick. For Obama to “bring us together” he must govern from the middle. It’s also the path to reelection, and I think he is smart enough to understand this. Reagan did.
Comment by manoman — 9/11/2009 @ 11:19 pm
Have you lost your ever-loving mind? Your kind of conflicted thinking literally makes me sick - no wonder America is on its last legs. Communitarians be damned!
Have you never heard the term “Red Ronnie”? The man was a tool… and a dodderin’ fool besides… just like all the others in our lifetime.
Clearly, you must’ve been indoctrinated in America’s communist school system. And for this I am sad; as I was too. But truly, you and your buddies - over-the-edge-a-cated fellow travelers all - need to perform your hootin’ and hollerin’… and technocratic magick tricks… in someone else’s back yard. Your countrymen will be the better for it.
Looking over the lengthy blogroll at this site should find y’all plenty of sh*t-faced party-goers to celebrate with ya. What a witch’s brew of scumbags, liars, traitors, cabalists, and moral reprobates they are!
And hey, why don’t y’all up and invite good ol’ Amitai Etzioni? Now wouldn’t that be a media coup for the brethren!
Comment by Justa Numerican — 9/12/2009 @ 2:09 pm