No! Deliberately misreading Obama?
Oct. 28th, 2008 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsThis morning I was listening to The Mike Gallagher show where he was trying to spread the evil further by claiming, perhaps accurately but, you know, I really don't care, that William Ayers has a Free Mumia poster in his office at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It just sounded like desperation.
But then he went off in the direction of an interview from 2001 in which Obama talked about the civil rights movement and its attempts at seeking the "redistribution of wealth." He played the interview at length, and then went off on how Obama was arguing that the courts could and should have done more. And I didn't get that at all from the quote I heard.
Here's the Obama quote in full, from ABC News:
It is a staple of conservative thought that the courts are not the place to seek change. If you want to change the law, change the law, don't have the courts go haring off looking for an excuse to "interpret" the law in a way favorable to your argument.
It seems to me that, if anything, Obama has chosen a path much more amenable to his vision of actually changing the law: despite graduating with a Harvard Law Degree magna cum laude and working as a professor of law, he's now a politician: he's taken the path that he sees as being the most positive toward changing the law in a meaningful way. He stayed out of the courts. The civil rights movement there, as far as he's concerned, is done.
Drudge had the headline (in his bombastic all-caps way), "TRAGEDY THAT 'REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH' NOT PURSUED BY SUPREME COURT." But that's not what Obama said. He said it was a tragedy that the civil rights movement became so focused on the courts as the way to address their grievances that they failed to create a meaningful, principled legislative package with which to push their ideals, or large-scale, people-driven instutions to back them. Having established the reality of de jure equality (a negative right), the civil rights movement became habituated to using the courts to push their agenda, when what they were really seeking were positive rights requiring changes to tax codes and civil services.
You might not agree with Obama's position on the way the law, economy, and society interact. I don't agree with it myself. However, nowhere in the Constitution of the United States does it declare that we are a capitalist society, and the phrase in the preamble to "promote the general welfare" gives everyone who wants to argue their position a lot of wiggle room. But the overall sense of the interview I get is that Obama, for all his seeming "radicalism," is pursuing his goals in the most appropriate manner possible. Conservatives should get over their bile and admire both Obama's moral position: he's making the changes he wants the way they want him to.
And Drudge is just a bald-faced liar.
But then he went off in the direction of an interview from 2001 in which Obama talked about the civil rights movement and its attempts at seeking the "redistribution of wealth." He played the interview at length, and then went off on how Obama was arguing that the courts could and should have done more. And I didn't get that at all from the quote I heard.
Here's the Obama quote in full, from ABC News:
If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples, so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order, and as long as I could pay for it, I'd be OK.Now, I don't know what Gallagher was going on about. It seems to me that in the central paragraph there, Obama is describing a conservative viewpoint, that the courts did not, and should not, legislate from the bench. The Warren Court, he seems to be saying, stuck with the traditional interpretation of the Constitution as one restraining the government from certain actions against its citizens, even to acheive goals the current administration and legislation depicts as necessary.
But, The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, as least as it's been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted in the same way that, generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn't shifted.
One of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement, was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways, we still stuffer from that.
It is a staple of conservative thought that the courts are not the place to seek change. If you want to change the law, change the law, don't have the courts go haring off looking for an excuse to "interpret" the law in a way favorable to your argument.
It seems to me that, if anything, Obama has chosen a path much more amenable to his vision of actually changing the law: despite graduating with a Harvard Law Degree magna cum laude and working as a professor of law, he's now a politician: he's taken the path that he sees as being the most positive toward changing the law in a meaningful way. He stayed out of the courts. The civil rights movement there, as far as he's concerned, is done.
Drudge had the headline (in his bombastic all-caps way), "TRAGEDY THAT 'REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH' NOT PURSUED BY SUPREME COURT." But that's not what Obama said. He said it was a tragedy that the civil rights movement became so focused on the courts as the way to address their grievances that they failed to create a meaningful, principled legislative package with which to push their ideals, or large-scale, people-driven instutions to back them. Having established the reality of de jure equality (a negative right), the civil rights movement became habituated to using the courts to push their agenda, when what they were really seeking were positive rights requiring changes to tax codes and civil services.
You might not agree with Obama's position on the way the law, economy, and society interact. I don't agree with it myself. However, nowhere in the Constitution of the United States does it declare that we are a capitalist society, and the phrase in the preamble to "promote the general welfare" gives everyone who wants to argue their position a lot of wiggle room. But the overall sense of the interview I get is that Obama, for all his seeming "radicalism," is pursuing his goals in the most appropriate manner possible. Conservatives should get over their bile and admire both Obama's moral position: he's making the changes he wants the way they want him to.
And Drudge is just a bald-faced liar.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Well...
Date: 2008-10-29 09:37 pm (UTC)Nine times out of ten, when people suggests there are entire categories of things "the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf" that aren't being done now, they're seeking a dramatic expansion in government authority.
And ten times out of ten when someone announces an desire to "put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change" they want to replace the current political system so that those who are currently weak and poor can enslave those who are not.
All of these statements are standard Marxist rhetoric, and I'm surprised you didn't recognize them as such.
But I guarantee you, William Ayers would recognize that language, and it was people like that to whom Obama was speaking back then. It was people like Ayers who taught him to talk like that.
I'm absolutely sure that Obama was exposed to a much wider range of political thought since then. You can't very well be a US Senator without people explaining to you the inadequacies of Marxist dogma. It's also certain that Obama has toned down his use of Marxist rhetoric in his speeches, though it's certainly not gone yet, as his recent reference to redistribution proved so clearly.
But all I can do is hope that Obama is no longer a Marxist, because it's very likely we'll find out, one way or the other, in the next several months. And if he still believes the kind of crap he was spouting in 2001, we are all seriously screwed.
. png
Re: Well...
Date: 2008-10-30 06:31 am (UTC)For my part, I believe in a meritocracy, but a true meritocracy requires equality of opportunity, which is not remotely the case when the distribution of wealth is highly skewed. If there were no inheritance I would maybe argue that the system needs no controls, but inheritance allows the creation of dynasties which results in a feedback loop, concentrating wealth at the top.
Is it Marxist to suggest that some intervention in the system is required to approximate a curve closer to what we would see in a strict meritocracy? Because a highly progressive tax structure is the simplest and arguably most effective and equitable way to achieve that. It's not an attempt to enforce equality of results, it's an attempt to remove a massive but, unfortunately, unavoidable spoiler from the equation.
Anonymous Blog Reader #127
Re: Well...
Date: 2008-10-30 07:14 am (UTC)You're using that word 'equitable' in a way that suggests you believe it's okay to seek equity. I don't.
It isn't merit, or the absence of political coercion-- that kind, or any other-- that leads to power and money being concentrated in the hands of a few. Merit isn't sufficient to guarantee success, and it's not strictly necessary, either.
As for inherited fortunes, heirs piss away fortunes with nearly 100% reliability unless they learn to be worthy of their wealth. If they do, there's no problem. If they don't, there's no fortune. Usually they don't.
The only reliable way to end up in a situation where a small number of people have power over others is to allow that power to exist in the first place. That's where 'ocracies' come from. Hell, they're usually named after the people who gain undeserved power.
If there's no source of undeserved power, there's no 'ocracy' and nothing to worry about. In a way, who really cares whether politicians steal elections if there's no political power beyond deciding how many cops or soldiers to employ? A government that spends its time deciding whether the free parking spaces should be limited to one hour or two isn't ever going to get out of control.
Limiting political power was the original idea behind the US Constitution. The Framers screwed up in various ways, but the principle was sound. We can learn from their mistakes and do a better job next time.
But if we continue to elect more and more socialist politicians, there's no clear, safe path to that result.
. png
Re: Well...
Date: 2008-10-30 08:21 am (UTC)I'm also curious: do you truly believe that no attempt whatsoever should be made to constrain the Gini index? Your statement about heirs may be true a large percentage of the time, but the fact of the matter is that the index has been steadily and consistently increasing in the U.S. over the last 40 years, so obviously any alleged self-correcting mechanism is not entirely effective. There is a vicious cycle at work in our economy, and it can't continue indefinitely. Compare to Europe, which for the most part shows stability. The U.S. has historically been an exception to the negative correlation between the Gini index and economic growth, but there are definite signs that that may not remain the case.
Our views actually seem to be somewhat similar except that I believe that excesses of both political and economic power can result in unjust interference in individual liberty, while you seem to believe that only political power is a concern. From my point of view, I see political power as the only real check against abuses of economic power, and so some government interference in the economy is a necessary evil.
Anonymous Blog Reader #127
Re: Well...
Date: 2008-10-30 08:44 am (UTC)Economic power established without political intervention is a fundamental human right.
The Gini index is just dumb. It isn't much worth thinking or writing about, and it's certainly not worth DOING anything about. But I will say that the Gini index in the United States appears to be strongly correlated with, and adequately explained by, our increasingly diverse society. We're not making the rich richer as much as we're just bringing in more poor people. Just as significantly, we're doing a better job of including poor people in economic surveys. (Which we should, of course.)
When you say "abuses of economic power" all I hear is "uses of economic power", and I can't really get bent out of shape over that.
. png