High tide of Obamaism

by Scott Johnson in Barack Obama, Defending the Founders, Progressives and progressivism

It may be too optimistic to wonder if commencement speech to the graduating students of Ohio State University (White House video here) might not have represented the high tide of Obamaism. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but I wonder if it might not be (bumpily, with the implementation of Obamacare before us) downhill from here:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

The Founders promoted the constitutional form of government with a system of checks and balances to frustrate the will of the people that Obama presents as “self-rule.” They rejected “pure democracy” as a menace to liberty and property, providing “nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.” Looking at history, Publius held that “such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.” Obama is the kind of politician the Founders warned us against and it is time for us to reclaim our heritage.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/05/high-tide-of-obamaism.php