When Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination later this week, he will portray himself as a shining example of the Great American Dream. With his impressive rhetorical skill, he will speak of embracing America’s common ideals and securing them for future generations and continuing on that glorious path established by our founding fathers, yada, yada. And he won’t mean a word of it.
To the contrary, Obama largely rejects the principles of individual liberty on which this nation was founded. His thinking is more closely aligned with Karl Marx’s than John Locke’s.
“In America,” Obama frequently scoffs, “we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.”
Or as Marx put it, “Don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, etc.”
Personal liberty and responsibility are dangerous, according to Marx, because they allow an individual to be “regarded as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself,” rather than one whose responsibility is to the larger society.
Echoing that sentiment, Obama regularly sneers that the right wing “keeps appealing to that old individualistic bootstrap myth: get a job, get rich, and get out. … And they also have hijacked the higher moral ground with this language of family values and moral responsibility.
“Now we have to take this same language — these same values that are encouraged within our families — of looking out for one another, of sharing, of sacrificing for each other — and apply them to a larger society. Let’s talk about creating a society, not just individual families, based on these values.”
Indeed, Obama openly scorns the idea that individual families should take care of themselves. In his speeches he mocks conservatives who prefer “to give everyone one big refund on their government — divvy it up by individual portions — hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on.”
“In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society,” he continues. “And it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life’s lottery, that we’re the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won’t be the chump who Donald Trump says: “You’re fired!”
Got that? Only chumps dare to dream. (This from the candidate peddling hope.)
Although Marx would wince at the mention of God, he surely would approve of Obama’s implicit disdain for private ownership and individual achievement expressed in this line: “As long as there are those who try to privatize our government and decimate our social programs and peddle a philosophy of trickle-down and on-your-own, I ask you to keep marching for a vision of America where we rise or fall as one nation under God.”
Marx denounced the “bourgeois freedom” that permitted “an individual separated from the community, withdrawn into himself, wholly preoccupied with his private interest and acting in accordance with his private caprice.”
That upsets Obama, too. In the canned speech he gives at college commencement ceremonies, he says to graduates, “You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, leave this city, and go chasing after the big house and the large salary and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy. You can narrow your concerns to what’s going on in your own little circle and live life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s.”
Marx was more succinct. Explaining why the right to own private property is wrong-headed, he said because it allowed “the right to enjoy one’s fortunes and dispose of it as he will without regard for other men and independently of society.”
Obama doesn’t quote Marx word-for-word–but it’s close. Looks like Joe Biden isn’t going to be the only plagiarist on the Democratic ticket.
Examiner columnist Melanie Scarborough is an award-winning commentary writer whose work has appeared in more than two dozen newspapers, magazines, and books.
