We now have Barack Obama’s own words describing his strong conviction that redistributing wealth should be a national priority, thanks to the recent YouTube posting of a 2001 interview he gave to the Chicago public radio station, WBEZ. Obama’s words undermine his insistence that he really doesn’t share the radically anti-capitalist views of extreme leftists like William Ayers. During the interview, the former University of Chicago law professor and then-Democratic state senator was critical of the civil rights movement’s strategy in the 1950s and 1960s of focusing on the courts to bring about positive changes “on behalf of dispossessed peoples.” The problem with the strategy, according to Obama, was the fact that the courts wouldn’t do enough to redistribute wealth:
“The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society,” Obama said. “And to that extent, as radical as I think people try 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, at least as it’s been interpreted.”
That flaw in turn led to what Obama called one of the “tragedies” of the civil rights movement – failure to pay sufficient attention to creating”the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.” The task is made doubly difficult, he said, by the fact that “politically, it is very hard to legitimize” government action designed to bring about “redistributive change.” In other words, thanks to the opposition of millions of Joe the Plumbers, Obama’s concept of “sharing the wealth” can only be achieved by force through the power of the state.
Curiously, Obama has reacted to the opposition of Joe the Plumber with scorn, according to Wendy Button, a now-former speech writer for the Democratic presidential nominee. Button switched to John McCain when “instead of celebrating Joe’s aspirations,” Obama “mocked” him as not “a real plumber.” Besides, Button said, “Joe the Plumber is right. This is the absolutely worst time to raise taxes on anyone, the rich, the middle class, the poor, small businesses and corporations.” It’s also not the time to use the government to force people to conform to a Chicago pol’s abstract notion of how much wealth everybody else should have.
