More on Obama and the slow revealing of his basic philosophy of life

While campaigning in Holland, Ohio, in early October, Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher asked Obama about his tax plan. Obama said:  “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody."

I blogged about the 2001 WBEZ audio recording of Obama talking about how the Supreme Court is not doing what he wants this morning.  Here is a partial transcript (H/T: Bill Whittle at NRO):

Obama in 2001:

You know, 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 okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

Ah, the heart of his soul – he faults the movement for not providing the means for someone else to pay?  What does he really mean by political and economic justice – two SO amorphous terms that could be defined as almost anything depending on what the audience wants to hear (and that is a talent he has; sounding like what the audience wants to hear, yet not really defining his terms).  Bill Whittle got it right – it is about taking wealth and giving it to others.

That is why knowing his background, knowing his associates, is so important!  Any individual dot can be made to look like a "toss away" and unimportant.  Strung together, they do have meaning.

And the importance of each grows when each new dot, like this recording, is added to the group.

And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.

Course not!  I know a real conservative or a faux one – why wouldn’t Obama know the same – he IS one!

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, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] 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.

Again, I’m not a lawyer nor a Consitutional expert.  As an ordinary citizen, there are some things that the Constitution IS to provide (e.g., defense of the nation).  But the real genius was to enumerate what the Government could NOT be allowed to do in intefering with the expression of our individual rights.

However, as Obama is a socialist, individual rights should be subservient to the needs of the collective (i.e, the State).  NOTHING that I have heard him say or that has been written about him has EVER said that he champions the individual over the group.  Never.

And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the

civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and 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 suffer from that.

A caller then helpfully asks: “The gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn’t terribly radical. My question is (with economic changes)… my question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work, economically, and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to change place?”

Obama replies:

You know, I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts.

But he will find another way to do so….and I think that he is almost on the verge of doing so.  Heaven help us all, especially if the Dems get a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.

The institution just isn’t structured that way. [snip] You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, you know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time. You know, the court is just not very good at it, and politically, it’s just very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard.

So I think that, although you can craft theoretical justifications for it, legally, you know, I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts.”

Here’s the deal – the big deal is NOT the fact, as some Obama spinners are trying to do, Obama is rejecting using the Supreme Court as a way to redistribute Rights and Wealth.  Rather, the scary part is that he has not given up on the idea of implementing the philosophies he learned at the knee of Marshall, the subverting of the educational system by Ayers, the radicalness of Dohrn and Klonsky, and the agitational operations of of Alinsky.

As Ed Morrissey at Hot Air put it:

"Barack Obama wants to reverse that entirely.  And that’s radical change you’d better believe in, or else."

P.J. Gladnick at NewsBusters summarized it well:

"…and one segment of society has the basic right to the money of other segments of society."

Not a helping hand, not even a handout – entitlement city.  Essentially, this blows up the primacy of the Right to Private Property.  If I cannot expect to keep that which is mine, why would I work hard for it as it can be taken from me at any time?  If Government can decide, that at one time I can keep something, and the next session, I cannot, how can I plan?  Why would I work for something that I can then use productively for the benefit of me and my family, and my employees, when it can be had at a whim?

Abe Greenwald of Contentions had a great insight:

Yesterday, Barack Obama spoke in Colorado, and said something that may be of interest to Joe the Plumber:

Now, make no mistake: the change we need won’t come easy or without cost. We will all need to tighten our belts, we will all need to sacrifice and we will all need to pull our weight because now more than ever, we are all in this together.

The tone is miserable, and the suggestion is vaguely collectivist….It’s not that Obama is necessarily a socialist; it’s that his roots are so thoroughly intertwined with those of socialists he doesn’t know when he’s saying something that makes capitalists go white….The common thread is unmistakable. The government will tell the individual how to sacrifice for the common good–because the common good is ultimately the individual good. Start spreadin’.