Over at Townhall was a piece on a phrase from Obama’s 2nd Inaugural Address (a paeon to Progressivism – once again “repurposing language” to sound as if he agree with the Founding Fathers but absolutely up ending the original intent):
“Preserving our individual liberties,” the President said, “ultimately requires collective action.”
A phrase worthy of the Hobbesian philosophy that Rights are determined solely by Government; that is to say, by the Collective and allocated solely by politics and power. The piece goes through the speech and comments on how “collectivism on steroids” Obama spoke on a number of points in his speech. I did not listen to the speech live nor have I yet read the speech in its entirety but from what I have gathered in reading other commentary, the Founders are not rolling over in their graves but were exhumed by Obama and handled as dissenters in the finest tyrannical fashion (“see that wall?”).
I had my own thoughts on this phrase and how it violated our native political philosophy and instead, is trying to “fundamentally transform” what has been our heritage into something more Marxist / Socialistic. While it is true that the Founders agreed on the notion of “we must all hang together or we will all hang separately”, they were fighting to standalone and apart from a tyrannical Government that made decisions for all apart from their input. After all, that is the history of Mankind – evil people wishing to either hang on to or gather power into themselves. For politicians, in most cases (and certainly almost all on the Left) crave power and control far more than the “capitalists” they disdain and castigate for being greedy for mere money.
My thoughts (such as they are):
- No, my Individual Freedom does not depend on collective action. It does, however, require a belief in something bigger than self, and bigger than mere govt. It requires that our Rights come from God, and proceeding with that premise in all that is done politically. It requires that there is an accountability that goes beyond the Laws of the land, and the regulations they promulgate. It requires an internally based governor that says “Thou shalt not cross this line”; something that Progressives fail to observe.
- It requires that some things, some ideals, are preeminent and are to remain sacrosanct above and separate from the mundane.
- It requires than any given individual respect those Rights implicitly and requires them not do to anything that would infringe upon them – especially true when one is in a position to write laws or create policies.
- No, Mr. President, it does not require collective action, for the nuance that you supply (in an unspoken manner) is that our Rights then come from the Collective, namely Government. The danger, as our Founders learned from studying human history and governing history, is that once Rights are no longer held to be absolute, they can be at the mercy of Government which, in turn, is at the mercy of those at the helm of Government.
- Which is to say, there are no Rights at all, merely political fads and ideology, being tossed to and fro depending on the political climate and philosophy du jour (on the idea that Democrats in NH are now doing with “settled law”; they decried Republicans even thinking about undoing their passed laws yet are gearing up with abandon to change those laws passed by Republicans – especially those considered to be based on Natural Law which the Founders acknowledged).
What Obama says here, what he declares, is a complete repudiation of the Founders philosophy. Instead of Rights being in God’s hands, in the hand of Nature’s God, our rights are in Government’s hands. In Obama’s hands. In the hands of a Majority – the Mob (which the Founders feared most of all).
I can think of few things worse than that.
