Who Is Barack Obama?

JO — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:08:15 GMT

In 2007-2008 conservative "establishment" Democrats, plus feminists, had a clear choice: Hillary. Self-proclaimed progressives could hear echoes of their sentiments in John Edwards. And then there was Barack Obama, inspirational speaker without peer. Yes, he seemed more conservative than Edwards, but perhaps that was just caution, an appeal to the broad middle of an electorate aching for change--but exactly what sort of change they weren't entirely clear. Obama carried those hopes on what was, in many respects, a blank slate.

Some leftists, sorely tempted by Edwards, nevertheless gravitated to Obama, captured by his oratory and willing to see what they wanted to see. After all, how conservative could a veteran South Side community organizer really be? And hadn't Obama long opposed the Iraq war that Senator Edwards had voted to approve and that Hillary still supported? Wasn't Iraq the overwhelming issue in 2008?

Ah, what a difference a year makes.
Edwards, of course, has proved to be one of the most wretched individuals ever to run for the White House, at least as far as we know.

Hillary "I support the war in Iraq" is now Secretary of State! The president of the New York federal reserve, Timothy Geitner, who was at Ground Zero during the financial meltdown of 2008, is Mr. Treasury Secretary with Larry Summers calling shots from the side. And there's Rahm "Fuckin'" Emanuel callin' the fuckin' shots from next door to the fuckin' Oval fuckin' Office.

Where is Obama in all this? And what should progressives who bought into the rhetoric of Barck the Candidate a year ago make of Obama the President at the outset of Year 2?

An article last week in the FinTimes ( http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b6b4... Regis. required, free, and worth it) suggested that the White House had been taken over by a Gang of Four from Chicago (Axelrod, Gibbs, Emanuel, and Barack Himself), whose particular brand of politics may not go down especially well outside the Windy City.

In other cases, some progressives view with wonderment Obama scheduling a televised conference with Republicans on the topic of health care, in hopes of persuading them, finding a middle ground, or whatever, and thereby rescuing "health care reform," without exactly defining what that "reform" might be--guaranteed profits for private insurers? Continued runaway costs? "Do Not Touch" pharmaceutical prices? Yes, Virginia, the health care system could be made even worse and that could be called "reform." Guaranteeing health care as a basic human right...well, that's a bit tougher if we're still expect to put a Mercedes in every MD's garage and Bentleys in the 4th through 6th bays of health insurance CEOs' car barns.

How many Americans are concerned that any sense of national purpose or common good has been lost beneath the constant drumbeat of Me, Me, Me, whose drum majors are the CEOs of corporations that have happily exported jobs to lowest-paid worker zones, conveniently forgetting ol' Henry Ford's notion of making cars that his workers could afford to buy--not just by making cheap cars, but also by paying decent wages? Will lofty rhetoric alone solve this symptom of social decline and fall?

How many Americans marvel at the speed with which the favored ones covered by TARP have sprung back and resumed paying multi-million dollar bonuses, while upwards of 15% of Americans remain unemployed or underemployed, or just too discouraged to even look? Seems the government can do something about economic hurt--when it's determined to do so.

I might still be chanting "yes, we can" if I had a clearer picture of just what it was we could do. I might not be asking "who is Barack Obama" if Safeway accepted Hope for groceries and offered Change in return.

Is Obama drifting to the right, as I read here and there? Was he always on the right, having hidden there in the bygone era of don't ask don't tell? Well, we can still hope, but our belief begins to wear thin.

Let's Have a Party

JO — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:20:09 GMT

Earlier today, a poster on this site who has consistently shown himself to be one of the more sophisticated, better informed, and more articulate participants, declared that he was a member of the American Constitution Party, which describes itself as the "Colorado Affiliate of the Constitution Party." Curious about this group, I read their platform ( http://www.americanconstitutio... ) which includes this line under the heading "Cost of Big Government":

The only legitimate purpose of civil government is to safeguard the God-given rights of its citizens, namely: life, liberty, and property.

While I could argue with virtually every word of this party's platform--as well as its national parent's platform (see below), I would like to challenge this line in particular: "God-given right... property."
In 1789, when the Constitution was drafted, all but three states (PA, MA, RI) recognized slavery. (VT also banned slavery, but it was not one of the original states signing onto the Constitution.) The Constitution specifically barred the new federal government from interfering with the slave trade for 20 years (Article I, Section 9), and one of the key institutions of the new government, the Senate, was very specifically designed to give slave states, regardless of population trends, sufficient leverage over the new government to combat the growing abolitionist movement in the North. (If you doubt this was the central issue behind the structure of the Senate, advance to the Missouri Compromise of 1820.) Slavery meant, in turn, that human beings were someone else's "property."

So, my question to members of the American Constitution Party is this: Did God grant, as an unalienable right, the right to own humans who were, after all, "property"? Did government subsequently have the right to take away that "property" by abolishing slavery?

A second question: IF a free citizen of, say, Georgia grew cotton plants, spun the cotton into thread and wove it into fabric, and then sewed a shirt--did that shirt belong to the landlord who owned the property where the cotton grew? Or, in a more likely scenario, if the shirt was sold for $10, how much of that $10 was the "property" of the landlord and how much the "property" of the grower-spinner-weaver-tailor? Was this share a god-given "right" as a matter of property (my land, therefore my cotton; my cotton, therefore my thread...etc.)?

Third: Thomas Jefferson certainly had read John Locke's formulation of "god-given" rights--life, liberty, and property--when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. But Jefferson changed that line to: Life, Libertry, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Was that a meaningful edit?

And fourth: How does the American Constitution Party come by the knowledge of what rights god did and did not create?

From the Web site of the Constitution Party http://www.constitutionparty.com/ :

Seven Principles of the Constitution Party are:
1.Life: For all human beings, from conception to natural death;
2.Liberty: Freedom of conscience and actions for the self-governed individual;
3.Family: One husband and one wife with their children as divinely instituted;
4.Property: Each individual's right to own and steward personal property without government burden;
5.Constitution: and Bill of Rights interpreted according to the actual intent of the Founding Fathers;
6.States' Rights: Everything not specifically delegated by the Constitution to the federal government, nor prohibited by the Constitution to the states, is reserved to the states or to the people;
7.American Sovereignty: American government committed to the protection of the borders, trade, and common defense of Americans, and not entangled in foreign alliances.

I'm astonished that one of the better informed and more articulate posters on this site, whose views I respect, would admit to being a member of the local affiliate of a political party which endorses such a list. These seven principles raise far more than seven questions. Here are just a few (numbers refer to the numbered planks of the platform):

1. Life for all human beings from conception to natural death. (a) is a zygote a human being? (b) if the mother's life is endangered by pregnancy, does the life of the zygote-foetus supercede the mother's right to protect her life by an abortion? (c) may we take it that the CP opposes capital punishment?

2. "Freedom of conscience and actions for the self-governed individual"--including, may we assume, entering into a non-reproductive sexual relationship with whomever that individual chooses? Assuring that the relationship is non-reproductive by whatever actions allowed by the self-governed individual's conscience?

4. "right to own and steward personal property without government burden." Does "government burden" mean "taxes"? If so, who should pay for the protection of property--or is that not a function of government?

5. "actual intent of the Founding Fathers." As determined by whom, and by what means? Do all subsequent generations, including this one, have no right to change the Constitution as they see fit?

6. States' rights. This slogan was long used to deny equal rights to black people in some states. Does the Constitution Party support that concept?

7. "not entangled in foreign alliances." Sounds a bit like George Washington. Is that really relevant in the wake of German aggression in Europe in the late 1930s? Or Japanese aggression in Asia in the same period? Does freedom of international trade in any way depend upon foreign alliances?

Honestly, I cannot understand how any sophisticated person could spend more than 30-40 seconds taking the posted principles of the CP or its local affiliate even half-way seriously!

ColoradoPols.com - Recommended Diaries

Who Is Barack Obama?

Let's Have a Party