No joke. In this 2001 PBS radio interview, the Messiah chastises the very liberal Warren Supreme Court for not going far enough with civil rights in the 60's, saying imposing laws requiring the redistribution of wealth as a means to guarantee economic equality should be made a constitutional right.
OBAMA: You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the courts, I think where it succeeded was to get 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 was able to pay for it I’d be OK. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.
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, and the 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. And that hasn’t shifted. And one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think 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 to bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.
Welcome to the United Socialists of America, gang. By the time Obama's presidency is done, we will make France look right wing. The American people want socialism? Well, they'll sure get a big dose of it now...Marx must be smiling ear-to-ear from his grave.
-MZ
It will fail.
ReplyDeleteThe DailyTelegraph said that sales of Marx's books, have been skyrocketing lately.
ReplyDeleteMadze:
ReplyDeleteYou're interpreting 'redistribution of wealth' in a very narrow, reductionist way by equating it with Socialism.
The various waves of social movements throughout Europe's long history weren't primarily designed to 'redistribute wealth' but rather, as Obama puts it correctly "to get formal rights in [for] previously dispossessed peoples". Without these movements the universal right to vote would never have come about, you could also forget about women's rights or even the most basic (and necessary) workers rights (such as the right to a safe working environment).
Contemporary US conservatives have difficulty distinguishing between these highly benign (and inevitable) social movements on the one hand, and Socialism as an economic system and system of governance on the other. That lack of understanding largely comes from the fact that white Americans never really belonged to a dispossessed group (at least not after their arrival in the New World).
The European social movements, incidentally, were quickly joined by traditionally more conservative forces like the churches because they recognised too that change was inevitable, even necessary and that fighting a rear-guard fight would cost them dearly. Today's multiple European Christian Democratic parties are the direct descendents of originally more conservative strains that embraced change (up to a point).
Socialism in Europe (which really never took hold all that much - much less than you typically believe) was the negative culmination of these social movements and inevitably it failed.
There is no reason to believe that Obama will embrace Socialism for the simple reason that the American people as a whole are not dispossessed. Some social change to emancipate some pockets of American dispossession, probably yes.
Economically, Obama sings very much from the same songsheet as McCain: look at their tax plans for instance: in real terms it's a matter of minor differences in emphasis, nothing more.
Even the bailout is nothing more than a, granted rather large, nudge to push the system back into equilibrium and self-sustaining.
You're falling into McCain's Manichean trap: through clever use of distorted ideas about Socialism he paints the spectre of an economic system that really doesn't suit anybody, let alone the American people who really don't need it. But it puts Obama in a bad light and that's the purpose...
Beamish, of course it will fail miserably. We all will pay for the irrational class warfare that will ride Obamessiah into the white house. Socialism is about stirring hatred and jealousy in the masses at the expense of sound economic and social policy.
ReplyDeleteRen, never in my lifetime have I seen America this receptive to socialism.
Gert, social engineering is racism. Redistributing income as welfare to the lower class is socialism. While Obama is by any measure a socialist, my hope is that this little experiment will blow up in the face of the blacks, latinos, and working class whites who crave a nanny state that will provide for them.
America isn't receptive to socialism.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think Obama DENIES he's a socialist?
No. Obama's popularity is firmly tacked to the sub-standard international education rankings of Americans now old enough to vote.
"Gert, social engineering is racism."
ReplyDeleteNonsense. What Obama talked about in the speech you linked to has nothing (and I mean nothing) to do with social engineering.
Black dispossessed people that fought a long struggle to get equal rights, that's social engineering to you? And thus ergo racism?
Again, Europeans, historically, know where the road to the jungle leads to, perhaps sadly Americans will yet have to experience it for themselves...
You're turning the Free Market principle into an ideology, not what it actually is: a system for wealth generation...
Truth is that chances are that you will now have to endure Obama. Give it at least a chance.
Gert, you clearly didn't pay attention to the video. Obama states clearly that he thinks the Supreme Court SHOULD have altered the constitution to impose government income redisribution as law.
ReplyDeleteAs far as social engineering not being racism, well, whenever you determine hiring and admissions based on race and skin color instead of qualification you have racism.
Affirmative Action is state imposed bigotry. It's pure hatred and racism.
Well, I'd love to see the full thing, not this snippet, carefully chosen because it contains the gold dust words "redistribution of wealth".
ReplyDeleteWhere (here or elsewhere) has Obama advocated affirmative action (positive discrimination)? He's kept race out of his campaign like the plague.
This campaign is taking its toll on you: you're starting to see things. (wink).