Is President Obama a leftist ideologue?
Well, yes. The real question is just how dangerous to American values is such leftist ideology.
I watched FOX News' Bill O'Reilly's interview of President Obama conducted as part of the Superbowl pregame activities. (No, I didn't watch the game.) O'Reilly asked several questions of Obama concerning his leftist ideology, to which the president merely laughed, indicating either he doesn't believe he's a leftist, or that he thinks the question is too stupid to warrant an honest answer.
The question isn't whether or not Barack Obama is a leftist ideologue, clearly he is. Yet it would be a good exercise to point to just where Obama stands in the political spectrum. Here's what his past two years in office have demonstrated of his ideology.
Obama is a Socialist
Despite the bad rap conservatives have taken for using and abusing the term in relation to condemning government's control and regulation over the economy, the fact remains that principles of government control over the economy derive from socialist ideals. Democratic socialism, while still allowing the people to vote to give up economic control, ends up at the same place as other versions of socialism. When O'Reilly asked Obama of his socialist trend, Obama made a big point of saying that he had reduced taxes over the past two years, as if taxation were the only measure of democratic socialism. (Whether he's reduced taxes or not can be saved for a later discussion.)
Obama's record, on the other hand, demonstrates anything but the founding principles of classical liberalism. The Affordable Care Act alone demonstrates a whole new batch of entitlements handed out by government, funded with (you guessed it) new taxes, in order for the government to assert more control over the medical market. Just that piece of legislation alone would land Obama squarely in the socialist camp. Take into account his support of Cap and Trade legislation, supporting tax increases for the rich, and his "spread the wealth" comment during his election, and we have enough indicators to point the socialism finger.
Obama is a Keynesian
Keynesian economics uses the fear of the economic boom and bust cycle in order to push in favor of massive government overspending during economic recession. Interestingly, Obama ran for president blaming George W. Bush's government overspending and regulation policies for the current recession. Then, once in office, Obama approved massive spending on a scale never before seen in the US, assuring us all the while that the only way out of our economic woes was through government borrowing and spending.
The problem with Keynesian economics can be summed up by noted economist F.A. Hayak's observation that public money can never work as efficiently or well as private money, and will actually slow down the economy - the opposite of Keynes' ideas. Although economics is the great, debatable social science, history shows us that Keynesian spending has indeed slowed down recovery and growth. Deficit spending also brings with it a whole set of its own problems, not the least of which is the increased insolvency of the US government.
Obama is a Multiculturalist
Multiculturalism is the idea that no culture has any value above that of another. This translates into the ideal that indicates if one culture seems better than another, it must have cheated, or oppressed, or destroyed that culture in order for it to have emerged on top.
This is a dangerous and misleading ideal. It implies that the only reason that the US is culturally exceptional is because the American system is the most evil, oppressive, manipulative regime in history. It ignores the exceptional qualities of the founding principles of the US, such as the God-given rights of life, liberty and property, the principles of individualism, the concept of limited government, the civil right of free speech, or the free exercise of religion. Instead, it says that all cultures are good, and if one culture appears to do evil, it is only because it has been oppressed by more successful systems.
Of course, few multiculturalists will come out and say that the US is evil, but the ideal remains and pervades most public education. Multiculturalists condemn the US for the very culture that made it exceptional in the first place. Hence, they are free to blame the US for the atrocities of 9/11. It's the fault of the US that those Muslim nations are so oppressed and Americans deserved their retribution. Illegal immigration? That's the fault of the US for imperializing Mexico away from the Mexicans so many years ago. Our very success proves that the US is the aggressor and in the wrong.
Obama spent his first year in office apologizing for the "evils" of the US, a clear indication that his ideology falls directly into the multiculturalist camp. What other phenomenon explains why Obama would rewrite history to attribute Western Civilization to Islam or to apologize to the Chinese for Arizona's immigration law?
Obama adheres to Identity Politics
Identity politics is an ideology based on the socialist concept of class oppression and the uprising of the proletariat. Identity politics replaces class struggle with such things as race, gender, or sexual preference. Yet, because of identity politics, the classical liberal concepts of liberty and equality have been subsumed into a system that must maintain race or gender warfare well past the point of equality under the law, replacing it instead with a perpetual tension based on a continually changing system of invented rights and entitlements.
Part and parcel of identity politics is the ever-changing struggle we call political correctness. In order to maintain the tension of racial struggle, for example, identity ideologues must continually redefine terms and conditions of acceptance in order to maintain the existence of an oppressed class. Words are redefined, history is rewritten, books are scrubbed "clean" of offensive language (consider the republication of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn where "offensive" material has been edited out).
Hence, Obama's support of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, shows us that he is more interested in maintaining his ideology of identity politics than in the wishes of the people of the US, let alone those in the military. Obama can acclaim the benefits of women's choice over the principles of the right to life. Obama condemns "the rich" for their evil excesses, while enjoying and living the life of the elite and privileged class.
Conclusions
These ideologies are dangerous to the American foundational principles of individualism, life, liberty and property. According to The Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, in 2010 the US index fell from the ranks of the economically free for the first time. Socialist and Keynsian principles have finally taken their toll in reducing the economic freedoms of Americans.
Multiculturalism threatens the bedrock of our democracy - the educational system. As more of our youth are indoctrinated into believing the worst lies about the American system, we place ourselves at risk of becoming a nation that will continue to accept government as the solution, rather than the problem.
Identity politics threatens our court system, turning our courts into centers of legislative action and social redefinition. It also threatens to maintain a society of oppression and discrimination since identity politics cannot survive without some system of continued class warfare.
Solutions aren't easy. At the least we should support presidential and congressional candidates who don't preach these doctrines in direct contradiction to true freedom, liberty and justice. Modern democratic socialism is seductive, bribing society with entitlements and government solutions. Yet, such seduction is, to coin a phrase from Marx, the opiate of the masses.
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