Obama Rehearses the Liberal Political Formula

www.americanthinker.com

A couple of months after Barack Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008, I had lunch with a liberal friend. “Isn’t it wonderful to have the first black president?” she said. “Huh?” I thought. I had voted for Obama not because he was black but because two terms of Bush was enough. Just as two terms of Clinton were enough. And two terms of FDR would have been enough.

I believe that the job of politics is to avoid civil war, and that is all. Politicians know nothing about the rest of life, from morality to the economy to art and the humanities, and it shows.

I experienced President Obama’s speech at the opening of his brutalist presidential center on Juneteenth 2026 as an opportunity for me to analyze the current Democratic Party Political Formula.

Political Formula: “the set of doctrines, myths, or abstract principles that a ruling elite uses to legitimize its authority and secure the passive obedience of the masses.”

Obama spoke about the Founding:

In forming our union, the founders fell terribly short of the Declaration’s promise, leaving slavery intact, allowing states to restrict the franchise to white men who owned property, but in drafting a constitution and a bill of rights, they did have the foresight, the genius to provide us with a framework that allows each generation to make our union more perfect.

Yeah, I get it. Because the “founders fell terribly short,” liberals should be empowered to crank up government power forever. Because justice.

But no power for far-right racist-sexist-homophobes. No soup for you, bigot.

Then Obama went on to mention the man, Theodore Parker, who first stated: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice" at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Convention in 1858.

Couldn’t agree with you more, Barack old chap. Now let’s talk, all friendly like, about the injustice of forcing ordinary Americans into the unjust administrative nightmare of your Affordable Care Act. I have a feeling that the arc of the moral universe is going to get tied up in knots for decades before it bends towards justice in health care.

You say that

over more than two centuries, through petitions and protests, marches and strikes, moral appeals from the pulpit and conversations at the family dinner table, men and women from all walks of life of every color, every faith, every region took up the cause of democracy and made it their own, until "We the people" came to include not just some of us, but all of us.

But I believe, Mr. President, that, for you and your Democratic friends, bending the arc towards justice means little more than using government power to invent new gubmint handouts for Democratic voters, because justice.

But wait! Obama says that

When we lose faith in each other, when we stop believing that voting matters, that citizenship matters, that our collective voices matter, that how we treat each other no longer matters, and we give away our power to decide our own futures, we open the door to the most ruthless, or the most careless, or the most fearful among us, who see some groups and some people as more equal than others, and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies and keep those who are different in their place.

Gosh, Mr. President. I assume you are describing the current Democratic Party. What Democrat today believes that voting and citizenship and non-liberal voices matter? And what do you propose we do about it, sir?

Hey, everyone thinks that “we are the good guys” fighting for justice against the bad guys. The beginning of wisdom is to step out of your bubble and whisper to yourself, sotto voce, that maybe the other guys have a point.

For I Have a Dream. I dream of an America where an occasional partisan Democrat concedes that “Houston, We Have a Problem” after a century of pursuing a vision that believes everything can be solved by politics and government.

One fine day, we’ll see, even the most credentialed experts will begin to discuss whether surrendering 40 percent of our hard-earned income to the government to spend on its supporters is best understood as a partial return to slavery.

Okay: back to reality. One fine day, when evil right-wing bigots have demolished the Education Industrial Complex and the Regulation Industrial Complex and the Grant Industrial Complex and the Activist Industrial Complex and the Media Industrial Complex and the Fraud Industrial Complex and the Cancel Industrial Complex, our liberal friends will…

Yes, how will they react to the demolition of all their power, and their status, and their cozy sinecures?

About the word salad on your Obama Presidential Center, Mr. President. Did you know that the U.S. Supreme Court says it all with the motto “Equal Justice Under Law” on its portico? Short and sweet.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also, get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.