Obama’s Declaration of Collectivism. By Larry Kudlow. National Review Online, January 25, 2013. Also find it here.
Larry Kudlow Radio Podcast. 77 WABC Radio, January 26, 2013.
Kudlow:
One of
the least remarked upon aspects of President Obama’s inaugural speech was his
attempt to co-opt the Founding Fathers’ Declaration of Independence to bolster
his liberal-left agenda.
Sure,
the president quoted one of the most important sentences in world history: “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
So far,
so good. But he later connected the Declaration with his own liberal agenda: “
. . . that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new
challenges; that preserving our individual freedom ultimately requires collective action.” (My italics, not his.)
He
fleshed this out with his trademark class-warfare, income-leveling
rationalizations. Such as: “The shrinking few do very well and a growing many
barely make it.” He also talked about “Our wives, mothers, and daughters that
earn a living equal to their effort.” He followed that up with, “The wages of
honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship.”
Here’s
what I take away from all this: Mr. Obama is arguing counter to the Founding
Fathers that the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of equality of results, not the equality of opportunity, and that he will do what he
can to use government to make everybody more equal in terms of their income and
life work.
That is
exactly wrong. We should be rewarding success. We should be promoting
entrepreneurship. We should be encouraging individual effort and opportunity.
But
this was no opportunity speech. This was a redistributionist, income-leveling
speech. And it completely missed the point of the Founding Fathers some 237
years ago.
They were talking about the
equality of opportunity, not results. Theirs
was a declaration of freedom, not government power or authority.
In
fact, the Declaration of Independence was written expressly to begin a
revolution against the autocratic monarchs of England, who used their
government authority to tax, regulate, and oppress the colonists without any
representation or voting rights, thus denying them the unalienable rights of
liberty.
So
while Obama was on the one hand preaching “fidelity to our founding principles,”
on the other he was saying that preserving our individual freedom ultimately
requires collective action.
Collective action? The
Founders were talking about individual
liberty and rights. Not the power of a collectivist government.
The
“collective” is a socialist idea, not a free-market capitalist thought. And the
story of the last quarter of the 20th century was of the absolute breakdown and
end of the collectivist model. Collectivism was thrown into the dustbin of
history by the weight of its own failure.
To me,
Obama’s mistaken opinions regarding the Declaration of Independence, and his
total lack of understanding of the thinking behind the Declaration, is more
troubling than any of the liberal programmatic proposals he set forth.
Fundamentally, you have to wonder if the president really understands the
American idea, and the American historical experience, beginning with the great
wisdom of the Founders.
Collectivism
also means “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” During his second-term
inaugural speech, Obama actually said, “We do not believe in this country that
freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few.” Were Steve Jobs
and Bill Gates lucky? Was Henry Ford lucky? Was Thomas Edison just lucky?
How
about they used their God-given talents of creativity, imagination, and
ingenuity, coupled with hard work, to create commercial ventures that
financially empowered millions upon millions of people who were then able to
live a better and more comfortable life?
That’s
what the Founders had in mind. Freedom.
