Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food
I’d hesitate to say [Obama’s] a Marxist or an Elitist
Think Progress reports:
On the Brian and the Judge radio show today, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano asked Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT): ...
NAPITALIANO: Hey Sen. Lieberman, you know Barack Obama, is he a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case in today’s New York Times? Is he an elitist like your colleague Hillary Clinton says he is?
LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, I must say that’s a good question. I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he’s obviously very smart and he’s a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn’t…I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.
When I think about Obama, I am reminded of Richard Epstein’s observation that in order to remain politically viable modern socialists no longer advocate direct government ownership of production. Instead, modern socialism operates on two different levels: “At a personal level, it speaks to the alienation of the individual, stressing the need for caring and sharing and the politics of meaning. At a regulatory level, it seeks to identify specific sectors in which there is a market failure and then to subject them to various forms of government regulation.” Sounds a lot like Obama’s stump speech to me.
In turn, the current flap over whether Obama or Hillary Clinton is the more elitist reminds me of something Fr. Richard John Neuhaus wrote quite a while back:
The fact is that we now find ourselves with two alienated classes. It is alienation that distinguishes today’s overclass from the ruling classes of the past. A ruling class that discreetly disguised its role in deference to democratic sensibilities was by most Americans thought to be bearable and even admirable, especially as its privileges were thought to be derived from breeding and achievement. The overclass is something else. As the word suggests, it is marked by an overbearing quality; it presents itself as being over and against the American people but is quite unable to give any good reasons for its pretensions to superiority.
The encouraging thing is that an overclass cannot sustain itself as a ruling class because it offers no argument for its right to rule. Assumed superiority is not an argument. The overclass that emerged from the 1960s deconstructed the moral foundations of its current privilege by its relentless attack on all traditional justifications of privilege. Proponents of permanent revolution are hard put to call for a pause in the revolution in order to allow them to savor their triumph. They cannot recall from the political culture the passions and prejudices which they employed in overthrowing the establishment, and by which they are now being overthrown. Today’s moment of populist insurrection is commonly called traditionalist, but it is in large part a continuation of the revolution of the sixties, now directed against the revolutionaries of the overclass who seized the commanding heights of culture.
Their perch on the heights is most precarious. In ways beyond numbering, Americans are railing at the governmental, media, and university elites, declaring that they have had enough and are not going to take it anymore. Rather than perching on the heights, it may be more accurate to say that these elites have retreated to protective enclaves in search of refuge against an angry and ungrateful populace. There they find solace among their own kind. In undisturbed caucus they propound the true socialism that has been betrayed by every socialism tried; their network anchorpersons sound nightly alarums against the ascendant fascism of Christian conservatives; and they churn out unreadable academic deconstructions of elitism, turning a blind eye to the elite that they are. Or the elite that for one shining moment—a Camelot, so to speak—they thought themselves to be. But now the enclaves are shadowed by the suspicion that they are only talking to themselves. Outside, the barbarians are taking over....
Whether called the knowledge class, the new class, or the overclass, today it is tottering, and it knows it. The campaign of liberation from the traditional meanings that give life meaning met with such popular hostility that some of the overclass had second thoughts. From out of one defensive enclave rode a paladin of high spiritual purpose proposing nothing less than a “politics of meaning.” A puzzled populace, not knowing what was meant by meaning but recognizing the politics, politely declined the proposal. The politics may be disguised for the nonce, and there may be another election or two to be won, but the rule of the overclass is drawing to a close.
A generation that was born, nursed, and reared by the overclass, that never knew anything but the overclass, must finally fall back upon sounding a final trumpet for the nostrum that first roused it to political consciousness: The American people want change! The American people warmly agree. And so it was, future historians will note, that the overclass rode off into the sunset astride the weary old charger named Change, the very horse on which it had arrived.
These days the charger is named “Changed we can believe in,” but the point remains true.
BTW, hunting down that quote lead to another Neuhaus gem:
Michael Lerner is credited with having put the First Lady on to “the politics of meaning,” although she says she met with him but once, and that only for fifteen minutes or less. On the other hand, it has been reported that she sometimes has memory problems.
When I think about Obama, I am reminded of Richard Epstein’s observation that in order to remain politically viable modern socialists no longer advocate direct government ownership of production. Instead, modern socialism operates on two different levels: “At a personal level, it speaks to the alienation of the individual, stressing the need for caring and sharing and the politics of meaning. At a regulatory level, it seeks to identify specific sectors in which there is a market failure and then to subject them to various forms of government regulation.
This comment makes, literally, no sense.
If your definition of “socialism” is “advocates for some type of government regulation at some time”, than every president in American history is a socialist.
They sure as heck have all signed bills that augmented government regulation, and none of them had to. And I’m willing to bet $100 that every single one of them have spoken positively about some regulation, somewhere.
So what you’ve done is empty the word “socialist” of any recognizable meaning. When “socialist” is “someone who advocates regulation”, then America is run by an overwhelming majority of socialists.
Go send out a poll that asks, “is government regulation of any type of economic behavior ever a good thing?” Watch your response.
glanost,
You missed the point, which I believe was that no one buys into socialist arguments of direct government regulation, so the tactics that socialists use are to speak to the alienation of the individual and to identify specific sectors subject to regulation. Where is it stated that this “defined” socialism? If one states socialists today do X, and you state others do X, it is a non-sequitur to then claim that others are socialists, no?
Marxist and elitist are not independent categories. Marxists think they know better than everyone else how to run their lives. Thus they are by definition elitists.
Another point of contact with Marxism in Obama’s remarks is the ideal of the “perfectibility of man.” This is the hoariest socialist doctrine of all, explicit in Marxism and later, Marxism-Leninism. This is an idea so utterly vacuous and foolish that not even the Euro socialist governments cleave to it, if they ever did, except in Eastern Europe, and then only when they were communist. Clearly implicit in Obama’s remarks is the idea that since racism, religion et. al., arise from the lack of government regulation, they can be expunged by more of it.
You see, we can all become virtuous if only the government controlled our lives.
Not only are Obama’s remarks a clarion call to socialism, they also objectify the people he refers to. He dismissed them as free, moral agents in their own right. Gosh, it’s no wonder those white people hate blacks and Hispanics, go to church and buy guns and feel angry - they can’t help it. The government has let them down. But with proper government regulation, intervention, activism (oh, pick your own name), then they won’t be racists, religious, xenophobic, or own guns.
How have things changed? The Fabian socialists of the Edwardian period (Webb, Shaw, Wells et al) chose indirection as their explicit strategy. Even the name refers to the Roman general famed for avoiding direct battle.
Clearly, indirection is the refuge of those who are certain they know better than you what is best for you. I have assumed since the Hillary/healthcare debacle that she is a latter-day Fabianist.
I wish I shared Richard John Neuhaus’ confidence in the twilight of the Overclass. Where he sees a resurgence of “underclass” common sense, I see a frightening, continuing erosion of freedom-- and not just in a structural or legal sense, but in a psychological sense. I fear that each generation of Americans since the 1960’s have been progressively (pun intended) brainwashed to view freedom with suspicion. The message is “freedom is just people being selfish.” “Freedom” means gas-guzzling SUV’s and sprawling suburbia; nothing more.
If you doubt it, just look at the textbooks your kids’ are reading in school, and the thought that are being inculcated.
Bitter Pennsylvanians of the world unite--the only thing you have to lose are your guns, xenophobic attitudes, and religion!
I’m reminded of the famous quote by unapologetic socialist Upton Sinclair:
“The American People will take Socialism, but they won’t take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to ‘End Poverty in California’ I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.”
He was exactly right and more bluntly honest than today’s socialists. Obama said the other night that he’ll cut poverty in half in ten years, which is roughly what LBJ promised voters before his landslide victory in 1964.
People who appreciate the liberty envisioned by our founders need to see through these charades, no matter who’s playing them (and that includes a lot of Republicans).
The difference between a non-socialist and a socialist regulator is that socialists hold double standards. Market solutions are accepted grudgingly, if at all, and they are hostile to reexamination of past regulation and the creation of market mechanisms to self-regulate. Non-socialist regulators just want the problem solved and would be happy to have the market deliver what is needed.
It is this sometimes difficult to discern intent that is the reasonable demarcation line. The truth is that the market does not solve all problems. It is not an institution that is *supposed* to solve all problems. Capitalists are not informed of their standards of beauty, faith, or love by the market, and a good thing too. Socialists, on the other hand, have government as the answer everywhere. There are socialist schools of art (socialist realism) but no capitalist ones.
I think one of the difficulties here is that “Marxist” has become an empty pejorative, much as “fascism”; they have perfectly lovely actual meanings, but they’ve used as the intellectual version of “yo’ mama!”
I don’t think there’s any question that the economic-class based analysis Obama used in his talk is properly called a “marxist analysis.”
To run a small business sucessfully takes a certain amount of guile but mostly it takes a lot of hard work and attention to detail. To succeed in an academic setting takes a certain amount of hard work but mostly it takes the willingness to screw youself into a library chair and concentrate while life slips away. In a capitalist society where people compete for money, the skills of a businessman give him the edge. In a socialist society where people compete for power, the skills of the academic givem him the edge. (Only someone with superior powers of concentration and inferior understanding of human life can comprehend Das Kapital.) In feudal times there were those who felt that a strong right arm was the sine qua non of the ruling class. The clergy (the academics) felt that an understanding of Latin (dialectics) was necessary to properly govern. My own feeling is that whichever party wins I stand a fair chance of getting screwed.
Wow, listening to you people regurgitate centuries-old political philosophies from your schoolbooks to try to label Obama a “Marxist-Leninist” or a “socialist” or a “Fabianist” is beyond hilarious. We’re in the 21st century and Obama is about as middle-of-the-road as they come. His plan for solving our health care crisis involves no dismantling of the current system. Indeed, throughout his political career he’s worked closely with big business. He’s a free trader, and Obama has over his career relied on the advice of a U. of Chicago professor named Austan Goolsbee, who calls himself “a centrist, market economist,” among other free-market advisors. If you all were ever confronted by real socialists, as opposed to phantom ones, I can’t imagine how you’d respond.
There is a technical term for overclass neo-Marxists: “Gucci Communists’.
"Marxist and elitist are not independent categories. Marxists think they know better than everyone else how to run their lives. “
Whereas the Religious Right never wants to tell anyone how to live their lives . . .
Cornellian,
The difference is that the Marxist left not only tells you how they want you to live they also strive to put in laws and structures into effect making you live exactly the way they think you should. They also want you to think, say and do everything according to their ideas of how you should.
Review some of the laws put in place by the Marxist left in the last 40 or so years.
While you are at it you will also note the thought control they have put into place aka “Political Correctness”. This kind of thing is especially rampant on college campuses where the Marxist Left can say and do as they damn well please while silencing all who have differing views.
"We’re in the 21st century and Obama is about as middle-of-the-road as they come.”
If that be the case, I think a whole lot of us would rather be travelling a different road…
I’m with H on this one. It’s all well an good to work ourselves into a froth about Marxism and socialism. But can anyone point me to any substantive policy Obama has proposed that can fairly be labelled anywhere close to Marxist? As H points out, Obama’s big policy proposal, health care reform, is far more modest and market-oriented than what I would expect a Marxist or even truly socialist proposal to look like. In fact, it closely resembles the proposal of that noted socialist, Mitt Romney.
It’s perfectly fine to say that Obama is a liberal and that you reject a lot of his proposals. But can we please disagree on the substance, rather than inaccurately labelling someone a Marxist (or fascist, or what have you)?
Jeff,
You state: “If one states socialists today do X, and you state others do X, it is a non-sequitur to then claim that others are socialists, no?”
I agree. But then it is equally a non-sequitur to say, based on the above, that if Obama does X, then Obama is a socialist. No?
Jody.
"We’re in the 21st century and Obama is about as middle-of-the-road as they come.”
Yes? I don’t see any neccessary contradiction between that and his being a socialist or Marxist. Much of Marxism has been main-streamed and widely accepted, even by people who think of themselves as anti-Marxist.
“Indeed, throughout his political career he’s worked closely with big business.”
Big business tends to get along very well with socialism and even Marxism. Armand Hammer was chummy with the Politburo. They share the same desire for a top-down rule by “elites”. As long as they get to be the elites.
"We’re in the 21st century and Obama is about as middle-of-the-road as they come.”
Give me a break. The fact that Obama isn’t proposing radical socialistic change is because he’s not stupid, not because he’s a middle of the road politician.
His friends, previous speeches and interviews and especially his biography all give the impression of someone who’s socialist leanings are far greater than the average American. The fact that he runs as a more ‘middle of the road’ candidate than he really is, is not surprising at all. Most candidates run as more ‘middle of the road’ than they really are in order to appeal to the largest number of people.
Posted by glasnost on 04/15 at 12:56 AM
“Go send out a poll that asks, “is government regulation of any type of economic behavior ever a good thing?” Watch your response.”
Actually, you’re doing what your claiming other are with the term regulation.
There are degrees and levels of regulation. Clearly, the author means levels at which a market economy sector would changed into a government planned sector via regulation rather than direct ownership of the assets.
Saying no lead in paint is not the same as setting the price for paint, production targets, and not allowing new entry into the market.
Amen to Chris. Obama’s biography may give him better insights into the minds of Indonesian Muslims or Kenyan villagers but demonstrably it does not give him better insight into the minds of rural Pennsylvanians. Shouldn’t any American election be more about making Pennsylvanians feel good about their leader than giving Kenyans (non-Kikiyu ones anyway) and Indonesians cause to celebrate. I don’t know if Obama is specifically Marxist in any of his policies, but I do know that he feels that the crimes of capitalism are much heavier than the crimes of marxism. I have the sense that he would be more sympathetic to Chavez than to Uribe. This may be unfair, but it is my feeling.
Obama’s upbringing was in a Marxist household. One of his mentors was Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
Black Liberation Theology at the core of TUCC/Wright is politically Marxist.
Obama’s analysis of flyover country makes more sense if you think the Big O looks at the world through the eyes of a Marxist. Given his upbringing and his mentors and then his work as a “community organizer” (organize for what? - what part of the political domain uses that term?) he could very well be a Marxist at heart.
Posted by M. Simon on 04/15 at 03:24 PM
“Given his upbringing and his mentors and then his work as a “community organizer” (organize for what? - what part of the political domain uses that term?) he could very well be a Marxist at heart.”
You pegged another one. His community organizing was working with William Ayers.. a founding member of the Weather Underground… and a Marxist…
But don’t call him a socialist we wouldn’t a real socialist if we met one… blaw blaw blaw…
Heck, half of leftism these day is to deny leftism exists…
I think Obama’s comments about the “bitter” people “clinging to guns and religion” are a clear derivation from the Marxist concept of “false consciousness”.
The modern Left no longer seriously advocates confiscation and redistribution of wealth. But high taxes, subsidies, corporate welfare (for the “right” purposes), state-enforced market restrictions… all good. And all ways for wealthy rent-seekers to cash in.
Plus there is a lot of wealth in new industries, whose proprietors are often social liberals. E.g. the creator of Quark Express, who is now spending $millions to defeat Republicans opposed to same-sex marriage. He’s homosexual, so that matters more to him than income-tax rates, and he has more money than he could ever use anyway.
I would love some enterprising journalist to track down what he did as a “community organizer”. He says it so proudly. What does it mean? Who paid him? What did he organize?
All the “organizers” I ever knew were out-and-out communists (aside from union organizers, but he always says he was a “community organizer").
Please, somebody look into this.
Whereas the Religious Right never wants to tell anyone how to live their lives . . .
Posted by Cornellian
What is with this Christian Right straw man stuff.
I’m as biblicaL, Christian and far right(?) Ok, I’m a Republican as any typical American I know. I don’t advocate doing anything to anybody and no one I know does either. I’ve been a pastor for over 20 years and I haven’t heard one believer or pastor I know advocate any kind of “Religious” rule over anyone, this thing is voluntary. There are believers who would like to see a theocratic rule, but they are a minority and don’t seek to do it other than at the ballot box. All we are doing is trying to warn a world of godless secularists that they are in grave danger in the world to come and they need to take care of that now, period. Since you’ve already rejected that out of hand, I can only say may God have mercy on your soul. I will vote my conscience just like you. Absolute moral standards, is that a problem?
the tim guy:
I have to say that I couldn’t agree with you more. This boogeyman of “the Christian Fascists are coming; the Christian Fascists are coming!” is so tendentious and manipulative it is ridiculous. America is about as likely to become a Christian theocratic state as it is to… fly. This is just a favorite scare tactic of the Left to distract the inattentive, while the Left continues beavering away at our individual rights and the cultural pillars of our society.
Cornellian: Just because someone has moral qualms about abortion or gay marriage does NOT mean that person secretly wants the Pope to run America. That’s a strawman that you made up.
"Just because someone has moral qualms about abortion or gay marriage does NOT mean that person secretly wants the Pope to run America. That’s a strawman that you made up.”
The Pope has no interest in “running” America. He’s got bigger fish to fry...like leading a 1.6 billion member Church.
It’s going to be hard to paint John McCain with the “Christian fascist” brush. Dunderhead Dobson dislikes him and so do many of the card-carrying NCF (National Christian Fascist) party members.
Anyone doubt Snobama is a Marxist. I’d like to ask him one question-is there anything the government cannot do?
**********I’m a Republican as any typical American I know. I don’t advocate doing anything to anybody and no one I know does either. I’ve been a pastor for over 20 years and I haven’t heard one believer or pastor I know advocate any kind of “Religious” rule over anyone, this thing is voluntary.**********
Mr. Tim, if you haven’t heard one believer or pastor advocate any kind of “Religious” rule, let me introduce you to the people who want to amend the Constitution to ban abortion for religious reasons. Let me introduce you to President Bush, who has blocked federal funding for stem cell research for (according to him) religious reasons. Let me introduce you to the folks in Dover, Delaware who tried to compel their public schools to teach “intelligent design” until a federal court stopped them. Let me introduce you to the Republicans in the Florida Legislature who are currently trying to pass a bill that would protect any public school teacher who decides to tell students that “creationism” and “intelligent design” are “scientific” theories just as valid as evolution. Are those examples sufficient, or would you like some others? Do let me know.
Posted by simon on 04/16 at 11:48 AM
“Mr. Tim, if you haven’t heard one believer or pastor advocate any kind of “Religious” rule, let me introduce you to the people who want to amend the Constitution to ban abortion for religious reasons. Let me introduce you to President Bush, who has blocked federal funding for stem cell research for (according to him) religious reasons.”
That and what you posted after is some serious spin. For example, this stuff I quoted. It’s not religious reasons, it’s because they think life begins at conception. You don’t have to agree (I don’t agree) but that’s what they think. You’re just trying to discredit what they think by tarring it / claiming it’s all on the basis of religion… ergo.. invalid.
This is sort of a knee jerk thing for leftists. To write off other opinions for absurd reasons (call other thought, racist, sexist, redneck, or self interested / based on profit)…
In some ways this works to our advantage. The center does not buy these kinds of write off attacks. Only people in your closed intellectual circle do. So, you loose a lot more public debates than you win.
Comments like Simon’s always sound cool when read in a Darth Vader voice. Try it, it’s fun!!
**********That and what you posted after is some serious spin. For example, this stuff I quoted. It’s not religious reasons, it’s because they think life begins at conception. You don’t have to agree (I don’t agree) but that’s what they think. You’re just trying to discredit what they think by tarring it / claiming it’s all on the basis of religion… ergo.. invalid.**********
First, why does claiming that something is “on the basis of religion” make it “invalid”? I never said any such thing. If you claim I did, show me a quote to that effect from my post. Making false statements about what another poster said is not nice. Please stop doing that.
Second, are you seriously claiming that there is NOT among abortion opponents a large group of people whose opposition is based on religious belief? For example, the RC bishops who threatened to deny John Kerry communion in 2004 because of his support for abortion rights? Are you really saying their position has nothing to do with religion? If your answer is “Yes,” my next question will be whether you are a visitor from some alternate universe.
Third, the federal judge who blocked the teaching of “intelligent design” in the Dover case—a Republican appointed to the bench by Bush—specifically found as a fact that the proponents of that doctrine were using it in an attempt to introduce the teaching of a religion in the public schools there. So don’t pretend that this is some canard invented by “leftists.” It won’t work.
Criticisms of the religious right are sometimes valid but also trivial. I am pro-abortion and pro capital punishment, but I am also very glad that I live in a country where the people who disagree with me are free to organize and try to win the argument. It is a slippery slope on either side of the mountain. My argument with the left is not the validity of their positions (some of which I agree with) but the self righteousness with which they advance them. If you think any of this criticism of Obama is unfair, watch what happens if he ever deviates two clicks from orthodox liberal thought. The Rev Wright will thunder against him from the pulpit. But the fact that Obama is so measured in his criticism of the Rev Wright and so facile in his criticism of Imus and Ferraro leads me to believe that this will not happen any time soon.
**********Criticisms of the religious right are sometimes valid but also trivial.**********
I doubt anyone who suffers from Parkinson’s would agree that blocking funds for stem cell research for religious reasons (or any reasons) is “trivial.” Nor would I describe as trivial any of the documented cases in which parents in this country let their children die because getting medical treatment offended their religious beliefs. Generations ago, when medical science offered very few effective treatments for disease, denigrating science for religious reasons was perhaps no big deal. Now things are quite different.
**********I am pro-abortion and pro capital punishment, but I am also very glad that I live in a country where the people who disagree with me are free to organize and try to win the argument.**********
I certainly don’t disagree with that. I will point out that liberals did not object when Dr. King cited religious doctrines as justification for the civil rights legislation he favored.
Simon, I do not disagree with your point about stem cell research, but I would ask you to consider the following: If DDT were to be used not as insecticide to increase crop yields but as an insecticide to control malaria bearing insects several million lives could be saved. This will not be done because the liberal orthodoxy holds that DDT is as taboo as cannibalism among near relatives. Big pharma has created several effective drugs against AIDS. They did this not in pursuit of any high ideal but in pursuit of profits. In liberal ideology this makes them more suspect than the Rev Wright and his libels. In South Africa the health minister repressed the use of retro-virals among pregnant woman because she had read a book claiming that HIV was not a disease but a syndrome of poverty and that it was all just a myth created by pharma to help them sell expensive drugs. Can’t you see that there are as many contradictions and hyperboles in the liberal orthodoxy as there are in the Bible?
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Obama is not necessarily an Ivy League prig (in the John Kerry mold), but his recent comments were definitely elitist. I can sympathize, I have been arrogant myself at times only to realize how little I really knew later on. We all do it occasionally. But Barak is running for president and he can ask Hillary or John how little the margin of error can be. I think Podhoretz nails it with this analysis. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/jpodhoretz/3332