http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obamas-anti-absolutism-club
The Mainstream Mafia- excuse me, Media – oblivious to their own death throes and their glaring irrelevancy in contemporary American political discourse, continue to fawn over President Barack Obama and his second inaugural address of January 21st. They behave as though everyone in the nation were breathlessly glued to CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, Washington Week, Face the Nation and PBS’s variety show of round table analytical yak fests. The MSM erroneously presume that the nation receives their dollops of wisdom from them. The truth is that even Obama’s supporters and worshippers rely less on what the MSM have to say and more on Internet news outlets, as well as on Twitter and Face Book, where they can “inter-react” with each other and play virtual paddy cake with their Progressive/Marxist idols.
Still, the MSM believe they set the terms of the discourse. Let’s examine some examples. Keep in mind that these are all from a left-wing perspective.
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post broke out her rosary or worry beads and fretted over how The One will accomplish all he has set out to do during his second term. Also keep in mind that, to The One and his titillated throngs of admirers, there are no such things as “absolutes,” except the “absolute” of the moment, which must be “seized” and made an absolute before it fluxes into something distasteful. After scoring Obama on the “blustery naiveté” of his first inaugural address, she forgives him.
The battle-scarred Obama of the second inaugural address was simultaneously more realistic and more confident. He spoke like a man who, in the course of four long years, has developed a far sharper vision of the role of government: first, “that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action”; second, that “our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.”
The Marxist theme of those assertions may or may not have escaped Marcus. But they are definitely Marxist, and more and more liberals are admitting it. “This was a speech that tilted decidedly to the left, far more so than four years ago.” Left, but not Marxist.
Another aging Washington Post resident tyro, Harold Meyerson, crowed that Obama’s majority is now everyone’s majority, even if everyone didn’t show up on the Mall to “witness history.” He, too, forgives Obama for his narcissistic and tautologically confusing words in 2008.
But in the aftermath of Obama’s 2012 reelection and his second inaugural address, his 2008 remarks seem less a statement of self-absorption than one of prophecy. There is an Obama majority in American politics, symbolized by Monday’s throng on the Mall, whose existence is both the consequence of profound changes to our nation’s composition and values and the cause of changes yet to come.
The Mall throng was a bizarre menagerie of groups “from Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall” that represent Obama’s constituency, not the nation’s majority. Meyerson, too, waits breathlessly for him to cause “changes yet to come.” Meyerson takes a swipe at Obama’s principled and absolutist opponents.
Our history, Obama argued, is one of adapting our ideals to a changing world. His speech (like recent books by Michael Lind and my Post colleague E.J. Dionne Jr.) reclaimed U.S. history from the misrepresentations of both constitutional originalists and libertarian fantasists. “Fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges,” the president said. “Preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.”