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Obama’s nationalism and socialism

Partly because I like quotations so much and partly because I haven’t perused many blags recently, my favorite blag post of the last several days was this one by Michael Rozeff. He compares the unifying, nationalistic theme of Obama’s four-year presidential campaign to the ideas and slogans of the Nazis.

People keep talking about one America. Having searched on this, I find it has been an Obama theme since 2004 at least. In one speech he says:

“With the challenges and crises we face right now, we cannot afford to divide this country by race or class or region; by who we are or what policies we support. There are no real or fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation—we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from.”

How close can he come to the Nazi slogan? One people, one empire, one leader. Awfully, awfully close.

Can we not divide ourselves by “policies we support?” He doesn’t want that? What kind of totalitarian sloganeering is that? …

With the challenges we face, it is exactly divisions that we need. We need to challenge bad ideas with good ideas. We need to confront evils. We do not need conformity to the wishes of ein fuhrer. We exactly need to challenge such ideas as Obama is expressing.

Well, there are (at least) two problems with comparing the relatively young Obama’s speeches with the writings and speeches of Adolf Hitler. First is that Obama—as is admitted by many of his supporters on the left—is notoriously non-specific and metaphorical in his speeches, whereas Hitler, at least in Mein Kampf and some of his speeches, was much more specific. Second is some of the stuff Hitler was most specific about: racial purity, the specifics of his fascist socialism, his role as the autocratic leader of all, and Germany’s right to conquer Europe to expand its lebensraum (I don’t know how specific he really was about this last, but my impression is that he openly asserted it as Germany’s duty and its right, at least during the war).

Either way, I think a lot of ideas in Obama’s inauguration speech are rightly seen as nationalistic and not at all individualistic, and so you can compare these to Hitler or any other nationalist leader you please. (Probably George W. Bush, for all I know.)

One recurring theme throughout Obama’s inauguration speech was the role of the military in Protecting Our Freedoms™. Now, this is one of the most nationalistic ideas out there. In almost every case throughout history and especially in the United States, the military is used for purposes that decrease individual economic and social freedom. The military serves the desires of the government, not the people, and the desires of the government are in direct conflict with the desires of the people; if they weren’t, why would the government have to exist and operate by coercion and extortion with literally every action it takes and every function it performs?

Caveat: I think this could be done with a lot of inaugural addresses and other speeches by a lot of presidents, but if any one of them was truly a great man with great ideas about economic freedom and individualism, he would have stressed these subjects above all else, especially at a time like this when so much government meddling into economic matters has impoverished so many and its meddling into the affairs of other nations has killed so many and endangered so many more. But, after all, the megalomaniacal criminals who have held the office of President and the people who voted them in believe that those men should be the leaders of the nation, and furthermore they believe that the nation voted them in.

Some of the more apropos writings and sayings of Hitler that I found:

“The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.” [Does that apply to anyone alive today more than it does to Barack Obama?]

“We don’t say to the rich ‘Give to the poor,’ we say, ‘German people, help each other.’ Rich or poor, each one must help thinking, there’s someone even poorer than I am, and I want to help them as a fellow countryman.”

“So we have come together on this day to prove symbolically that we are more than a collection of individuals striving one against another, that none of us is too proud, none of us too high, none is too rich, and none too poor, to stand together before the face of the Lord and of the world in this indissoluble, sworn community. And this united nation, we have need of it.”

These are all from Obama’s inauguration speech:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
[...]
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned.
[...]
They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
[...]
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.
[...]
The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart—not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
[...]
We honor them [military servicemen] not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.
[...]
…those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism.
[...]
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility—a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly….

Lastly, in all fairness, I really liked this line from the Savior’s inauguration speech:

Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things—some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor—who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

The overriding theme of all of Obama’s speeches (to the extent, admittedly minimal, that I’ve paid attention to them) has been along the lines of ein Volk, ein Reich, without the ein Führer part. As unilateral as the power of the President of the United States is by nature and as megalomaniacal as its holder must necessarily be, I can’t recall any particularly autocratic rhetoric from Barack Obama. It is usually more “we” than “I”. He sees himself as the leader of America, for sure, but not as autocratically or as deserving of worship as dictators of the past (or present). (That doesn’t mean he doesn’t receive it.)

Comparing speeches from different times is almost pointless; indeed, even using a 21st-century American politician’s speeches as predictors of what he will actually do isn’t such a high-probability venture. What is more important is the degree and type of national socialism the Obama administration will inflict upon its subjects. I predict that he will tend to mean what he says and that he will give us a ghastly mix of Keynesian New Deal–type socialism and more modern corporate-State socialism, in addition to a general continuation of neoconservative foreign policy and police-state measures, all under the guise of civic duty, religious destiny, national unity, national greatness, national security, national everything and individual nothing.

Godwin demerits: 2.

Posted in Elections, Fascism, Obama predictions, Statolatry