Ranting to /dev/null

Fantastic post.

I tend to agree with your assessment about Obama's liberalism, but do you not think that the result of this speech has more to do with opening a dialog rather than advancing a specific agenda?

I've read the speech several times, and I didn't come away from it thinking, "what a clever way to mask liberal policies." Undoubtedly, Obama was in a tough political spot and he needed to reconcile the Wright controversy. Politics played into the timing, but the result transcended the petty circumstances.

Maybe I'm naive and caught up in Obama-mania. But if this is how the next President resolves political problems, I'm ok with that.

See, I think "opening a dialog," like "raising awareness," doesn't really accomplish anything most of the time, unless you think that dialog is an actual solution. Which, IMHO, reflects a deep leftist sensibility. I don't think yesterday's speech resolved anything important, though it may have diffused the immediate threat to his candidacy.

I'm not accusing Obama of being petty or just politicking. Those hadn't actually occurred to me. I do think he has more than your average amount of integrity, especially for a politician. I don't think he was deliberately attempting to hide liberal policies.

I think he was deliberately attempting to expose them. As has been said elsewhere, Obama's solution to race problems is "LBJ, only more so." Or here, saying he's a "a standard old fashioned doctrinaire blacks-and-whites-together-for-health-care progressive."

Sounds about right to me.

"Politics played into the timing."

Politics WAS the timing.

Dialog may not be the "actual solution" per se, but the solution may, in fact, contain a dependency on said dialog.

If not so, what is your alternative?

I love dialog. We need to be having it. I'd like to think I'm already having a lot of it.

I just don't want Washington telling me when I should be having it.

But there's a difference between "opening a dialog" (which is what I said) and "raising awareness." Though neither is an actual solution by itself, the latter smacks of feel-good activism on the part of the speaker or participant. The former acknowledges the legitimate grievances between two parties. In short, it's the first step in a diplomatic settlement - a very important component of the Presidency.

I concede to your 2nd paragraph, and my apologies.

"LBJ, only more so." That's an unfair caricature. In the speech and in his writings, he points out that affirmative action and welfare often exacerbate the problems of poverty and racial inequality. His positions and policies are more nuanced than Conservative hyperbole suggests. I'm not saying he's a friend of the Right by any stretch of the imagination, but he's at least willing to make some political concessions from time to time.

I'll give you healthcare and his collectivist mindset, but a large chunk of the Country is already there.

A caricature, perhaps, but I don't think unfair. I would agree that "affirmative action and welfare often exacerbate the problems of poverty and racial inequality," but whereas Obama's response to that would be to say that it was done wrong and the solution is more of it, my response would be to say that it was probably a bad idea in the first place. I'll freely admit that his position is relatively nuanced, and I'm no large "C" Conservative, but his "concessions" seem to be largely rhetorical. He'll acknowledge white resentment and the damage caused by the Great Society, but these are factual admissions only. He doesn't seem prepared to concede anything substantive, and he does seem committed to expansive government handouts.

I'll quote Douthat again: my objections to Obama have everything to do with the fact that he's a left-liberal. I don't intend for this to be an attack, merely a description: Obama, despite his appearance and the hype to the contrary, is a leftist. 'Nuff said.

"Obama's response to that would be to say that [welfare/affirmative action] was done wrong and the solution is more of it...He doesn't seem prepared to concede anything substantive, and he does seem committed to expansive government handouts."

On the issues of welfare and affirmative action, what are you basing this on? Most conservative criticism (little C's) I've read tends to just paint with the "Barack Obama is a liberal" brush. I include Douthat in my observation because there's no substance there other than "Obama supports the welfare state."

I'm basing it on the assumptions I detect underlying Obama's speech. I believe that people basically suck, but through grace can suck less. Obama thinks that people are basically good, only external factors like history and racism and economics can make them ornery, but if you remove those things we can all just get along. I think this is bunk, and I think policies based on this are dangerous.

I understand that this isn't a distinction that is commonly associated with politics, but I think it's probably the most important distinction out there and a pretty good indicator of the policies one is likely to propose.

Ryan, I agree that the fundamental assumptions underlying Obama's policy-making are generally liberal, in the fashion that you have outlined (tending to believe that society is perfectable).

I cringed when he finished the speech with the phrase "that is where the perfection begins," because I agree about the danger of believing in perfectability.

That said, I think there are a lot of reasons to celebrate Obama's candidacy (including, as you say, the fact that he speaks to us like adults -- whether that turns out to be a good political move or not, we'll see), and the evidence that I've seen leads me to believe that his policies will move liberalism in a direction that will be good for the country.

A couple quick specific examples:

1. His speech in Texas, where he discussed the importance of parenting in education. Roughly, his argument was "here's a bunch of (liberal) policy measures that will improve education, but they'll never fix the school system unless parents step up and take responsibility for their children -- and we haven't been doing that." Barack can't (and hasn't said he will) make parents do that. But at least he's admitting that all the policy measures in the world won't fix a broken system if people don't step up.

2. Apparently, his advisors have expressed the view that affirmative action should be class-based rather than race-based; there's no way he'll come out and say that until the general election at the earliest, but, again, I think it marks a serious (and good) departure from liberal orthodoxy.

3. Finally, I'll link to a TNR article about his advisors, which describes the difference between his liberalism and Clintonian (Bill) liberalism:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4d40a39e-8f57-4054-bd99-94bc9d19be1a

Rob: Again, I do appreciate that while still a pretty dyed-in-the-wool liberal, he is more nuanced about his positions than most partisans, but I guess I didn't intend this post to be about why I prefer Clinton to Obama, because I'd take Obama over Clinton any day. But given the choice between McCain and Obama, I'd have to grit my teeth and vote McCain, because nuance doesn't prevent me from thinking that Obama is largely wrong about a lot of things.

I'd submit that McCain is largely wrong about a lot of things too (different things!), but that's an argument for another day.

But I should have added, I thought it was a great post -- expressing exactly why its reasonable to disagree with Obama and why conservatives can find fault in the speech (without being accused of being closet racists, as Sullivan seems to be accusing every other conservative of these days).

Ryan, Obama talks about Americans generally sharing similar wants, which isn't necessarily some value-assessment of their inherent worth. My point is that the right v. left distinction with Obama has to do with the Constitution ensuring "rights" vs. "guarantees". Obama wants to guarantee certain things. That isn't a "people suck" vs. "people are good" divide.

Relatedly, the "desire for a good education" is somewhat value-neutral, no? That's just one example of the things Obama claims unites us all.

Rob: I'm not really thrilled about McCain by any means, but I'm somehow more comfortable with the ways he is wrong than the ways in which Obama is wrong.

Josiah: Observing that people basically want the same things isn't a particularly profound observation. Everyone wants to have more money than they currently do, no one wants to work to have more money than they currently do, and no one wants to have to absorb any externalities required to raise boats for everyone. I'm not objecting to Obama's observations, but I would object to the idea that they're somehow deeply meaningful. It's kind of like saying that everyone really wants food: true though it may be, I don't really think a "pro-nutrition" platform is something anyone would take seriously.

But the "rights v. guarantees" distinction you draw actually lines up pretty nicely with the views of human nature I've described. If one has a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature, as I contend Obama does, it makes sense to believe the Constitution guarantees things, because one would tend to believe that it's possible to guarantee those things.

But if, like me, you take a view of human nature which encompasses original sin, you see the Constitution as a document which assumes that people are a problem: The President will try to act like a king, the Courts will always seek to expand their jurisdiction, and the Congress will sell the silverware to line its nest. Instead of sitting around the campfire singing kumbaya and how great it is that we're all one big happy family (see the proposed EU Constitution for that, and see how successful that was), our Constitution assumes in significant ways that we aren't unified, and then capitalizes on the presumed self-interestedness of its actors to ensure that the parties involved are hampered in their megalomania.

So no, saying that we should guarantee certain things not really a value-neutral position, and making the transition from "everyone wants this" to "the government should guarantee this" is actually a pretty leftist sentiment. I'm not comfortable with that, ergo I can't really get excited about Obama.

good post and discussion. thanks.

Good old human nature. Do I detect some references to David Mamet's recent piece in the Village Voice? What he says isn't exactly news, but he certainly says it in an entertaining way.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,why-i-am-no-longer-a-brain-dead-liberal,374064,1.html/full

Hannah: I did read that, but wasn't really trying to reference it. Any similarity is coincidental, and/or reflects a basic underlying sentiment that people are stupid.

Do you include yourself in that sentiment?

I'm not trying to be a wise-ass. The question is genuine.

What about the participants of this thread? Though it's gotten way off-topic, is this not an intelligent and inherently "good" discussion driven by people with good intentions?

I do agree with your sentiment on some levels, but there are many notable exceptions to the rule you propose - enough to question its universal range.

I do include myself in the sentiment, though a more accurate statement of my beliefs on the subject would be "sinful," not "stupid" as such. There are plenty of very intelligent people who nonetheless do awful things, but all persons, smart or stupid, are broken by sin.

I don't think there are any exceptions to this rule, and I certainly don't constitute one. I think that with God's grace people are capable of being less broken, but we're never perfect. I don't think that what I've heard from Obama at all coincides with what I believe Scripture teaches about sin and redemption. I didn't really set out to question his Christian bona fides, as I'm sure he's no different than any other mainline Protestant, but I happen to believe that mainline American Protestantism doesn't largely reflect the gospel anymore.

I believe that any government policy that doesn't take sin seriously is doomed to failure, sometimes immediately, but always in the long run. The reason the Constitution has been so successful is that the concept of human depravity is embedded in it. The degree to which our current system of government is failing corresponds in some sense to the degree to which we've stopped believing in depravity.