October 29, 2008
Negative Liberties and Obama Newspeak

By Bruce Walker


The 2001 audio tape of Barack Obama describing the Constitution as a document of "negative liberties" reveals an utterly Orwellian Obama. How can liberty be anything other than negative? Liberty is the absence of external control. Only in our age of collective thinking and untidy language could such a thing as "positive liberty" be conceived. The state power to coerce is not liberty.


Notions like "positive liberty" are part of the web of thought control by language manipulation which Orwell described in 1984. If Obama cannot think of "positive liberty" as a contradiction in terms, then he simply cannot think. The conscious surrender of language to the needs of the party creates a self-made prison from which escape is, quite literally, inconceivable. These unguarded remarks by Obama display a mind trapped in a reality in which words are phantoms.


Obama could have spoken about the limited value of liberty. Government does some things which reduce our private rights and yet which increase the common good. Politics is all about where the boundary between broad notions of promoting the general welfare by state coercion and preserving liberty should be. Politicians on the Left have often argued that liberty should be reined in more tightly so that "the people" can live better. But implying that more state power somehow increases liberty is beyond mere Leftism. It is entry into that dead realm of Newspeak in which language is pureed into nonsense, and then nonsense is presented as argument.


Obama could also have spoken about the private duty of charity, that moral imperative which makes the virtue of liberty pure. Charity, though, is private. True charity is always a free act. That does not make the moral duty of charity any less, but it means that it is a function of liberty. But it seems as if Obama's mind cannot grasp this sort of distinction.


Is the Orwellian character of Obama's mind a surprise? No. He is a man young enough to have grown up in a cocoon of semantic babble. The subliminal contradictions of popular entertainment, the indoctrinary quality of his education, the pandemic use of "politically correct" language, the nonexistence in Obama's universe of any need for critical thinking, his absorption into a parish filled with surreal anger which numb his conscience -- almost every single aspect of the life of Barack Obama dovetails into someone for whom the word "liberties" has no authentic meaning.


This is the newness of Obama in our history. Leftists like George McGovern and Jimmy Carter lived real lives. Both served in the military. Both seemed to have been genuinely religious. Both worked in private business. Both came from states that were conservative, and so they had to defend their political philosophies. Barack Obama, by contrast, has lived a life of utter sameness. There are no bumps or rough edges or hints of individuality at all.


It is not just his life, so marinated in rote theory, that makes Obama unique. He is an early prototype of a new creature in our lives: Orwell's children, if you will. These are the people who can honestly believe that September 11th was an "inside job" or that the CIA invented crack cocaine to hurt blacks. This is the generation which has grown up with no intellectual or cultural system of checks and balances.


Iron and dull control of education, destruction of the nuclear family, disappearance of religion in public life, degradation of art and entertainment into tasteless mush, and, most of all, the politicization of everything in life -- these forces have created a new sort of human being, a person who lacks from life any tools of discernment or devices to describe life outside of the realm of collectivist political rhetoric.


There is something about Obama, many of us sense, which is different from any other politician. Socialism is inadequate to explain Obama. He is both more and less than that. The Left with all its odd menagerie of causes and claims is not enough either. Obama is part of that but part of something more disturbing. He is someone who can say "negative liberties" unaware that he is saying nothing at all.


Bruce Walker is the author of Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie, and the recently published book, The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.

Page Printed from: American Thinker: Negative Liberties and Obama Newspeak at October 29, 2008 - 06:49:21 PM EDT

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Here, here!

as i have said before, the duty of government is the enslavement of its people by the degradation of their natural rights. as pure individual creatures, our rights are unlimited. we are free to do as we please without the constraints of codified mores and societal norms, it is government's place to enforce the ethics of a society, nothing more. it is the conceit of government that it is somehow the originator of these liberties and that the people may only do that which they are told to do. this is the brave new world we are being ushered into, an endless hive where we must sit idle until we are given some task to perform. as government grows more and more intrusive, there is no other path. without the heavy hand of overeager politicians we might find the necessary balance between freedom and the common good through enlightened self-interest, but with the overbearing parental figure of a totalitarian state there is no need for the people to grow in self-control and no way for them to find that balance for themselves.

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When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

Undertheice sez ...

"with the overbearing parental figure of a totalitarian state there is no need for the people to grow in self-control and no way for them to find that balance for themselves."

We can see it right here on this forum. How many times have we seen posters call for legalizing cannabis, then have the government control it ... and tax it? There is a much better outcome than this. How about We the People abolish pot laws and just get the government the hell out of the way?

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Some great words of wisdom in this post Ice- as I've come to somewhat expect from you. I'll have to put this on my notepad for a while to reflect further on.. thank you for this post..

As usual, a thought provoking and very eloquent post. I wish I had half the skill with words that you have.

"The contest for the ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power." - Daniel Webster.

Unfortunately, it appears that we are entering a new age, where the contest will become rescuing liberty from the grasp of legislative power.

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Libertas inaestimabilis res est - Liberty is a thing beyond all price. | Sic Semper Tyrannis

government was invented to relieve us of the burdens of morality. what we failed to take into account is that without that burden we cannot grow. we are a child race, just smart enough to know how foolish we can be, and the pain of our mistakes is our only teacher. liberty is for adults and we don't seem to want to grow up, so i suppose we will continue to shift the responsibility for our destiny and blame from one group to the next until we are willing to emerge from the cradle.

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When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

May I interject.. "relieve us of the burdens of morality" and responsibility.. though I see you certainly made a point to put that in the end of your comment.. That is what I view as the biggest problem with society- the constant running from responsibility.. always handing our personal power over to the 'experts' or 'those that know better'..