Obama in 2001: The Constitution Has A “fundamental flaw” Because It Did Not Demand the Redistribution of Wealth and It is A “Tragedy” that the Courts Did Not Change That
By Jimmie on Oct 27, 2008 in Featured, The Economy and Your Money, The Obamessiah, The Rise of the Nanny State
It’s always that pesky Constitution that gets in the way of the socialist ideal, isn’t it?
Barack Obama gave a radio interview in 2001, when he wasn’t running for President and could let his freak flag fly safe in the cocoon of corrupt leftist Chicago politics, and boy did he unfurl a big flag.
If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.
Well, not, they didn’t. The biggest reason for that is because the Founders had already left a place where a ruling class controlled the who could make what money and how. In their wisdom, they wrote a document that started with the premise that human beings are free, then specifically enjoined the government from encroaching on those freedoms.
That, however, is a not a feature of our way of life, but a horrible bug.
To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.
In other words, the real “tragedy” is that our courts didn’t ignore the Constitution and empower the government to do stuff the Founders recognized as the very things they fled and never wanted to be an part of our government.
That would, of course, be an unprecedented overreach of the courts, even worse than the years when FDR tried to blackmail Congress into accepting his judges by threatening to illegally expand the number of justices on the court to get the judges there who would enact his patently unconstitutional “social justice” programs.
Ah, but there’s more.
In this clip from the same interview, Obama says that this lack of the founders to address “redistributive change” is a “blind spot” and a “fundamental flaw” of the Constitution.
Here’s the thing. The “social justice” that Barack Obama wants is antithetical to the Constitution and the American way of life. He says that society must be just not in allowing equal opportunities but in guaranteeing the sort of outcomes he believes should result. That is what he means when he says that the Constitution doesn’t address what the state must do for us.
Of course the Constitution addresses that. It insists that the government provide a system of courts, a meaningful way of passing laws and addressing grievances the citizens may have with it, a means of negotiating treaties and agreements with other nations, and protecting the nation against military aggression. What the Constitution does not to is demand that the government provide you with a livelihood, which is what Barack Obama wants it to do.
In order for him to make tht happen, he’s is going to do his best to adjust the courts so that they may feel free to ignore the Constitution and crte the sort of laws that he and his friendd William Ayers, Bernadette Dohrn, Jeremiah Wright, and the other totalitarian anti-American leftists want to create.
Barack Obama’s America isn’t a “fair” America. It is an America where he and his will decide what you earn, how much of your earnings you are allowed to keep, what medical treatments you may get and when you may get them, what cars you drive, what food you eat, what you teach your children, and what you can and can not say about the ruling class.
In short, “Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State”.
Here also is a link to the whole interview (RealAudio file link) so you can hear the clips in full context.
Stumble it!
The fact that you actually found the entire interview and STILL completely misconstrued what was said means you either weren’t listening very well, or you intentionally want to make Obama look bad. Only you know the answer to that, Jimmie,
It amuses and frightens me that so many of your readers will be willing to take the 28 second clip and draw completely outlandish conclusions from it, with no idea of its context.
What Obama is was referring to as a “fundamental flaw” of the Constitution is that the document made economic concessions on a moral issue: slavery. In other words, slavery was not outlawed in the initial writing of the constitution because of the threatened loss of support of pro-slave states.
HE TALKING ABOUT SLAVERY, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
For the original context of the conversation, the comment is made about 45 minutes into the interview, though I’d advise that folks actually listen to the WHOLE THING, because not only is it a very interesting topic, but also because IT PROVIDES CONTEXT FOR OBAMA’s COMMENTS.
FatRichie | Oct 27, 2008 | Reply
Oh nonsense.
You want me to believe that what Obama was really saying is that the Warren Court really wasn’t racial because it didn’t address slavery??
Please. He uses the phrase “redistributive” to refer both to the Constitution and the decisions of the Warren Court. He’s not talking about slavery but about the same old “social justice” that progressives have been pushing since the early 1900s. You have to really work hard to hear anything else.
Or replace common sense with Obama campaign spin.
Jimmie | Oct 27, 2008 | Reply
Sen. Obama needs to reread the Constitution:
1.The Constitution DOES outline what the Federal government is to do for the people. Read the Preamble.
2. The teneth ammendment grants any powers not specifically given to the Federal government to the State or People.
3. The founders were visionary and humble enough to realize that their document was not “perfect” which is why we have the Ammendment process Article five.
4. His “redistribution of wealth” comments based on civil rights are clearly a form of REPARATIONS for slavery and unjust treatment of Black Americans. As he clearly feels that 3 ammendments, equal rights and opportunnity is not enough.
News flash Sen. Obama….You are likely days away from being elected President. You are supposed to represent ALL americans not just Black Americans. Such an attitude will only prevent the healing process.
BIG BROTHER | Oct 27, 2008 | Reply
Obama is the kind of person/government that the founders was preventing ever in attaining power.
“In 1911 Booker T. Washington wrote in My Larger Education, Being Chapters from My Experience the following:
‘There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do do not want to lose their jobs.’”
Obama uses this plight to empower himself not others.
Interesting to see how ex-slaves viewed the Constitution themselves.
“Frederick Douglass [6], in an 1852 speech, intoned:
‘Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither.’
And later he told his audience:
‘Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.’”
Take that Obama. Those quotes are priceless and reveal what you sir so lack – love of America.
le combat | Oct 27, 2008 | Reply
Obama was talking about how the courts have traditionally not been involved in such issues, and how they shouldn’t be involved in it. His lament was that liberals spent too much effort on changing the courts, instead of working through the legislature. You can misrepresent the interview to you readers all you want. But will you answer this? Obama made a strong case for the traditional Republican argument that changes in the law are best done through legislation, not the courts. Do you disagree with that?
fostert | Oct 28, 2008 | Reply