Obama v. Madison, et al

We've been convalescing offsite for a week or so after a domestic accident but this little gem caught our ear t'other morning ....



Obama seems troubled that the Constitution deals only in "negative rights" -- the rights to be secure in one's life, liberty and property, at least until you encroach upon the negative rights of others.

But what are these "positive rights" he so pines for?

Why, the "right" to health care. The "right" to housing. The "right" to a job.

And on and on.

The problem with "positive rights" is that most of the time they entail stealing money, time and/or resources from an individual or, more typically, a class of individuals for the benefit of a larger class of "dispossessed" or "victims" of an "unjust" system.

Since, to the chagrin of community organizers everywhere, the Constitution makes no mention of such freebies it is left to legislators like Obama to fleece people like Joe the Guy with a Real Job in order to lavish these "positive rights" on their enfeebled and benighted constituents (Read: voters).

This concept of "positive rights" runs counter to the philosophies of John Locke, whose writings informed many of our Founders including Madison and Jefferson.

Locke, in his 2nd Treatise, wrote:

Though the legislative, whether placed in one or more, whether it be always in being or only by intervals, though it be the supreme power in every commonwealth, yet, first, it is not, nor can possibly be, absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people. For it being but the joint power of every member of the society given up to that person or assembly which is legislator, it can be no more than those persons had in a state of Nature before they entered into society, and gave it up to the community. For nobody can transfer to another more power than he has in himself, and nobody has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life or property of another. A man, as has been proved, cannot subject himself to the arbitrary power of another; and having, in the state of Nature, no arbitrary power over the life, liberty, or possession of another, but only so much as the law of Nature gave him for the preservation of himself and the rest of mankind, this is all he doth, or can give up to the commonwealth, and by it to the legislative power, so that the legislative can have no more than this. Their power in the utmost bounds of it is limited to the public good of the society. It is a power that hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects [...]
Second Treatise, Ch. 11.)

(All emphasis ours).

Essentially, in a state of Nature, I have no right to help myself to your wealth or property so how, upon entering into a joint society, is it laudable to band with others -- perhaps with the help of community organizers -- to empower a legislator to do just that?

Is thievery acceptable as long as a majority approves?

This reminds us of one our favorite Walter Williams quotes -- and we paraphrase: The only difference between a mugger and a liberal politician is that the mugger doesn't stand around boring you with all the reasons he robbed you.

Obama is frustrated that the Warren court wasn't radical enough, that it "didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution".

The Founders sought to form a "more perfect union".

As brilliant and wise as they were, they knew it could never be fully perfect, for true perfection is not of this life but the next.

Obama, however, by all appearances, believes himself enlightened enough to form a perfect world, a Heaven on Earth, simply through the power of his superior intellect and pureness of heart.

Transcendent, the "One" we have been waiting for and all that crap.

Funny stuff.

Hayek called such pathological grandiosity the "fatal conceit".

For Thomas Sowell, it's the "vision of the anointed".

In The Road to Serfdom Hayek reminds us of Hölderlin's admonition that "[w]hat has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven."

Thanks to a weak-as-water McCain campaign and a media more interested in Sarah Palin's wardrobe than the radicals -- his father, Franklin Marshall Davis, Saul Alinksy -- who shaped Obama's worldview, or the convicted slumlord who helped Obama buy his home or his true relationship with the loathesome Weather Couple and the voter fraud machine known as ACORN or his friendship with Rashid Khalidi, the one-time PLO spokesman , Obama just might get his chance to try to erect his collectivist Heaven here on Earth.

Make no mistake, like all others before him, Obama's road to serfdom will lead to Hölderlin's hell.