Reinventing Liberalism
Posted on July 19th, 2009 in Philosophy |
This speech reflects one prominent reason why I supported Barack Obama for president even before he announced that he was running in February of 2007. In this speech to the NAACP last week, Obama is articulating a new kind of liberalism, one that incorporates the importance of personal responsibility and individualism explicitly in addition to the notion that government can improve the lives of its citizens if it is administered effectively. If conservatives are correct that America is unique from European nations in its focus on the individual, then Barack Obama represents a melding of the communitarian aspects of liberalism with the emphasis on the individual in conservative political philosophy. I believe that this synthesis of ideals is one reason why many Republicans ended up voting for Obama in 2008. In any case, this is one of President Obama’s best speeches of the year IMHO. I recommend that you watch it.
By the way, as an aside, notice the emphasis on education in this speech. I’ve written here before that I believe that improving education is perhaps Barack Obama’s most important goal in his political life. Despite the current focus on health care reform, I suspect that education is the issue that drives Obama the most. Finally, I didn’t even mention the significance of the first African-American president giving a speech to the NAACP for the first time. I’m glad that Barack Obama was the one to give that speech.
4 Responses
Thank you so much Jared2.0 for posting this wonderful and inspiring speech — I wasn’t able to watch when it was on T.V. the first time. As you said, hearing it reminded me also of why I supported Obama so many months ago now. It’s a true awareness of how much President Obama cares for and loves our country that really touches me deeply. It already is so easy to take him for granted, but this speech was a true “wake-up call.”
To view this as a new vision is to assume that liberalism was missing this key ingredient in the first place. Did FDR downplay the importance of personal responsibility? Kennedy? Johnson? Carter? To think so is to buy into a republican version of history. Clinton made the same speeches but, not surprisingly, we have to keep playing this game. No matter how many speeches Obama makes, Republicans will still paint Democrats as downplayers of personal responsibility, and the next Democratic president will have to “articulate a new kind of liberalism” all over again.
I take your point John. I may have been better off calling this speech a very effective formulation of liberalism rather than a new kind. I’m not sure. What seems true to me is that very often liberals do not explicitly or frequently emphasize the role of the individual in improving society in the way that Obama is doing here. The emphasis is often on government solutions. Just look at the debate about health care reform right now. Most of us liberals are focused almost exclusively on the need for a public option in the health care plan. While that is important, it is equally important that Americans start eating a healthier diet and exercising more to prevent some of the illnesses that are contributing to the rises in health care costs. But I rarely hear that aspect of the problem being discussed.
But going further than just anecdotal evidence, if you look at the most famous liberal theories in political philosophy such as Rawls’, the focus is primarily on the state in creating a just society. Little attention is paid to the virtues needed among individual citizens in helping to foster a just society. I think a better formulation of liberalism would emphasize both personal responsibility and the value of government to solve certain problems. If other Democratic presidents did this as well as Obama, then that is a historical point that could be debated I suppose. I’m not really sure what the answer is to that one. However, my point is that it doesn’t seem like a totally made up criticism of liberals by conservatives that the emphasis is frequently too much on the community as opposed to the individual.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. It’s an emotional issue for me because I had to watch George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and others taken down by this. I think the perception you describe is real, but it has no substance. People do think that way about Democrats, but only because we never effectively countered the argument. And we won’t do that until we have a stronger voice in the public debate.
Who on earth doesn’t think it’s important to have an educated, hard-working, responsible citizenry. Rawls? In what way is it an issue, specifically? The only way you “emphasize” personal responsibility is by de-emphasizing government, and that’s the whole point. It’s a way of removing programs for the little guy without entering the debate on the role of the government.
And, again, what really gets me down is that we think we’ll get brownie points for forging a via media, a third way, a consensus. We don’t. Until progressives have a voice in the public forum, Democrats will still be painted as big spenders no matter how much we cut. We’ll still be seen as radically partisan no matter how much we reach out. We’ll still be accused of making people wards of the state no matter how much we decimate the safety net.
I’m glad Clinton played the Third Way game because it got him elected. Most of his cronies took it a bit too far to the right, on the asumption that if it worked well to go half way, it should work really well to go further. But are we seen as the party of the Third Way? No, we’re still viewed as socialists who would be communists if we could get away with it.
The only meaningful questions that this non-issue raises are: Can government go too far in helping the little guy? If so, where are those lines? When does the safety net become so large that it hurts us rather than helps? Are we supposed to help the little guy at all?
Those would be debates worth having. But, please, stop telling me McGovern didn’t believe in personal responsibility as strongly as Reagan did. It’s a total ruse.