Barry's Constitution

One of the few facts about Barack Obama's past that has been allowed out of the closet is that he spent twelve years teaching "constitutional law." Oh, and that he held the prestigious editorship at the Harvard Law Review, but without ever publishing anything during all this time.

The audio clip from this 2001 radio interview shows a shocking misunderstanding--and worse--an utter disregard--for the constitution as written. It is clear that Obama was radicalized early in life, and was one of those students who sat through all the courses he had to take in constitutional law with pre-formed and impervious opinions of the sort held by what Eric Hoffer calls the "true believer."



What comes out of this early interview is a clear disdain for the work of the Founders--they only established "negative liberties" and no "positive liberties". "Freedom from" or negative liberty is indeed the hallmark of classical liberalism, and the cry of political adults who want to live their own lives in dignity and, yes, FREEDOM. But to the radical Left, beginning with their godfather, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it is the positive liberty of "freedom for" and, like the old Genevan, they have no qualms about "forcing men to be free". That sentiment is one of the roots of the radical reaction against the bourgeois liberalism of John Locke--the one that appeals naturally not only to Americans, but all of those "teaming masses yearning to be free" who have beaten a path to this country by the millions, escaping regimes variously informed by notions of positive liberty and how to apply it, notions like Obama's and Rousseau's.

One of those positive freedoms is for Obama and his ilk reparations for blacks. It is a "tragedy" that the Warren Court, in taking up the civil rights cases in the 1960's did not include wealth redistribution. This is pure and unadulterated socialism of the kind that is absolutely incompatible with our Constitution. But Barry is on the way; he does have doubts that the Court can take the steps he envisions to right the ship, but he ominously states in this interview that it can be taken care of "administratively," i.e., by executive fiat. Of course, the Congress he is likely to have--should he gain the presidency, may God forbid it--is unlikely to hinder anything like what he has in mind. They might even be driving the bus in an Obama administration--we'll have to see what kind of "executive" this naif will be.

This is perhaps the most revealing interview yet to surface; one wonders where the Hillary campaign was on this, or the McCain campaign, for that matter. This is devastating stuff--and old Joe Biden needs to get a follow-up on his denial in his interview with Barbara West--see below--where he denies Obama ever said anything about redistribution of wealth. Yeah, that'll happen. This is the next Joe the Plumber episode for Obama--and bears out the accusation of socialism they have been busy batting away since that tragic (for Barry) moment on that rope line.

Vlad the Invader

The following piece by the editors of National Review explains why the Russian incursion into Georgia must be met with stronger disapproval from the White House and the rest of the Atlantic Alliance than has been forthcoming: resurgent Russian nationalism fronted by a KGB kleptocracy flush with oil wealth is as dire a threat as the old Soviet empire, the rebuilding of which is Putin's fondest dream.

The invasion of Georgia serves to show the importance of true worldliness in a president, a quality that is quite different from the pseudo-cosmopolitanism of Barack Obama and the international left as a whole. Barack Obama, still in short pants geo-politically speaking, pitted against a Putin or any of the other maximally criminal leaders in the world, is truly frightening. John McCain has his head screwed on right in this respect.

The tagging of an Obama presidency as Carter II has its most dangerous implication here. The Russians invaded Afghanistan on Carter's watch; the Iranians invaded our embassy in Tehran and held hostages for 444 days under Carter's watchful eye; and the Chinese took over the Panama Canal under his masterful performance in the world's most powerful office. The totalitarian and authoritarian jackals of the world have Western liberals' number, and they are salivating at the prospect of another weak liberal at the helm of this country.

Chrystia Freeland's piece in the Financial Times speaks to why weakness now in American leadership could be a disastrous historical turning point for the world.

And George Will reminds that it is events, and a true leader's ability to discern the right response to those events, that characterizes a nation under strong leadership, not the gauzy, limp-wristed oratory of a left-leaning demagogue.