More Clarity from the Obama Administration?

The police recently evacuated the media from a small protest that, apparently, someone in Washington didn’t want Americans to see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaBk1dUF9nM

And, as the video of that encounter spreads, it’s worth recalling what John Lewis pointed out in his article “Obama’s Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity of the Democratic Agenda”:

This is the clarity that Obama has brought to the political scene. To see a president’s clear and principled commitment to ideology—any ideology—is precisely what America has needed for decades. This sight has helped many understand the issue at a more fundamental level than they ever have. . . . For three generations now, America has needed a blunt confrontation with the policies that have been leading the nation toward dictatorship and into bankruptcy. . . . Obama has given active-minded Americans a close-up view of this future. . . . But until now this destination has been hidden by the smoke and mirrors of rhetorical obfuscation. Obama’s strident efforts to impose this agenda are enabling people to see that future with clarity. . . . Many are coming to see the issues, even if imperfectly, in terms of dictatorship versus individual rights.

The full article is worth reading and sharing. It ends where a proper response to this new attack on the media should begin:

[Obama’s] most astute opponents are correct to see his plans as attacks on their individual rights. But many people remain confused about the nature of the threat because they lack an understanding of the principles needed to grasp the cause and meaning of the trend toward statism and to reverse that trend. Those principles begin with the rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, and with the founding purpose of our government: “to secure these rights.” To grasp the meaning of this seminal statement, we must understand that the right to life does not mean the right to coerce others into providing us with the needs of life. It means the right to live our lives free of such coercions.

The essence of the capitalist system is freedom: each man’s freedom to pursue his own goals, to pursue his own happiness, to keep the material products of his efforts, and to deal voluntarily with others. But to reestablish and maintain their freedom, Americans must assert, javascript:void(0)with full knowledge of the principles at stake, that they have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the only proper moral purpose of government is to secure these rights. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid, not of their party, but of their country’s founding principles, by understanding those principles and guarding them as if their lives depended on it—because they do.

About Daniel Wahl

Daniel Wahl is assistant editor at The Objective Standard.

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