Weekly Opinion/Editorial

LIBERALISM IS NOTHING NEW!
by Steve Fair

Can Barrick Obama be America’s next President? That remains to be seen, but the young Senator has defied the odds and beaten Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, but can he beat John McCain? Granted, the forty six year old Obama can string a sentence together. He is an inspiring speaker who can work a crowd with the best. He also inspires young and old alike with his message of change. The problem is that Obama speaks in such generalities that it’s hard to determine what he actually stands for. Anyone can advocate change, but unless there is a detailed execution strategy to bring change about, it’s just talk. A better indicator of Obama’s true values is not the speeches he delivers at campaign rallies, but how he has voted in the U.S. Senate.

According to the National Journal Senator Obama was the most liberal senator in the storied body in 2007. The insurgent presidential candidate shifted further to the left last year in the run-up to the primaries, after ranking as the 16th- and 10th-most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate. He is even more liberal than Hillary. Senator Clinton ranked as the 16th-most-liberal senator in the 2007 ratings. Obama is a classic liberal. He energizes young educated professions- many with limited political knowledge or experience. As a liberal, Obama and his followers believe the government should be more involved in people’s lives. They also believe those who disagree with them are uninformed hillbillies.

An example of how Obama feels about the average working class Democrat was revealed in the statement he made in Pennsylvania during the primary campaign. The Senator said, "it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." The “they” Obama was referring to were average working class Americans.
Syndicated columnist George Will wrote in response. “Obama's dismissal is: Americans, especially working-class conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program. Today that program is to elect Obama, thereby making his wife at long last proud of America.”

The condescending attitude Obama and his liberal followers have for working class Americans defies conventional wisdom. They arrogantly proclaim that only their liberal ideas of change can save America. But this characteristic of arrogance is nothing new to liberalism. In 1952, Illinois liberal Adlai Stevenson was the Dem’s nominee for President after a brokered nominating convention. With nine candidates on the ballot, including Oklahoma US Senator Robert S. Kerr, Stevenson finished second on the first ballot. The party bosses were convinced the young liberal would do well in the general election and pressured the delegates to nominate the grandson of President Cleveland’s Vice President. They did so on the third ballot of the convention. But Stevenson failed to connect with the average American and was soundly beaten by General Dwight D. Eisenhower- not just in 1952, but in 1956 as well.

The similarities between Obama and Stevenson are striking. Both came to national prominence after delivering stirring speeches at the Democratic National Convention. Like Obama, Stevenson was young and was an Ivy League graduate. He was considered an intellectual like Obama. In fact, Stevenson’s nickname was “the egghead.”

But Stevenson’s electability problem was his inability to connect to the average man. According to David Greenberg, “to mainstream Americans, Stevenson was an odd bird. He was divorced, and a Unitarian, and he talked funny. Mort Sahl joked that Adlai believed in the "Ten Suggestions" and that if Stevenson were in the Klan, he would burn a question mark on your front lawn.

Stevenson’s primary problem was that he thought he knew more about what Americans needed than they did. That is a classic characteristic of liberalism. Liberals believe they are smarter, can jump higher, and run faster than the average man. The liberal’s favorite book is Humility and how I mastered it. Liberals don’t subscribe to personal responsibility and accountability. They believe the government is the answer to every problem. Liberals don’t believe in absolutes. To a liberal, behavior is dictated by the situation, not by solid concrete principles of right and wrong.

Obama is cut from the same piece of cloth as Stevenson. Like Stevenson, Obama fails to recognize, respect, and appreciate the people of middle America. He cannot understand that owning a gun or practicing ones faith doesn’t make them bitter. It defines who they are and what they stand for. To imply otherwise reveals a lack of understanding of what made America great. Obama is disconnected from middle American and for that reason, Abe Lincoln, the first Republican President, will continue to remain the only person ever be elected President from Illinois.