Far from radically departing from the American political tradition, Obama is merely exploiting possibilities that have long been intimated by that tradition.

Throughout this most recent presidential election until the present, right-leaning commentators — "conservatives" — have labored inexhaustibly to inspire in Americans an untiring vigilance against the socialistic agenda of their current President.  President Obama, we are incessantly reminded, desires the transformation of the United States from the "capitalist" country that it has always been into a "socialist" utopia that never was.

That there is no small grain of truth in this account of the situation is a proposition to which no intellectually honest person can reasonably take exception. Nevertheless, the narrative that these right-wing pundits have composed remains a grossly truncated depiction of the political reality.

Barack Obama is indeed what we would call a "socialist." Furthermore, as I have argued in the past, his is a self-conscious commitment to a socialist ideology that, nominally at least, Americans have staunchly eschewed. Rightist commentators are equally correct when they note that President Obama seeks to affect a metamorphosis of American society, a desire doubtless informed by, at best, ambivalence and, at worst, contempt for the United States as it has traditionally conceived itself.

Still, the idea that America's political timeline can be neatly divided between two eras, those of pre-Obama "capitalism" and post-Obama "socialism," is a function of the average right-winger's self-delusion: Obama's presidency would be inconceivable had the stage not long been set for it.

As historically communistic and socialistic societies have within recent decades been experimenting with capitalism, so America throughout the twentieth century has acquired an admittedly qualified attraction to socialism. Our public education system, designed as it is to distribute an equal and equitable distribution of a social good to all of society's members, rich or poor, white or black, male or female, etc., is alone sufficient to establish that Equality — the cardinal value of "socialisms" and "communisms" everywhere — has elicited affirmation from even the sworn enemies of these leftist, collectivist ideologies from as early on as the nineteenth century — that is, long before the Obama administration and even well before the "New Deal."

The point, obviously, isn't that the establishment of public schools by itself renders the United States a socialist society. Nor does the establishment of any other individual redistributionist scheme per se (like say, "social security") amount to socialism. The point is that for the better part of our history as a sovereign nation we have engaged in one socialistic experiment after another. However, it is true that this flirtation with socialism that began in the nineteenth century and which developed into a love affair throughout the twentieth, threatens to blossom into a marriage in the Age of Obama.

Be that as it is, far from radically departing from the American political tradition, Obama is merely exploiting possibilities that have long been intimated by that tradition.  Obama is a radical, yes, but it is neither possible nor (politically) desirable for any politician — regardless of popularity and power — to advance any agenda that isn't to some extent susceptible to being assimilated by the tradition(s) of his or her society.

My primary objective in this essay, though, isn't to note the socialistic impulses within the American political tradition. Nor am I concerned with either criticizing or (much less) excusing President Obama's sorely conspicuous lust for an unprecedented expansion of an already bloated federal government.  My chief concern, rather, is to show, first, that socialism is but one expression of a distinctive style of politics that from the time of our nation's founding to this very day has dominated our collective self-understanding; and, secondly, the Right, doubtless through inadvertence, even as it unabashedly rejects Obama's socialism, potentially contributes to its perpetuation.

The socialist, whether explicitly or implicitly, consciously or subconsciously, holds a set of interlocking views regarding the natures of human reason, morality, and political philosophy that, in spite of being distinctive of his orientation, are not unique to it.

Reason

The rise of socialism, communism, fascism and other collectivist and totalitarian ideologies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is unquestionably concomitant with and reflective of the emergence of historically unrivaled power and affluence that also occurred during this time. Yet, in addition to this vast increase of resources, the cultural landscape supplied an equally unrivaled confidence in the omni-competence of Reason, including the ability to design whole societies in accordance with its vision.  

Morality

The terms in accordance with which Reason sought to design and re-design the world were its own principles, moral principles and/or ideals that were thought to be accessible — in theory, at any rate — to all human beings in all places and at all times.  There never has been anything on the order of a consensus as to what these "first principles" of Reason allegedly are: Liberty, Equality, Virtue, Pleasure, Piety, Prosperity, and Happiness are among the candidates that have been submitted.  Yet there is consensus among their respective proponents that any such principles or ideals transcend history and culture.

Politics

When Reason is construed as a trans-temporal instrument limitless in scope, and Morality is conceived primarily along the lines of abstract principles and/or ideals no less universalistic than the intellectual faculty in which they reside, then politics is considered accordingly. The State, from this perspective, is understood as a grand enterprise to which its citizens are joint contributors, comrades-in-arms whose resources must be deployed in the service of bringing to fruition some moral goal thought to subsist for all eternity and from which the society in question is believed to derive the justification for its very existence. If Equality is the favored principle, then citizens will be expected to labor tirelessly in order to insure that their body politic realizes Equality for all; if that moral principle allegedly demanded by Reason is Liberty, or Virtue, or Piety then, accordingly, citizens' chief obligation will be to realize it.

Rationalism

The foregoing triadic scheme, as I stated, is held by the socialist, but it is far from being uniquely his, for socialism is but one expression, among many, of what has been called "Rationalism."  The conceptions of reason, morality, and politics to which we just attended are recurring themes central to all versions of Rationalism.

It is crucial that self-identified right-wingers recognize this, for most contemporary movement conservatives, though vehemently opposed to the Rationalism of socialists and welfare-state liberals, are no less rationalistic, a fact readily revealed by the common language they share with their opponents.

Movement conservatives, not unlike American leftists of various sorts, never cease invoking the Declaration of Independence, and like their leftist counterparts, movement conservatives insist that it is upon the principle enshrined in this document — the proposition that all men are created equal and in possession of divinely dispensed rights — that the United States was founded.

This twofold belief — that morality is comprised fundamentally of abstract, "first" principles and that America is the first and only nation in the history of the world to be erected upon such principles — is rationalistic to the core.  The objection that the Declaration's appeal to God as the source of these principles — in this case, "self-evident," "unalienable" rights — is singularly incapable of meeting the charge of rationalism, for the God to which the Declaration refers is "Nature's God," the "Creator," that is, the God of the Deists: the God of the Declaration is no less abstract than the principles of which he is said to be the ground.

Deism was quite popular among the intelligentsia of the eighteenth century, of which Thomas Jefferson — the author of the Declaration of Independence — was a member.  Deism, or at least the deism of the eighteenth century, was the belief that while there is a God, and while this God did indeed create the universe, He is indifferent to how human beings live their lives. The God of the Deists is like a watchmaker: He creates the watch of the world and steps back to let it unwind on its own.

The God of the Deists is an impersonal Being.  It is for this reason that the seventeenth century French Catholic philosopher Pascal remarked that Deism is almost as repugnant to the Christian faith as atheism, for any mention of Christ is conspicuously absent from both of them.

As for the notion that America was "founded" upon a "proposition," it is a convenient fiction for those seeking to justify their policy preferences, whether they are preferences for wars for "Global Democracy," massive Third World immigration, endless "affirmative action," or "Global Capitalism."  A nation founded upon a bloodless universal proposition owes nothing to time or place.  In reality, America owes her being to precisely the same kinds of historical contingencies that account for the origins of every other society that has ever existed: racial, ethnic, and religious considerations no less informed America's self-conception from its inception than they informed the identity of other societies. 

In short, as long as we refuse to acknowledge that America is the product, not of a trans-cultural, trans-historical Reason, but a culturally and historically specific tradition, we greatly deceive ourselves and, in so doing, further the Rationalism under which we are today suffering, a disposition that is the quintessential monument to Man's staggering arrogance, his belief in his ability to remake the universe in his own image.

Yet though the average movement conservative isn't a self-conscious rationalist, the idiom that he continues to employ in daily political discourse is a residue of Rationalism. For example, to his own admission, when the movement conservative goes to the voting booth, he is in search, not of a ruler or governor, but a "leader."  What is a political "leader" expected to do?  Political "leaders" are expected to lead citizens in "the right direction."  And those political "leaders" who "lead" most effectively are those who succeed in "unifying" citizens.

These notions, that politicians are supposed to be "leaders"; that they are responsible for moving the country in a single direction; and that their effectiveness as "leaders" is determined by the "unity" that they succeed in inspiring in their citizens (who on this reckoning, must be regarded as followers), are the central terms of the Rationalist's vocabulary. However, this is the vocabulary shared by both movement conservatives and their leftist rivals, and it implicitly presupposes the ideas of reason, morality, and politics remarked upon above.

Whether movement conservatives would or even could substitute another vocabulary for the one they currently have is questionable. In order to prevent the socialistic onslaught that they legitimately fear under an Obama presidency, it would indeed be wise for them to at least attempt to liberate us from the Rationalistic terms in which this onslaught will necessarily be couched. Beyond this, there is an alternative vocabulary available, and it is to be found, from the movement conservative's perspective, in the most ironic of places.

Of this site of ideas I will say more at another time, but it is a centuries-old intellectual tradition in whose name the movement conservative champions the cause that he does.  It has been called "classical conservatism."