Tuesday, January 27, 2009

President Obama's Communitarian Promise

President Obama and Dr. Amitai Etzioni

Nine years ago I found the Communitarian Network and discovered the philosophy behind the new behavior laws passed in Seattle. I say "discovered" because until the night I found Etzioni, I had never heard the term once. Not once during my entire lifetime of education in American public schools, US Army schools for dependents overseas and American colleges had I ever heard the term communitarianism.

I scored in the top 1% nationally on the Political Science portion of the GED at Renton Vo Tech in 1982, and, I can assure you, the term was not anywhere on that exam. Nobody knew it. My dad had never heard of it, my friends and family had never heard of it. It can't be found in any PS encylopedias published before the 1990s. For this reason, most Americans I tried to explain it to thought I had made it up as part of some grand, insane delusion I was experiencing.

IF there was such a thing as communitarianism and IF it was such a powerful idea that would change the face of America forever, then SOMEBODY else would have been talking about it. It was impossible to even consider that I, a complete nobody with zero credentials, no PhD, no good job at CNN or even the local newspaper, could be the only one who knew about a major world philosophy being quietly introduced across the globe that would destroy individual freedom and eliminate the nations that protect it. It just was too ridiculous of an idea to bother indulging me, and few people I know have ever read any of my ACL writings, even to this day.

But, and here's the real kicker, many people I know have completely embraced communitarian values! I am hearing more communitarian double-speak every day, and it's beyond bizarre to listen to it. I am beginning to wonder seriously about my choice to remain in the US and to reject the new requirements for global citizenship here where I was born with the right and the responsibility to resist tyranny. Now I can plainly see it, my countrymen will turn on me next time for not wearing the new shackles we all have to volunteer to wear under my grandious, insane delusion that there is a whole new system of government called communitarianism.

The ACL and this blog are getting a lot of search hits for "Obama communitarian" lately. So I took a little stroll through the first 7-8 pages of google returns. Along the way I found this publication by students at Delaware County Community College: The Communitarian http://thecommunitarian.org/editorial.html. Isn't the National Association of Scholar's initiative on communitarianism (referenced on the ACL homepage) called No More Delawares?

As if we needed further proof that in some sectors of our society it is REAL, the following quotes prove that some people do know Obama's real politics and some people do discuss it frequently among themselves. The rest of us common folk can only describe it as change we can believe in.

Communitarian Network Letter #8
http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/ACommunitarianLetter8.html

“That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper… we must also admit that fulfilling America's promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover what John F. Kennedy called our ‘intellectual and moral strength.’” Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention
Conservatism is Dead: Long Live Liberalism? (Part III)
by Amitai Etzioni, Posted July 16, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amitai-etzioni/conservatism-is-dead-long_b_113096.html
"Obama draws heavily on -- and contributes much to -- a little known social philosophy known as communitarianism. It is centered around the importance of community, the common good, and service."
Obama the Communitarian
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/01/20/obama-the-communitarian.aspx

"Alan Wolfe is a TNR contributing editor and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. His latest book, The Future of Liberalism (Knopf), will be published in early February.

"Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama's language mixed liberal themes of hope and purpose with a communitarian emphasis on duty and responsibility. In his inaugural address, the latter language was so loud that the former could barely be heard."

The Dangers of Obama’s Communitarian Service Program,
Phil Orenstein • December 8, 2008
http://democracy-project.com/?p=3334
"In the coming four years we will witness a growing mobocracy with more of these Wal-Mart moments, if these communitarian service programs and the creeping Marxism behind them aren’t nipped at the root, before they multiply."
Communitarianism v. Libertarianism
By Scott Winship - January 22, 2009, 1:03PM
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/01/22/communitarianism_v_libertarianism/
"This is the essence of the social contract, and President Obama's rhetoric to date indicates that he intuitively grasps the intricate connections between communitarian and libertarian values. It will be exciting to see whether he manages to translate this rhetoric into a workable set of policies that can command broad public support."

Citizens, Not Americans
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/01/20/citizens-not-americans-the-metaphysics-of-barack-obama-s-inaugural-address.aspx

"Linda Hirshman is a former professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at Brandeis University, and the author, most recently, of Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World.

"There are two kinds of participants in the American Republic: citizens and Americans. They parallel precisely Isaiah Berlin's powerful, defining essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty." Citizens achieve positive liberty, freedom to. Americans enjoy negative liberty, freedom from. Almost nothing Barack Obama says is accidental. He chose "citizens," not "Americans."

"Now Barack Obama, no dummy, is offering not just political change, but metaphysical change."
And what's this from CBSnews last summer?

Can Democrats Claim The Alaskan Frontier?
by Charles Wohlforth, The New Republic: Chances Of Obama Breaking The Democrats’ Dry Spell Are Better Than Ever, July 23, 2008
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/23/opinion/main4286673.shtml

"Obama's communitarian values also seem too far out of sync with Alaska's independent, self-reliant voters (unless he starts offering free government money to everyone, which always seems to work here)."

Here's how they discuss it in American law schools:
The Hierarchical-Communitarian Worldview
October 8, 2008 | Posted by: Alan R. Madry
Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog
http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2008/10/08/the-hierarchical-communitarian-worldview/

"One thing that most fascinated me about Dan Kahan’s findings (as reported in his Boden Lecture here on Monday) was the lack of people appearing in the quadrant (on his “group-grid” framework) that would be characterized as hierarchical and communitarian (the flip of that, also apparently lacking, would be individualistic egalitarians–more on that later). The gap is striking since hierarchical communitarians are heavily represented in history among philosophers and theologians. Plato and Aristotle would both be hierarchical communitarians, as would Aquinas (pictured above) and other of the Church fathers. Further afield, in China we’d find Confucius and his dialectics and in India, Manu and the dharma shastra."
Is Obama going to introduce a full national turn to Keynes' economic ideology?

The New Republic
A Man for All Seasons by
The misunderstood John Maynard Keynes.
Post Date Wednesday, February 04, 2009
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=b5f61f74-dde6-43ea-a433-9feb0f752c3b


"When the economy goes south, one name invariably surfaces on the lips of pundits and economists: John Maynard Keynes. That is because the twentieth century's greatest economist is generally associated with the idea that markets require government intervention in order to function properly. During boom times, when the market seems to be working, no one has any use for Keynes's skepticism toward unrestrained capitalism. But, during recessions--when the economy grinds to a halt and Washington suddenly looks like the only thing that can save it--Keynes invariably enjoys a revival. The current economic crisis, our country's worst since the Great Depression, is no exception. Everyone, it seems, has spent the past months rediscovering Keynes."
Everyone huh?

What does John Maynard Keynes have in common with Dr. Amitai Etzioni, the founder of Communitarianism and President Obama's behind-the-scenes guru? Fabian socialism.

"Keynes scorned these "catastrophists" in the Labour Party. He also despised Soviet communism. And he had a low opinion of Marx's economics. "My feelings about Das Kapital are the same as my feelings about the Koran," Keynes wrote Bernard Shaw in 1934. But he was sympathetic to the Fabian socialism of Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb, which had influenced the Labour Party." {ibid}

12 comments:

Stop Common Purpose said...

Niki

I had never heard of communitarianism until a few months ago when I stumbled upon your blog and eventually worked out that communitarianism = Blair's Third Way and is the philosophy behind the New World Order + Fabians + New Labour + Common Purpose.

John

Anonymous said...

I am behind you Niki!

Edith

Brow Furrowed said...

Where would you go Niki? I've been thinking of putting distance between myself and the 'control system'. But where? Take to the hills maybe. Not so easy in western Europe.

Over here in the UK they're in the process of introducing a national database of all children under 18, address, school, social services involvement, etc. Available to concerned professionals. Oh,this list is only for the mid to lower echelons, MP's and the famous, it's proposed, will not need to supply all such details. It's a stock inventory of our kids under the pretext of protecting them, following some high profile child torture cases. Problem-reaction-solution.

angry cheese said...

I too have only become aware of communitarianism over the last few years. In Britain it is manifest in the Third Way or the Third Sector. Communitarianism is in action here, gobbling up public money and sucking the life out of established institutions through a poisonous organisation called Common Purpose - and its numerous clones, but we're starting to fight back:
www.thebcgroup.org.uk

http://cpexposed.com

www.ukcolumn.org

Niki Raapana said...

There was a time when if I had got these kinds of comments about how you all found communitarianism (or support my study of it), I would have broke down and cried. Now I'm all grown up and instead of letting loose with happy tears because I'm "okay," I'm feeling the growing awareness and focusing on adding information from Eustace Mullins' "Creature from Jekyl Island" to our ACL banking page.

I always felt too uneducated to write about banking. That hasn't changed. But I also thought I was too uneducated to write about communitarianism. So, what do I know? :)

I'm also inspired to do another chart and will be sure to put Common Purpose in this one!

Mud, I'm already where I would go if things got bad, so I have no idea where I'd go if I left here. I just don't think I can stomach it if I have to hear that people were arrested or shot because it had to be done for the community's safety. Maybe someplace where I can't speak the language would ease my pain when I witness the big final "change." And, well, someplace warm would be nice too, heh. I saw that database plan for the kids in England, and, as you may have noticed, many of my readers are from Great Britian. We REALLY need a Brit to write the British perspective in 2020!!!! :)

Anonymous said...

Niki,

Speaking of data bases have you heard about what is tucked away in the stimulus package now in Congress?

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=87322

What do you think of this?

Edith

Anonymous said...

"Devilvision" - available for free online - is a pretty darn good reference too, Niki; because it presents evidence... from a wider lens... for how and why we got in this mess.

Personally, I believe it'd just be too cool if we could all simply resolve to totally un-tether our lives from blatant counterfeiters and pirates altogether.

This crime wave might come to an ignoble and sudden end if we were to re-learn... the not-so-silly... once common [Protest-ant] European-American practice... of justifiably shunning (the fine art of ignoring; or of 'turning away' from) those tainted by corruption... and the wicked, besides. Then through the lessons we once learned later from the likes of Gandhi... we could just-as-easily re-learn... the seemingly almost forgotten virtues of self-preservation and self-reliance.

My goodness... if the squirrel can still do it - and have such a grand time of it too - then why couldn't we?

And just like that industrious, fun-loving squirrel... maybe we could then put ourselves in the enviable position... of being able to honorably treat... those vile, corruptible communitarians... as the stuff of our wonderment - if not the stuff... for our very own... personal amusement!;)

Anonymous said...

It is The Third Way.
The Dialectic.
When our daughter was finishing the third grade in her quite affluent government brain laundry (central Ohio) she was recruited for their "gifted program". They call it PACE. We were lied to about the purpose of it and she spent five years in the program. Four years later I learned what it really was/is. It is based on the philosophies of very famous Marxist change agents (Benjamin Bloom, Krathwohl, Hilda Taba and others). Specialized materials are used on the children to train them to be group oriented and to DIAPRAX (practice the Dialectic). When I finally caught on and asked to see the teacher manuals I was fought for months by school employees. The change agent who was our child's teacher finally retired, lives on our taxes, and is now working as a change agent in the ecumenical movement called Walk To Emmaus. Trained Facilitators are everywhere. The good news is it was through discovering how the government schools tried to brainwash my child that my eyes were opened to the big picture.

Niki Raapana said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Niki Raapana said...

I allowed super jon's comment here to show how truely lame the communitarian's rebuttal argument is.

Notice jon never mentions the word communitarianism, not once. Our "only answer is an alliance" with Etzioni and his countrymen. Oh, okay.

Anonymous said...

Israel would never survive without that steady flow of U.S. cash year after year. If that isn't an alliance, I don't know what is. Oh... thats right, he means a Communitarian alliance.

The best thing they can do right now is get out the vote for Net-an-yahoo. If they make him their president, that madman will bomb Iran for sure. Obama won't support the idea, but if they do it anyway believing he'll come to their defense, imagine their surprise when he just wags his finger at their naughty deed instead.

If that happens, it will be a free-for-all in the unholy land.

Anonymous said...

Superb Jon, did you make it all the way over here... from the Constance Cumbey blog... or from where, might I ask?

Could you please tell us exactly?

I don't want to seem unkind, but hey, are you even for real? Are you assuming an archetypal identity just for the thrill of it?

Or did you begin life as a bot?

Either way, I've gotta hand it to ya, dude: Man, you are a born clown - in fact, I do believe... you are mahvelous!;)

BTW, how's the pay? Heck, I wanna wavy-gravy job like the one you got. Are there any special qualifications?

Or do you simply have to be plugged into a wall socket somewhere?

It's sure gotta be some fun! ~LMAO~