Acting Like President Lincoln? Not Likely!
Thomas Krannawitter writes that President-elect Barack Obama likes to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln, according to Krannawitter’s op-ed in today’s Washington Times, even citing that, just like Lincoln, President-elect Obama will be arriving by train to his presidential inauguration.
However, Krannawitter adds, “Yet for all the fussing over Obama-as-Lincoln, no one has dared to mention that in terms of what matters most, their moral and political principles,” Lincoln and Obama “stand diametrically opposed to one another.” Krannawitter explains:
“Lincoln gave his last full measure of devotion defending the idea that the most important rights are the equal natural rights that belong to each individual human being. This is precisely why Lincoln could condemn slavery as a great evil, regardless of what the laws or public opinion said. For Lincoln, a "new birth of freedom" in America required nothing less than a rejection of group identification, a renewed dedication to the founding principle that "all men are created equal," and ultimately offering equal protection under the laws to all citizens and fulfilling what the Founders called the "social contract." Whether one examines his consistent defense of abortion rights, or race-based affirmative action, or progressive tax plans and wealth redistribution, or bureaucratic regulation of select businesses and industries, Mr. Obama stands on the opposite, New Deal principle that group rights eclipse individual rights.
“Indeed, Mr. Obama's principles are much closer to those of FDR. rather than Lincoln. FDR's campaign for "economic rights" required government distinguishing between haves and have nots, taking from the former to give to the latter. The kind of progressive "social justice" that informed the New Deal as well as Mr. Obama's "community organizing" authorizes government bureaucrats to determine who gets what kind of rights and how many, dividing Americans into groups based on victimization and needs: the poor, racial minorities, women, homosexuals, farmers, union members, the elderly, the uninsured, and so on.”
For Krannawitter, the distinction is important, and argues that by following FDR, Obama:
“rejects the Declaration's principle of equal, individual rights. This explains why in a 2001 radio interview Mr. Obama lamented that the modern Supreme Court had not yet displaced individual rights with a Constitutional defense of group rights and schemes of redistribution of wealth and property. This is exactly how Mr. Obama thinks the Constitution should be understood.”
Hold on to your wallets, folks, because your taxes are going higher.
More of Thomas Krannawitter's writings can be found at The Claremont Institute.