Obama’s radio remarks that are supposedly “Socialist”
Conservative bloggers are in a lather over some remarks Obama made years ago on a Chicago radio station discussing the Warren court and how it was perceived to be radical. He points out (correctly) that the court wasn’t that radical at all. If the court wanted to be radical it would have investigated wealth distribution as a remedy for the civil rights problems of the day. Simple-minded bloggers have taken this as a sign of Obama’s latent socialism and desire to redistribute wealth in this country:
The federal government must provide for the common defense, a military to provide and ensure National Security. The “essential constraints” placed into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers was to ensure a limited government, not a pervasive and massive federal government providing all things to all people.
Obama laments in the interview that the Warren Supreme Court failed to reinterpret the Constitution to read into it what was not there: Redistribution of wealth for “political and economic justice in this society.”
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For Obama, the redistribution of wealth is a civil right that the civil rights movement failed to attain. To Barack Obama, the redistribution of wealth is basic “political and economic justice,” and one segment of society has the basic right to the money of other segments of society. He’s very straight forward about this.
And while in the interview he did not think wealth redistribution could be affected through the courts, he was confident that it could be attained “legislatively.” The reason the courts have not legislated this from the bench is that it requires the court to interpret the Constitution in a manner that is wholly in conflict with the document – and its intentions – as written.
The problem, of course, is that Obama never actually said what these conservative types think he said. They would be well served to actually go to the tape and listen not for what they want to hear but what they do here.
The Republicans are stretching, and they know it. Andrew Sullivan hit the nail on the head here.
