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Citizens Not Subjects - What A Novel Idea
More historical and other musings on Obama.
The New Liberalism by George Packer - The New Yorker - 17 Nov 08
"When the reporter pressed [Franklin] Roosevelt to offer a vision of his own historical opportunity, he gave two answers.
First, he said, America needed 'someone whose interests are not special but general, someone who can understand and treat the country as a whole. For as much as anything it needs to be reaffirmed at this juncture that the United States is one organic entity, that no interest, no class, no section, is either separate or supreme above the interests of all.'
But Roosevelt didn’t limit himself to the benign self-portrait of a unifying President. 'Moral leadership' had a philosophical component: he was, he said, 'a liberal.'
The election of 1932 arrived at one of those recurring moments when 'the general problems of civilization change in such a way that new difficulties of adjustment are presented to government.' As opposed to a conservative or a radical, Roosevelt concluded, a liberal 'recognizes the need of new machinery' but also 'works to control the processes of change, to the end that the break with the old pattern may not be too violent.'"
"The [Wall Street] Journal’s nightmare scenario of America under President Obama and a Democratic Congress included health care for all, a green revolution, expanded voting rights, due process for terror suspects, more powerful unions, financial regulation, and a shift of the tax burden upward. (If the editorial had had more space, full employment and the conquest of disease might have made the list.)"
"[Harvard law professor and author of "Nudge", Cass] Sunstein suggested as the governing philosophy of an Obama Presidency the idea of 'deliberative democracy.' The phrase appears in 'The Audacity of Hope,' where it denotes a conversation among adults who listen to one another, who attempt to persuade one another by means of argument and evidence, and who remain open to the possibility that they could be wrong. Sunstein pointed out that 'deliberative democracy' has certain 'preconditions': 'It requires an educated citizenry, a virtuous and engaged citizenry that has sufficient resources—and Madison sometimes spoke in these terms—that they could actually be citizens, rather than subjects.'"
The New Liberalism by George Packer - The New Yorker - 17 Nov 08
"When the reporter pressed [Franklin] Roosevelt to offer a vision of his own historical opportunity, he gave two answers.
First, he said, America needed 'someone whose interests are not special but general, someone who can understand and treat the country as a whole. For as much as anything it needs to be reaffirmed at this juncture that the United States is one organic entity, that no interest, no class, no section, is either separate or supreme above the interests of all.'
But Roosevelt didn’t limit himself to the benign self-portrait of a unifying President. 'Moral leadership' had a philosophical component: he was, he said, 'a liberal.'
The election of 1932 arrived at one of those recurring moments when 'the general problems of civilization change in such a way that new difficulties of adjustment are presented to government.' As opposed to a conservative or a radical, Roosevelt concluded, a liberal 'recognizes the need of new machinery' but also 'works to control the processes of change, to the end that the break with the old pattern may not be too violent.'"
"The [Wall Street] Journal’s nightmare scenario of America under President Obama and a Democratic Congress included health care for all, a green revolution, expanded voting rights, due process for terror suspects, more powerful unions, financial regulation, and a shift of the tax burden upward. (If the editorial had had more space, full employment and the conquest of disease might have made the list.)"
"[Harvard law professor and author of "Nudge", Cass] Sunstein suggested as the governing philosophy of an Obama Presidency the idea of 'deliberative democracy.' The phrase appears in 'The Audacity of Hope,' where it denotes a conversation among adults who listen to one another, who attempt to persuade one another by means of argument and evidence, and who remain open to the possibility that they could be wrong. Sunstein pointed out that 'deliberative democracy' has certain 'preconditions': 'It requires an educated citizenry, a virtuous and engaged citizenry that has sufficient resources—and Madison sometimes spoke in these terms—that they could actually be citizens, rather than subjects.'"