Michael Kinsley / Obama laid out an unabashedly liberal view of 'rights' - pressofAtlanticCity.com: Commentary

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Michael Kinsley / Obama laid out an unabashedly liberal view of 'rights'

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Posted: Friday, January 25, 2013 12:01 am

Michael Kinsley / Obama laid out an unabashedly liberal view of 'rights'

President Barack Obama's speech Monday made - or tried to make - two different points, both concerning the definition of "rights." Although couched in the kind of president-ese appropriate to such an occasion, both goals were easy to spot, and both are parts of a solidly liberal vision of society and government.

People have been looking for the real Barack Obama: principled (maybe dangerously principled) progressive, or deeply (maybe disappointingly) moderate compromiser? This speech makes the answer clear.

First, Obama added a chapter on gay rights to the official story of America as a continuing experiment in expanding freedom: "We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths - that all of us are created equal - is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall." Women's rights, blacks' rights, gays' rights. From now on that's our story, and we're sticking with it.

This almost offhand reference by the president to a 1969 gay-rights riot as part of the grand procession of American equality and civil rights is itself a milestone. From now on, the boilerplate Fourth of July rhetoric of all politicians, or at least all Democratic politicians, will cite "black or white, men or women, Christian or Jewish or Muslim, gay or straight," and they will leave out the last pairing at their peril. (A genuine contribution of George W. Bush's presidency was adding Muslims to the roll-call of American pluralism. One now says, "our churches, synagogues, and mosques." Following Obama, one will refer to "our gay brothers and sisters" who deserve to be "treated like anyone else under the law.")

The president's second fascinating gloss on the concept of rights has to do with negative and positive rights. The Bill of Rights is largely a list of things the government may not do to you. It may not prevent you from having your say, or praying to your own God, or living unbothered in your own house. It may not discriminate against you on account of race, religion, and so on. But it has no positive duty to feed or house you.

There is another view of "rights" that sees them in positive terms, as obligations of society to all its citizens. The right to education, to food, to a job, to health care, and so on. These are the kind of rights that engage Obama.

"We the people," he said Monday, "still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity." Like the other kind of rights, these rights can exist in theory for years or centuries without being realized in practice. That's one reason that the struggle is never-ending.

Of course, being a politician, Obama claims that his vision of society is uniquely American. His critics, by contrast, have tried to nail him as a European intellectual (two fighting words). In truth, his vision of a properly run society is closer to the European model than, say, Rep. Paul Ryan's. But voters seem to prefer Obama's. Or at least the voters were given the opportunity for the Ryan model and turned it down.

Obama said, "A modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers." And, "a great nation must care for the vulnerable and protect its people from life's worst hazards and misfortune."

Who disagrees with that? Yet our particular great nation is letting its railroads and highways rot and does only a mediocre job of protecting people from life's worst hazards.

Perhaps we now know why Obama took up health-care reform at the beginning of his first term, even though there was other stuff (i.e., the financial crisis) going on, and his advisers (the ones on his payroll and those in the news media) were saying, put it off. Decent health care for everybody isn't just a nice thing to have. It's central to Obama's philosophy of government.

So Obama does have a vision - articulated pretty clearly if not explicitly in his speech Monday. Society, through its proxy, the government, should provide the individual with a higher level of protection from hardship and catastrophe than it does now. Government should also invest in public goods such as highways and education, which will also grease the wheels of commerce. Even global warming and the deficit get shoehorned into the framework of problems the government must deal with so individuals can be free to live their lives as they choose.

The president said, "This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience." It has? If so, it sure caught me napping. I think we are fairly untested, and it's hard to share the president's optimism. But he gets paid to be optimistic.

Michael Kinsley is a Bloomberg View columnist.

Posted in on Friday, January 25, 2013 12:01 am.

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