Obama Hates Dissent

Back before Obama even started publicly running for the presidency, I remember a speech he gave in which he said all Americans should put aside their disagreements and come together. I liked what he had to say, but I couldn't shake the feeling that by "come together" he meant "agree with me."

When he gave his State of the Union address, it was the same thing, but more obvious. He said he wanted us to put aside our "petty grievances" and have "unity of purpose," and that we should not have "conflict" or "discord" or "recriminations;" that if we believed, due to "worn-out dogmas," that our government is too big (and therefore, in our opinion, takes away too much of our liberty), then we are focusing on "childish things" and our "stale political arguments" no longer apply.

Translation: if you disagree with Obama, if you don't share his "purpose" or agenda -- even for principled reasons shared by most of the founders of this country -- then you are not part of us.

A lot of people didn't hear that subtext, or didn't want to. But it's proven to be more than just words. Obama has asked Americans to report people who disagree with his health care plan to the White House; he redefines "disagreement" as "spreading misinformation," of course, to make it sound good (not that misinformation doesn't exist, but it's on both sides, clearly; and further, the White House has no business being the arbiter of what is, and isn't, true).

He attacked the Tea Parties, which brought millions of Americans together in opposition to his plans, as merely astroturfing.

He later said in his health care reform speech he "will not waste time" with people who oppose his plans, instead choosing to question their motives as purely political.

He refused to do an interview with Fox News Channel only because of FNC's political leanings.

Now his two top advisors are saying that FNC is "not really news," which was said only to incite a culture war, drawing a divide between millions of Americans in a cynical attempt to throw his detractors overboard and to keep the Good Ship Obama afloat. He's already said he "will not waste time" with people who oppose his plan, so why not alienate them intentionally, if it will shore up his base? (And by the way, where's the rest of the media attacking Obama for attacking Fox? It used to be that the media took such attacks personally, even if not directed at themselves.)

If Bush had done any of these things, the left would have gone completely nuts over it. But when Obama does it, that's perfectly acceptable. Even desirable.

Bush caused division in this country by unapologetically pushing an agenda that much of the country disagreed with, even hated. Obama -- who is guilty of the same thing, of course -- is causing even more division in this country by actively pursuing it, in order to exploit it for political gains.

James Madison said in Federalist 10 that one of the "two methods of removing the causes of faction" is "by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests." He adds, "The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is ... an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government."

The only "unity of purpose" we can expect Americans to share is that of securing individual liberty, and maintaining the government that so secures it. Obama surely knows he cannot force everyone to have a "unity of purpose" in creating new and massive government programs; so, instead, he is pretending that if you don't share in that purpose -- an individual right which government is designed to protect -- then you are the enemy.

I submit that a President so disdainful of expressions of liberty is the problem, and not the people with such expressions, whatever they may be.