We now have exhibition 4,003 to prove that, at bottom, Barack Obama\u2019s agenda is and has always been socialistic to the core.<\/p>\n
The most recent piece of evidence confirming what, by now, everyone should know all too well is an audio recording of a speech the President delivered at a Loyola University conference back in 1998.\u00a0 It was there and then that Obama called for Americans to \u201cpool resources\u201d in order to \u201cfacilitate some redistribution [.]\u201d\u00a0 He unabashedly declared: \u201cI actually believe in redistribution.\u201d<\/p>\n
When we couple this with Obama\u2019s now notorious claim that the successful did nothing to deserve their success\u2014\u201cYou didn\u2019t build that!\u201d\u2014a larger worldview begins to come into focus.<\/p>\n
Yet to see that worldview spelled out, we must go beyond the sloganeering of the leftist politicians who promote redistributionist ideas to the leftist intellectuals who give rise to them.<\/p>\n
Philosophers John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin are among the contemporary academic world\u2019s biggest stars.\u00a0 And they are recognized as such because of their ingenuous and tireless efforts to construct an intellectual apparatus for \u201csocial justice\u201d\u2014i.e. redistribution.<\/p>\n
Rawls devises what he calls \u201cthe original position.\u201d\u00a0 In the original position, individuals gather together to determine what kind of society they shall inhabit together.\u00a0 In this regard, it is roughly comparable to what philosophers of an earlier era called \u201cthe state of nature.\u201d\u00a0 However, in the original position, individuals stand behind a \u201cveil of ignorance\u201d that blinds them to every one of those characteristics\u2014race, sex, class, religion\u2014that distinguish them from one another in the real world.<\/p>\n
Now, because no one knows what his circumstances will be in the society chosen, parties to the original position arrive at a consensus that their society shall be governed by two principles of \u201cjustice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first asserts that everyone is to have as expansive a right to liberty consistent with the same right for everyone else.\u00a0 But the second demands that all inequalities that arise from the observance of the first principle must be \u201carranged\u201d or redistributed in order to benefit \u201cthe least advantaged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parties to the original position would agree to this, Rawls thinks, because no one knows whether or not he will be counted among the least advantaged in the new social order.<\/p>\n
Notice, society here is treated as a lottery in that no one has done anything to deserve either his standing in it or \u201cthe advantages\u201d or \u201cdisadvantages\u201d that attach to his standing.\u00a0 (Translation: \u201cYou didn\u2019t build that!\u201d) Yet it is unlike a lottery in that\u2014just because one\u2019s fortunes and misfortunes are undeserved\u2014the just society requires of life\u2019s winners that they share their earnings with life\u2019s losers.<\/p>\n
Dworkin follows Rawls down this path.<\/p>\n
Dworkin contends that a distribution is equal and, thus, just, if it passes what he calls \u201cthe envy test.\u201d\u00a0 When a person envies the resources of another, he is willing to exchange his own resources for them.\u00a0 When no one envies the resources of others, then \u201cequality is perfect,\u201d Dworkin says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A person has two kinds of resources, \u201cpersonal\u201d and \u201cimpersonal.\u201d\u00a0 Personal resources are mental and physical traits\u2014health, strength, talent.\u00a0 Impersonal resources are material goods.\u00a0 The latter depend upon the former, but since no one did anything to earn his personal resources, no one is entitled to keep the impersonal resources that they made possible as long as there are others that envy them.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
Unlike impersonal resources, personal resources cannot be redistributed.\u00a0 However, Dworkin is a clear enough thinker to know that if it is permissible for the government to redistribute one\u2019s impersonal resources, then it is no less permissible for it do whatever it can possibly do to make good for inequalities in personal resources when envy extends to them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dworkin writes that if the distribution of personal resources fails the envy test, then there must be \u201ccompensatory strategies\u201d set in place to \u201crepair\u2026inequalities in personal resources and luck.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
To know the true character of Obama\u2019s redistributionist policies and where they logically lead, we need to know about the theories underwriting them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We now have exhibition 4,003 to prove that, at bottom, Barack Obama\u2019s agenda is and has always been socialistic to the core. The most recent piece of evidence confirming what, by now, everyone should know all too well is an audio recording of a speech the President delivered at a Loyola University conference back in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n