Obama’s Acceptance Speech Vs. Milton Friedman
Posted by: MichaelW on Thursday, August 28, 2008
Overall, Barack Obama delivered an excellent speech tonight. If there is one thing that he does well, it is this. Of course, it was mostly lofty rhetoric and anti-McCain Bush barbs, but this is literally preaching to the choir so that was to be expected.
The one portion of Obama's oration that really caught my attention was the following:
What is that promise?
It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect.
It's a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.
Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves - protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.
Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work.
That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper.
That's the promise we need to keep.
At this point of the speech, I couldn't help but think of JFK's famous line, "Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country." I think Obama obviously intended to harken back to JFK's acceptance speech in 1960 (which, incidentally, can be compared here), and to the legacy of government as patron of the people, for which it is owed a special allegiance.
I was also reminded of the Introduction to Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom rebutting JFK's version of "the promise of America":
Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic "what your country can do for you" implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, "what you can do for your country" implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or votary. To the free man, the country is a collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom.
Those words were published in 1962, and yet, somehow, they presciently challenge 2008's candidate of change. In taking on JFK's vision of an American united by a singularity of purpose, Friedman also dismantles Obama's dream of each citizen burdened with an obligation to be responsible for all other citizens. By juxtaposing JFK's message of subservience to government with the ideal of freedom, Friedman destroys Obama's notion that government is the provider of opportunities and the benevolent master of our destinies. In other words, Obama's rhetoric is so shopworn and predictable, so mired in the politics and policies of the past, as to be rebuttable by a book from the year he was born.
This is "The Change We Need"?
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