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“The Loves of Barack Obama”–Prof. Hadley Arkes in The Federalist
By The James Wilson Institute •
Posted on Mar 2 2015
Weighing in on the kerfuffle over former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani's accusation that President Barack Obama "does not love America," Prof. Hadley Arkes writes on "The Loves of Barack Obama" in The Federalist. Some excerpts:
"What would it mean, then, to ask whether Obama loves this country? Surely he would summon an affection for the country that elevated him to his high office—or at least to those voters who were willing to lift him to that station. But what of the regime whose defining principles made that election possible? For Obama, the country begins with the Constitution. But for Lincoln the nation began before the Constitution with the “proposition,” as he called it, that “all men are created equal,”—that the only rightful government over human beings would draw its just powers from the consent of the governed."
"But Obama made it clear in his autobiography that there are no moral truths of that kind. “All men are created equal” was a high-flown sentiment, but not a truth, and for Obama the telling point was that the Founders who owned slaves did not truly honor it. But to say that people have not lived up fully to the principle is not to say that the principle is false."
"Obama has clearly found much to love in this country. He loves his friends and loyalists, he loves basketball and his favorite music, and the celebrities who welcome him to their homes. But by his own words, he loves something quite apart from the truths that were thought to mark the distinct meaning and character of this country. As Lincoln said, that “truth” of the Declaration was the “electric cord” that connected the generations. It explained why people could regard this country as theirs even though their families were not part of the generation that fought the revolution. It’s the thing that drew people to this country. But it is not what has drawn Barack Obama to this country rather than to the land of his father, and, by his own avowal, it is not the thing he truly loves."
Read the whole piece here.