Broad and Main streets are of little interest to the U.S. president, who in a speech to the U.N. favors global economy and global “management“ of human society. (Photo David Tulis)
By David Tulis
The arguments for local economy and free markets sometimes cannot be heard for their breathlessness, their being stifled by more powerful and lofty claims raised in places such as the United Nations auditorium in Manhattan.
There the federal president, Barack Obama, gives a speech about democracy as the leading cause of wealth, prosperity, liberty and progress, and his idea that centralized international authority is needed to ensure the benefits of democracy for every human being on the planet.
President Obama says much that is glorious and favorable to internationalism and a sort of placeless sense of belonging (you belong the the earth without exactly being in any one place upon its surface).
To win people like you, he peppers his talk with statements that show you he indeed understands and incorporates your ideals. These ideals are suggested by the free market, constitutional government, old-style free enterprise capitalism, Christianity’s teachings of care for the other, and democratic and public control of both government and the state.
Mr. Obama does, indeed, understand us
➤ “[W]e see the collapse of strongmen and fragile states breeding conflict, and driving innocent men, women and children across borders on an epoch epic scale.”
➤ “The increasing skepticism of our international order can also be found in the most advanced democracies.”
➤ “The history of the last two decades proves that in today’s world, dictatorships are unstable. The strongmen of today become the spark of revolution tomorrow. You can jail your opponents, but you can’t imprison ideas. You can try to control access to information, but you cannot turn a lie into truth.”
➤ “[N]ations are more secure when we uphold basic laws and basic norms, and pursue a path of cooperation over conflict.”
➤ “[W]we have an interest in upholding the basic principles of freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce, and in resolving disputes through international law, not the law of force.
➤ [S]ome universal truths are self-evident. No person wants to be imprisoned for peaceful worship. No woman should ever be abused with impunity, or a girl barred from going to school. The freedom to peacefully petition those in power without fear of arbitrary laws—these are not ideas of one country or one culture. They are fundamental to human progress.”
➤ “I believe a government that suppresses peaceful dissent is not showing strength; it is showing weakness and it is showing fear. History shows that regimes who fear their own people will eventually crumble, but strong institutions built on the consent of the governed endure long after any one individual is gone.”
The real deal
The main argument of his 4,600-words talk is that for human progress to continue the world’s nations need to forge greater democracy and international cooperation.
Now democracy is a concept universally hated by the American founding fathers who saw that concept as revolutionary of lawful government and ultimately a tyranny. The bloody phases of the French revolution, as described by Nesta Webster and other historians, were steps toward what the revolutionaries thought was a greater democracy, where the committee of safety represented by its despotism the will of the abstracted people.
Necessarily the conception of democracy of the U.S. president is highly centralized in its pursuit of the ostensible benefits.
The blessings he describes come not from democracy, but Christianity, from people who put to death their sinful desires and seek blessings for others, those whom Paul describes in a letter to the Corinthians as people inheriting the kingdom of God.
“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
In other words, people who are fornicators and idolators are not part of the prosperity Mr. Obama pretends to seek. The prosperity and liberty President Obama says he wants comes from people who have abstained from their past practices in sin. These are men faithful in marriage, avoiding sodomy and lusts, staying away from the temptation of strong drink. The great world Mr. Obama seeks comes from people such as these, not by energizing further those instruments of external coercion such as nation-states, national governments, national militaries and clubs of governments such as the U.N.
“When opposition parties can seek power peacefully through the ballot, a country draws upon new ideas,” Mr. Obama says. “When a free media can inform the public, corruption and abuse are exposed and can be rooted out. When civil society thrives, communities can solve problems that governments cannot necessarily solve alone. When immigrants are welcomed, countries are more productive and more vibrant. When girls can go to school, and get a job, and pursue unlimited opportunity, that’s when a country realizes its full potential.”
Mr. Obama instinctively rejects local economy and free markets for Chattanooga, Hamilton County and the 94 other counties in Tennessee — and the peoples who dwell therein. He has a sweeping vision for humanity (from which his Muslim theories have temporarily been excised), he sees humanity from the top down, rather than from the bottom up.
That’s how you and I view humanity, from the individual working outwardly. He looks at humanity in the abstract, from a bird’s eye view. The Bible teaches that obedience to God’s law brings prosperity and liberty, and that like leaven it spreads outward into the whole lump of humanity. Lacking a belief in the Holy Spirit, Mr. Obama views the prospect of reform and human advancement externally, sweepingly, grandly, necessitating a grand global machinery and bureaucracy to better manage the program.
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