Is Obama Frodo? Or Liberalism in General?
By Anthony Gregory • Thursday June 17, 2010 9:40 AM PDT • 3 Comments
David, Stewart’s bit was indeed insightful and encouraging, one of the best he’s done in a while, and I found it very funny and compelling. All your points are well taken. But I must nitpick Stewart’s comparison of Obama to Frodo. It was hilarious, but it seems to be a bit too charitable. While Stewart is correct that taking the oath of office and assuming power was a defining moment in changing Obama from a left-liberal politician to the most powerful executive power holder on earth, I don’t think he ever intended to go to Washington to destroy the ring — he always wanted his precious power. Of course, Stewart can’t be faulted too much for making this type of joke, and considering his audience he is probably doing a service in educating the left on the follies of the “hope and change” of Obama, who did indeed promise some good-sounding things in the national-security arena before assuming the throne.
I would say, however, that the real Frodo in America is the liberal movement in general. Starting off as an essentially freedom-oriented movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, American liberalism became the premier champion of state power in the twentieth. Initially a movement interested in breaking down government power structures to liberate the common man, liberalism was taken in by the lure of power and the promise that it could be exercised for the good of all. At first a movement interested in ridding of coercive redistribution of wealth, correctly seeing it as a bane on the poor and a blessing for the politically connected wealthy, liberalism eventually succumbed to the temptation of utilitarianism and socialism—the ghastly prospect that the same tyranny that for centuries enslaved man and empowered oligarchs could somehow be turned to the benefit of the masses and against the interests of those same oligarchs. Along the way the movement embraced war, militarism, corporatism, the police state, secular puritanism, mass imprisonment, social engineering, central planning and all the other great enemies of mass prosperity and freedom that we now suffer under, regardless of the man with the ring.
This story of liberalism is told in Ekirch’s masterful The Decline of American Liberalism, put back in print by the Independent Institute, and is an important and tragically neglected facet in American intellectual history. The liberals were corrupted by the ring a century before Obama ever went to Mordor.
Tags: American History, Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Criminal Justice, Economics, Imperialism, Liberty, Natural Law, Personal Liberty, Philosophy, Socialism, The State, Utilitarianism, War 
So it would be more accurate to say that Obama is akin to Boromir perhaps? All statists falsely believe if they can just get the right guy into power, he will be able to wield the power of the ring (the state) for good. And then the power corrupts them every time. The only real solution is to destroy the ring. Even minarchists hold to the idea that “if we just use a little bit of the power of the ring” all will be well. Good luck with that!
Jeremy | Jun 17, 2010 | Reply
Anthony, I completely agree with your assessment that the liberal Jon Stewart was far too generous to Obama. Liberals foolishly have believed that Obama became President in order to overcome the wrongs of Bush/Cheney regarding civil liberties and other matters, but since liberals believe in the Progressive Myth of benevolent statism, they are unable to cope with the Obama disaster.
In no way has Obama been the humble, courageous, honest, and generous person that we find in the character of Frodo. Frodo was fearful of the power of the Ring and fought it, but ultimately, his own vanity won out as he also grabbed for its deadly allure of unlimited self-absorption. The only reason in the end why the Ring was destroyed was Providential because even the most decent Frodo and the depraved Gollum both similarly failed.
Obama, as with Gollum, has lusted for power for decades and as soon as the opportunity arose, he dropped any deceptive pretense of moral principle and restraint, showing little or no concern over the enormous harms his gigantic wielding of power is having in the lives of millions of people.
In my posting, I tried to be careful to discuss how Stewart himself viewed the matter, not as I have. But it is still to the naive Stewart’s credit that he at least went as far as he has, especially given the mainstream media’s disgraceful, virtual silence regarding Obama’s blatant and hypocritical assault on liberty. Without any grounding in the natural law tradition and deluded by the myth of modernism, liberalism (i.e., “Progressive” statism) has indeed become an incoherent, depraved and dangerous worldview.
David Theroux | Jun 17, 2010 | Reply
I don’t think we can sketch a coherent continuum between 18th, 19th and then 20th century “liberalisms.” The so-called “liberalism” that we know of now was previously (honestly) called Progressivism. It would be interesting to see how/when this morphed into “liberalism.” It seems to me that the original laissez-fairists never veered off course, but simply died off and the Progressives simply became ascendant. As we know Progressives/collectivists existed alongside liberals in the late 19th and early 20th century.
And so, I don’t think its very accurate to postulate such a continuum. Liberal today simply means socialist/Progressive.
Contemplationist | Jun 26, 2010 | Reply