Obama in a nutshell...

Here are the last eight minutes of so of Obama's speech on Lincoln yesterday, delivered in Springfield, IL. (The first part of the speech is also available at YouTube). If you want to get a sense of the governing philosophy of this administration, and understand the stark differences between Obama's belief in the role of government and that of the GOP, this is a tremendous illustration. Aside from the stunning oratory and the succinct and well designed historical context, this speech brings into high relief the differences between the Luddites who have placed themselves into opposition to the President and this administration, which is founded upon the fundamental belief that the government has a vital and irreplaceable role to play in making this country work for all of its citizens, particularly in troubled times such as today.

This speech highlights the difference between those who would spend a trillion dollars on a pointless and unnecessary war and then advocate broad-based tax cuts in order to starve the government of any ability to act when the inevitable bills came due, and a party who believes that our government has a vital role in providing services and infrastructure for its citizens so that as a polity we are a better thing. It is the same argument that surrounded the fundamental optimism and pessimism of Locke and Hobbes, and if we haven't been living in the ultimate manifestation of a Hobbesian nightmare for the past eight years, I'm not sure what we would call it.