The Daily Caller scoop of President Obama’s 2007 speech at Hampton University failed to live up to the hype. Its mistake is that it was pre-announced on Drudge. You shouldn’t raise expectations like that unless you have an out-and-out bombshell. But this video is not a bombshell. Obama was angry and talked in a black dialect to which he is not accustomed. But we expect that of politicians. As others have pointed out, Obama’s strike against the suburbs was the most newsworthy portion of the speech. Unfortunately, the idea contained in equating suburbs with bad is rarely discussed.
Obama told the largely black crowd in Virginia:
We need additional federal public transportation dollars flowing to the highest need communities. We don’t need to build more highways out in the suburbs. We should be investing in minority-owned businesses, in our neighborhoods, so people don’t have to travel from miles away.
The problem here is that Obama juxtaposes “we” with “taxpayers”. And it happens to be the case that the suburbs are teeming with net tax *payers*. If the cities were being gutted of the poor who then moved out to the suburbs, the only complaints would be for the lost of vibrancy and culture. City planners would be happy at this development. So when Obama says that “we need to do this,” he’s basically saying that the very same people who are moving to the suburbs need to pay for the negative externalities left behind when they leave the city center. Community organizers can’t sell a good explanation for why this must happen, so they’ll tinker with local policies in order to capture tax money and/or limit the ability of a city’s citizens to leave it for another nearby town.
Stanley Kurtz has worked to shed light on what he believes is Obama’s radical anti-suburb agenda – a public policy strategy called “regionalism” that Obama encountered in his days as a community organizer. He writes:
We also see here that Obama doesn’t want to build more highways out in the suburbs. That’s news to most, and there’s a lot more going on in that line than racial code. Obama’s hostility to suburbs stands behind some of his most transformative, yet least well-known, policy initiatives. To this very left-leaning president, the trouble with suburbs is ultimately a matter of class, not race. At any rate, suburban swing voters ought to wake up to Obama’s anti-suburban policies before they reelect a president who plans some very nasty surprises for them in his second term.
Kurtz previously wrote:
President Obama is not a fan of America’s suburbs. Indeed, he intends to abolish them. With suburban voters set to be the swing constituency of the 2012 election, the administration’s plans for this segment of the electorate deserve scrutiny. Obama is a longtime supporter of “regionalism,” the idea that the suburbs should be folded into the cities, merging schools, housing, transportation, and above all taxation. To this end, the president has already put programs in place designed to push the country toward a sweeping social transformation in a possible second term. The goal: income equalization via a massive redistribution of suburban tax money to the cities.
Given that over half of Americans live in suburbs, I think it would be news to many of them that Obama holds a generally unfavorable view of suburban life. Many suburbanites themselves are critical of life there, but community organizers suggest that a choice to live in the suburbs is a strike against social justice. At best, regionalists think that suburbanites are destroying the environment for the sake of good schools for their kids or for safe, affordable housing. At worst, Obama believes that the suburbs are prime examples of the deep-seated institutional racism that exists in this country. From a purely strategic political standpoint, asking Obama how he feels about suburbs and suburbanization might score points for Romney.
It fits in with my post from earlier today about elite public high schools. If the parents of New York City’s gifted children take their talents elsewhere e.g. to the suburbs, regionalism would tinker with the tax code to get those same families to pay for the city’s poorer education outcomes. Of course, community organizers would then clamor that the loss of funding is greater than the loss of brainpower or positive peer pressure that activists currently hope to sidle minority students up next to. All this stems from a radical communitarian concept whereby the local government polity has a claim on the individual citizen. Suburbanites owe duty to the city for their privilege which they then extracted from the city center, thus gutting it of the tax base it requires to survive.
It fits the two different visions held by conservatives and liberals. Liberals presume that the community grants privilege to the citizen. Conservatives presume that the community is a conglomeration of citizens and that it derives its good or bad qualities from them. The polity – national, state, or local government – is meant to serve its citizens, not the other way around.
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Yes, in a second Obama term you can expect a big push for heavy regulation that will try to curb “suburban sprawl” but this will just be a veiled attack at self-contained suburbs and small, wealthy white municipalities.
Also expect lots of attacks against wealthy enclaves for not having at least X or Y percentage of “affordable housing”.
Honestly, I want Obama to win his second term because I want this experiment of liberalism and progressivism to run its full course. I want it to have its full run of failed hope and failed change or else we’ll get more iterations of it down the road. I know this isn’t a popular view because it involves real people suffering real loss from these policies. But, like everyone else, I can be sadistic.
I’m beginning to see it the same way as you Chuck.
Drudge doing his usual overhype aside, I think this is pretty damaging, especially due to its huge anti-suburban bias … which, as Kurtz notes, is openly anti-white but even more than that. This will not convince anyone to vote for or against Obama – minds having been made up long ago in 99% of cases – but it may get a few working-class(ish) whites out in the ‘burbs to go out and vote for Mittens, a guy whom they rightly despise but may now see as less contemptuous of them than Barry obviously is.
Especially then you add this: http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2012/10/03/second-obama-video/
Drip, drip, drip … none of this is news to anyone who’s been reading, say, Steve Sailer, for the last several years; but it will be more graphic and in-your-face than anything shown or reported by the MSM (I’m including “right-wing” places like National Review in that list too). Kudos to the Daily Caller for getting out in front of this. Doubtless we’ll discover that the MSM sat on these clips – and what else? – for years.
Romney is a terrible, awful candidate who, had he wanted to alienate working whites, could hardly have done a better job with his aloof arrogance and barely disguised contempt for the 47% – which includes plenty of whites, by no means all of them meth addicts and convicts. But at the end of the day he’s white and if these Obama as angry Ivy League negro hatin’ on da ‘burbs clips keep coming, that might be enough.
You’re forgetting that the suburbs in many places are dying in favor of hipster inholdings in older areas that are being redeveloped. “Gentrification” and all that. C.f: Brooklyn, NY.
the media’s liberal bias is now so palpable, so thorough, that they have become a threat to the republic. the msm is a lie machine which sole purpose is the dissemination of propaganda that helps their side, and the suppression of truths which helps the other side. enemies within, the whole filthy lot of them.
Honestly, I want Obama to win his second term because I want this experiment of liberalism and progressivism to run its full course. I want it to have its full run of failed hope and failed change or else we’ll get more iterations of it down the road.
An Obama 2nd term will certainly force the GOP to evolve. The obvious thing that the GOP needs to do is drop opposition to abortion, but that may not quite happen yet even if Obama wins.
On thing that will certainly happen is that there will be a big push to find younger, better looking candidates who are groomed to be polished talking heads from the very first day that they enter politics. Substance and true track record will be less important. We won’t have any more old John McCains who get the GOP nomination as more of a “lifetime achievement” award.
And this Obama video at Hampton U is especially poignant because Southern Blacks can hardly be considered urban. The Hampton/Virginia Beach area can hardly be considered to have much of an “urban core” where blacks are concentrated, in contrast to places like Philadelphia or Baltimore.
However, when Obama said “we don’t need more highways in the suburbs” everyone in attendance knew exactly what he meant – raiding the white folks for more monies to benefit blacks.
Conservatives just seem more likable and interesting when they are in the opposition. At least they do to me.
Camlost,
Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are both relatively young and good looking. We don’t need them any younger than that.
“Conservatives just seem more likable and interesting when they are in the opposition. At least they do to me.”
chicks dig a rebel.
PA, Chuck:
I know many “progressives”. They honestly believe things are much much better now than they were 4 years ago, even the ones with Master’s degrees working shitty retail jobs. I don’t think another four years is gonna purge the Kool-Aid out of their system, especially when they can blame the Republicans for being obstructionist.
Frankly, I think the best thing to do is for the right to give ground on the civil side of the social issues, and give up the ghost on trying to block state recognition of gay marriage and other feminist issues.
Why? Think of it as a strategic retreat to a more defensible position where you can get your enemy to bleed itself out and tear itself to bits.
We’ve already seen that the left is willing to try to break the will of religious institutions as we’ve seen with Sandra Fluke and the suing of Catholic Charities adoptions due to their ban on gay adoptions. However, despite the sound and fury from Fluke, no suit was filed, or ever will be successfully pursued. Why? Because by basic constitutional principles, you cannot force the Catholic Church to break it’s own doctrine when said doctrine is not illegal.
You know as well as I do that the next target are the religious institutions, but I think this is a good thing. Why? What better way to split the SWPL leftists from ethnic leftists. We’re already starting to see black Democrats getting uncomfortable with the whole-hearted embrace of cultural leftism, as that pastor/city councilman’s letter to that Baltimore football player shows. You think they’re gonna stay silent when some black bull dyke sues to get married in some Baptist or AMEC church? Double that discomfort when white Catholics who are “tolerant” get to see their local diocese and church community dismantled by small scale lawsuits. It’s easy to be on the side of social justice when they’re railing against the Vatican and bishops, less so when they’re tearing down your spiritual home.
Right now Obama is the Oreo paste holding a Frankenstein monster together, but once he’s gone, where are they gonna find another black SWPL like him, or a Bill Clinton liberal good ole’ boy triangulator?
Conservatives just seem more likable and interesting when they are in the opposition. At least they do to me.
That’s because they are forced to focus on economic issues when in opposition (free-markets, less government regulation, lower taxes, pro-growth economic policies). The perfect example is the 1980 election when Reagan ran against Carter. When they are in power for too long, they devolve into the social conservative crapola. Social conservatism is not the same as economic conservatism. Economic conservatism is about liberty and reducing the power of government over people. Social conservatism is fascism, plain and simple.
I don’t get what the big deal of “regionalism” is. We have had this since the New Deal- the federal government gives money directly to big cities in return for political support. I guess the idea is that the federal government is too broke to do this, and the transfer should happen at a lower level. But of course it does already in liberal states, with income taxes and sales taxes.
I don’t get what the big deal of “regionalism” is.
Obama’s variety will be much more aggressive than what you described.
The failure of liberalism will be blamed on conservatives. Rooting for Obama won’t work the way you wish it would work. All you need to know is this: when WHEN there is a national crisis due to either WW3 with Iran, currency collapse, default, or a combination or even something actually unforseen, you do not DO NOT want team obama to be the ones who are in direct control of the federal agencies because they will use that crisis to literally destroy us.
Progress to the republicans means attracting more latinos and single moms, in other words, moving further to the left. And social conservatives seem to worship the free market and Israel, neither of which jive with fascism.
Am I the only one who has a problem with the argument that ‘When the GOP looses the election, their only hope of recapturing the mainstream is to adopt the positions that I personally favor?’
I’m speaking in regards to Camlost’s first comment but I’ve seen it in almost every serious discussion of the future of the GOP.
I realize that this may come off as hypocritical, but I don’t expect the GOP to make fundamental changes in it’s position on social issues in the event of a defeat. They may change what they chose to emphasize, as they’ve done in the past two election cycles, but they’re not going to abandon them as long as they the vast majority of their base remains rural and white, nor would I expect abandoning them to offer any concrete benefit to the party: The voters who the GOP would stand to gain by changing position on those issues still wouldn’t have any reason to prefer the Republicans over the Democrat party, and several very good reasons to remain right where they are.
The Republicans have to rely on demographic unity in order to win elections. Failure to do so means that the rural whites will split from the party, and that means that the GOP as a going concern is finished.
I fail to see significant differences between the republicans and democrats on many issues. They both for costly (in money and lives) foreign adventures with low returns on investment. They both (at least the national parties) favor more immigration, legal and illegal. They both are for increasing the size of government, the republicans only do it more slowly. Neoliberal economic policies are pretty much axioms of both parties, etc.
I’m seriously considering voting for Gary Johnson in November. I just wish that he’d be included in the debates. Hell, I’d settle for Jill Stein to be included in the debates.
My idea is to try to re-brand the GOP as the party of men and women who like men. Appeal to black and latino machismo, paint dependence on the government as effeminate. Show any man who can’t support themselves and their family as not men at all. Show women dismissing men who can’t support themselves and rely on the government as beta. Paint Dems as the party of gays, feminists, and wussy SWPLs.The left has Hollywood, the right should try to get athletes, especially black and latino athletes to publicly show support for them.
Yeah, I hope the Browns lose every game so they get the 1st draft pick next year. Winning by losing is losing.
Yeah, I hope the Browns lose every game so they get the 1st draft pick next year. Winning by losing is losing.
So that they can get a high pick and draft another bust like Tim Couch?
I nominate Romney’s beatdown of Obama at the debate as a hate crime. Sadly, I think we’re passed the point with identity politics and voting blocs where debates can help a candidate.
This is totally true. Look to the Maoist transsexual ADF that made a spectacle of himself at OWS. When it was pointed out that his sexual degeneracy wouldn’t have been permitted under Mao, and wouldn’t be tolerated in the modern PRC he basically said that the Chinese only hate faggots because they have been brainwashed by straight white males.
These people are never going to run out of Kulaks.
The rest of Spike’s post is painfully naive. Leftist’s aren’t just willing to fight over just this one thing. It’s always just this one last thing that they must have, and once 12 year olds can get free anonymous abortions, and everyone thinks that faggots are the best thing since sliced bread the left will officially be done. Does anyone believe this?
More to the point even if the progressive concept of justice and right weren’t something constantly evolving they are perfectly willing to go to war to spread their taint, so there is literally no end in sight because America being an officially pro-gay, pro-abortion country domestically is never going to be enough.
I also fully expect Freedom of Religion to go out the window (as it already has in many instances) when it comes to things like Catholic Charities. “Civil Rights” for blacks is also unconstitutional, and I don’t see how religious institutions have some special protections in the constitution when those protections don’t even apply to individuals. You currently are not free to form communities or businesses of your heart’s desire because “That’s racist!” but we will continue to be free to form religious institutions of our heart’s desire indefinitely into the future? No.
Chuck:
Seen this viral video:
Imagine you’d have some interesting (e.g. Roissy-esque) commentary. Figure there’s also a connection to Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism in there as well.
On Obama winning in order to wake up (white) America:
Obama as the embodiment of leftism may be our only hope. It’s very easy for the politically naive masses to understand how Obama is an anti-white leftist, i.e. he is black. It’s much more difficult for them to understand that the leftist Democrat party, people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and convention-speaking Sandra Fluke, hate whites, men, and suburban middle-class just as much as Obama does.
Kyle:
The idea is to get them to start fighting among themselves for the spoils and magnify the papered over differences while turning off people nervous with the “great project for the improvement of mankind” on the fringes. The left isn’t a solid bloc and anything to drive wedges into them is a good thing, since they’re nowhere near complete control. You can already see it starting to form with the more socially conservative and macho ethnics not being very happy with gender and sexual politics as well as them feeling that they’re targets of SWPL gentrification/pacification projects in their neighborhoods. Hell, that’s what got me on the path here, remember I’m an ethnic myself. Like I said, Bill Clinton was the last one who could legitimately bridge the two, whereas Obama is a SWPL empty suit who just happens to be black with an unwarranted sense of historical importance. They’re running out of ways to bridge the gap. What do they have after Obama is gone? Biden? Reid? Pelosi? Jackson Jr.? The gutless and gormless young ideologues on Gawker we make fun of here? They lifted him out of nowhere because they’re grasping at straws to find people who can keep them together in the great project.
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I think Stanley Kurtz is correct in saying Obama’s brand of regionalism is dangerous, since it advances “progressive” aims like land confiscation and social equity. But by castigating the concept altogether, Kurtz ignores some of the positive apsects of regionalism, which you can read about in my latest blog post…
http://bigcitysparkplug.com/2012/11/20/clues-about-ideology-in-obamas-brand-of-regionalism/
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