The New New Deal: From Roosevelt to Obama How Individual Rights Became Group Rights

Written By: Charles R. Kesler  |  Posted: Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

President Obama's New New Deal doesn't look so distinctive when you view it in this historical light. The collectivization of health care, for instance, is a hearty perennial of liberal politics and fulfills a 65-year-old promise made by FDR. Moreover, in cultivating the aura of a prophet-leader, uniquely fit to seize the historical moment and remake his country, Obama follows the theory and example of Woodrow Wilson. But there are signs of a few new or distinctive principles in this current leftward lurch, and I will mention two.

First, there is the postmodernism that crops up here and there. Postmodernism insists that there's no truth "out there" by which men can guide their thoughts and actions. Postmodern liberals admit, then, that there is no objective support-no support in nature or in God or in anything outside of our wills-for liberalism itself. Liberalism in these terms is just a preference. The leading academic postmodernist, the late Richard Rorty, argued that liberals are moral relativists who feel an "aversion to cruelty, " and it's that aversion that makes them liberals. And indeed, if one admits that all moral principles are relative, the only thing that really sets one apart as a liberal is a certain kind of passion or feeling. President Obama calls this feeling empathy. And yes, of course, all this implies that conservatives don't have feelings for their fellow human beings-except perhaps a desire to be cruel to them.

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