Obama's vision of a mature America: beyond the limits of individualism

Two recent posts have had very interesting and compelling takes on Obama's call for us to 'grow up' and focus on what is good for our common life and for the world, not just what's good for me.  I think this emphasis was a large part of my excitement about Obama.  He didn't seem, like so many politicians, willing to pander to my selfish gene, for example with the silly debate last Spring about if we should all get a bail out to help us buy gas over the summer.  Obama had the only sensible voice in that crazy conversation.   The first post is from one of the leading American sociologists, Robert Bellah, whose arguemtns about individualism and American have defined the debates for a generation.  He writes:

"If you look at Obama’s specific policy concerns you will find the common good at the core of almost all of them.  Universal health care is an obvious example.  And why, except for our culture of radical individualism, don’t we already have it as every advanced society in the world has it?  Because in normal times common good arguments do not carry the day in America.  Obama’s jobs program, his environmental program, his foreign policy concerns are all examples of making the common good the focus of politics.  What all this leads to in my opinion is that Obama is not concerned with center-left or center-right but with making America into a country with a concern for all its citizens and not just the privileged few, a country like other advanced countries and less like a third world country." [Read the rest here]

His arguments about where Obama's center lies are very hopeful, and to hear Bellah being hopeful is no small thing--the man is a realist and very cynical about American life, even if his Christian faith leads him in the  end to have hope despite our often deeply flawed leaders and public life.

The second post is from E. J. Dionne, Jr. who strikes a similar cord:

"What makes Obama a radical, albeit of the careful and deliberate variety, is his effort to reverse the two kinds of extreme individualism that have permeated the American political soul for perhaps four decades.

He sets his face against the expressive individualism of the 1960s that defined "do your own thing" as the highest form of freedom. On the contrary, Obama speaks of responsibilities, of doing things for others, even of that classic bourgeois obligation, "a parent's willingness to nurture a child."

But he also rejects the economic individualism that took root in the 1980s. He specifically listed "the greed and irresponsibility on the part of some" as a cause for our economic distress. He discounted "the pleasures of riches and fame." He spoke of Americans not as consumers but as citizens. His references to freedom were glowing, but he emphasized our "duties" to preserve it far more than the rights it conveys." [Read the rest here]

Anon, and peace,
Chris