On Dec. 5th, former President Barack Obama gave a speech on democracy at the Obama Foundation. The topic is of particular concern to the former president and holds valuable information regarding the outcome of the recent election.
“Now, I should tell you that when I mentioned to a few friends that our foundation would be hosting a forum on democracy … I got more than a few groans,” Obama said. “It felt far-fetched, even naïve, especially since, as far as they were concerned, the election proved that democracy is pretty far down on people’s priority list.”
I was struck by the illogicality of the former president’s statement, particularly in the way that he seemed to be dismissing our nation’s greatest civic act, greatest democratic act – the election of the United States president – by saying the event was somehow undemocratic.
How can it be that in the act of democracy, Democracy itself (as an ideal, i.e. a noun rather than a verb) is somehow rejected?
This instance is only the latest in the modern-day left’s attempt to subvert meaning in this country. Such acts have given way to popular catchphrases like “gaslighting,” “misinformation,” “election denier,” “climate denier,” “anti-vaxxer,” as well as others, and are part of what author James Lindsay describes as an attempt by progressives to enact a “Maoist Revolution,” a reference to the cultural revolution in China in which definitions of words were changed by the government to reflect a new, “politically correct,” reality.
These interferences are much more costly to our body politic than most media actors often discuss. Obama himself seems to admit this in his speech.
“It is true that in the decades right after World War II, our democracy seemed to run relatively smoothly,” he said, “with frequent cooperation across party lines and what felt like a broad consensus about how interests were shared, and differences should be settled….”
According to the former president, however, the broader smoothness had to be sacrificed to a much narrower goal.
[G]ays and lesbians stepped out of the shadows to demand equal treatment under the law, posing direct challenges to widely held religious and social norms. In other words, politics wasn’t just a fight about tax rates or roads anymore. It was about more fundamental issues that went to the core of our being and how we expected society to structure itself. Issues of identity and status and gender. … Historically disadvantaged groups began to question the legitimacy of a system as a whole when they had played no part in writing its rules. Public arguments became louder, more contentious, and more emotional. And in the face of all these challenges to the status quo, a lot of people — yes, those at the top of the pecking order, but also those who’d been raised to put their faith in authority and tradition — began to feel that their way of life, the American way of life, was under attack.
Obama’s speech is revealing in several ways. To begin with, unlike others on the left who seem willing to self-analyze after their recent electoral defeat, by taking a defensive posture, the former president suggests he has much more invested in the past four years than might be observable on the surface. Put another way, those who claim that Obama has been pulling the strings of democratic power all along seem to have an argument. At the very least, he is approving of what has gone on culturally in the Biden years, else why would he take the time to defend it?
In addition, Obama’s clever and nuanced use of the word democracy comes with an implicit demand: if democratic acts such as presidential elections don’t have the cultural groups he highlights above (namely the sexually-oriented, gender-identity one), then, put simply … it isn’t democracy. Or, rather, it might be democracy, but it isn’t Democracy.
It's a tricky proposition, to be sure. For, by packing a word so familiar to those listening with his own political meaning, he has a high likelihood of having the word accepted by his listeners. Indeed, it’s possible that those listening, even ourselves, might think we’ve swallowed Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, when in reality it’s Karl Marx, Howard Zinn and Michel Foucault we’ve just ingested.
However, a problem has emerged in what some might call an otherwise effective strategy: The more inward-looking and cerebral modern-day Democrats have become, with their new intellectual theories about democracy, etc., the farther away they’ve gotten from the voting electorate, and, therefore, from the final center of power in this country. It is arguably this distance, this disconnectedness, that ultimately cost them the election this year.
The cultural revolution attempted – and still being tried – by the left in this country is no small thing, and virtuous leaders should call this out more often than they do. The Dems’ sowing of destruction, even at the level of language, cost them the election this year, but what about the next, and next? Vigilance should be demanded, while plain language is in order. For, if we are not careful, we might end up just where James Lindsay said: confused and tormented in our own Maoist Revolution.
Along with his father, Allen Keller runs a lumber business in Stevenson, Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and an MBA from University of Virginia. He can be reached for comment at allen@kellerlumber.net.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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