Tel-Chai Nation

An audio has turned up featuring an interview with Barack Obama from 2001 that shows his whole notion of redistributionism goes back a long way. Stop the ACLU (via Hot Air) posted the transcript, which I'll feature here too:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.

To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that. [...]

I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.

Simply jaw-dropping in its awfulness. Here's the recording posted on Youtube:

The McCain camp has responded:

“The American people continue to learn more about Barack Obama. Now we know that the slogans ‘change you can believe in’ and ‘change we need’ are code words for Barack Obama’s ultimate goal: ‘redistributive change.’ In a previously uncovered interview from September 6, 2001, Barack Obama expressed his regret that the Supreme Court hadn’t been more ‘radical’ and described as a ‘tragedy’ the Court’s refusal to take up ‘the issues of redistribution of wealth.’ No wonder he wants to appoint judges that legislate from the bench – as insurance in case a unified Democratic government under his control fails to meet his basic goal: taking money away from people who work for it and giving it to people who Barack Obama believes deserve it. Europeans call it socialism, Americans call it welfare, and Barack Obama calls it change,” McCain senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said in a statement.

McCain's campaign should spend the last week prior to the election running this in ads. Indeed, people need to know just how awful Obama is.

Others on the subject include Protein Wisdom, Michelle Malkin, Memoirs from a Young Conservative, Right Voices, The Barton Bulletin.

Labels: political corruption, United States