Obama: Community agitator cum leader of the free world.

Back in my university days I was a liberal. Attending a notoriously left wing campus in California, I was steeped in all the cliches and memes of modern American progressivism. Warmed over collectivist sentiment wafted into the air and mingled with marijuana smoke and patouli. If I were the person I was then now, I would be thrilled at the prospect of Barack Obama as our next president.

The notion of a great unifier here to save us backward Americans from further humiliation on the world stage, here to reverse the damage done by an evil and stupid president on his way out, would have thrilled me. Finally the French would like us. I would be satisfied knowing that I was on the side of the intelligent, the enlightened masses who finally get it, who will finally redeem our country by dint of electing an evolved and educated man to save us from our backwardness.

But then I sobered up. What I didn't get then, and what I suspect many on the left don't get now, is that the very values I thought I was championing, individuality, freedom from oppression, and freedom of thought are not left wing values. They are actually values of classical liberalism, or conservatism. American conservatives are trying to conserve the liberal values upon which our country was founded.

There is a stultifying conformity among left wingers. The Obamamaniacs are a prime example of this. The cultish movement around Obama is both frightening and unprecedented in modern politics. He can't do wrong. Any criticism of the man is instantly tossed out of countenance. You just don't get it, his followers will say. The moment you criticize their secular Messiah, the moment you try to rationally point out the hypocrisy of his statements, the moment you point out that the prime players in the current economic mess were all Democrats and cronies of the One, a wild eyed rage wells up in them. It is like trying to convince a Scientologist that he is not an operating thetan and that no part of the world's history involved casting evil spirits into a volcano.

Apart from their current political convictions, liberals are pressured to conform in other ways. There is a nonconformist uniform, a set of correct cars to drive, there are correct places to live, correct products to buy, and correct views to espouse. What of the freedom to do as you wish, believe what you want, and live as an individual, completely self determined?

It is interesting to note that, apart from the heinous crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis, their social platform is strikingly similar to the modern liberal agenda. The Holocaust was where they went wrong, but their harnessing of youthful passions, hatred for religion and capitalism, exultation of action and activism over reason and moderation are all spot on for todays liberal. Bill Maher and John Stewart are today's unwitting channels of the worst movements of the Twentieth Century

Obama is an exemplar of the triumph of the politically correct. He speaks in platitudes that one can't argue against because they lack any substance to confront. One can't criticize him lest they be labeled a racist. His is a will to power and nothing else. His career has been marked by a constant jockeying for the next level of power. What will he do with it when he has attained the greatest power our country has to offer?