Much is being said about recent 1998 audio that was released showing then - Illinois state senator Barack Obama saying he believes in government wealth redistribution.
He asks, “How do we structure government resources that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution? Because I actually believe in redistribution…at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot,” he said at Loyola University.
Interestingly, though, in 2001 Mr. Obama was interviewed by WBEZ and discussed the Constitution as being a “charter of negative liberties.” (H/T ACE of SPADES)
He particularly pointed out that 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.”
Senator Obama went further and said, “It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties.”
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT BELOW
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 vest 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 okay. 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 it’s 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, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy 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.
