“Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character.
But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.”
Obama Inauguration Speech — 2013
1.) Times have changed and as such we have to finally relinquish our skepticism of central authority and now embrace the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone.
2.) Collective action can only be achieved through the State. So the State, accruing increasing power to itself, will make sure that individual freedoms will be preserved. Yeah, and fire can only be provide warmth as water is poured all over it.
3.) The ideas of individual freedom, initiative, and personal responsibility in today’s world is as old fashioned as fighting the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militia.
Note the irony of the appeal to give up individual freedom in order to organize collectively in the context of fighting against collectivism. We must become collectivist just like those evil collectivist that we defeated long ago.
