More of the Same

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
--The Who

Jacob Hornberger discusses the biggest failures of Barack Obama's presidency. Few liberty-minded people expected Obama to steer policy toward more economic freedom. In fact, it was easy to fear the worst--more intervention in economic affairs. And that has occured.

But Obama could have worked within his ideological constraints to alter the country's course on civil liberties and foreign affairs. He could have used his office to move America away from policies of militarism, surveillance, and foreign interventionism and back toward original principles of peace, security against warrantless search and seizure, and no foreign entanglements.

Instead, Obama allowed himself to be just another president. JH proposes that "Obama's two terms in office are nothing more than Bush's third and fourth terms in office."

How could it have been different? Obama could have worked toward several ends that would have made big progress on the civil liberties and foreign affairs fronts, including:

Repealing the Patriot Act.

Ending all US invasions, occupations, and coups of foreign soil.

Bringing home and discharing all US troops.

Closing all US military bases on foreign soil.

Ending all sanctions and embargoes. Cuba's embargoes could have been first.

Shutting all Cold War era military and intelligence departments agencies, including CIA and NSA.

Welcoming dissent about infringements on civil liberty and foreign policy, rather than seeking to prosecute it.

Ending all foreign aid.

Ending all surveillance--both foreign and domestic.

Ending the war on drugs.

About halfway through Bush's second term, I hoped that W would break away from his general party's direction and champion radical efforts toward removing force from the system. "Because Bush was a lame duck, what did he have to lose?" I reasoned (probably naively). It didn't happen, of course.

Of course, the book is not yet closed on Obama. Perhaps he will step out of the mainstream and champion liberty rather than force.

I pray that he does.