(Audio) Obama: Constitution Reflects Fundamental Flaw of This Country that Continues to This Day

4 Responses to “(Audio) Obama: Constitution Reflects Fundamental Flaw of This Country that Continues to This Day”

1. Charles on October 27th, 2008 10:00 pm

   Thanks for posting, but I don’t hear anywhere in the posted video which part of the constitution he thinks was blindsighted, no less any part in which he refers to race explicitly, nor that he even wants to change the Constitution. In other words, I didn’t hear him mention anything in the sound byte provided that is alluded to in-text. I am interested in hearing this byte in-context, however. Could the full dialogue/monologue/speech/etc. be posted, or the source thereof? Thanks!

2. Jay on October 27th, 2008 10:52 pm

   You are correct. When listened to in context, one knows he is speaking of the civil rights movement and black liberation through it in pretext. I’ll get you link.

3. Jay on October 27th, 2008 10:56 pm

   Here is a link for pretext and context.

   By the way, actually listen to the clip again and he says exactly what I said in the title. Of course, the text below it are my own thoughts.

4. Charles on October 27th, 2008 11:42 pm

   Great, thanks for following up on the original post! After listening to the 11 minute clip a few times over, I however get the impression that Obama thinks the flaw in the Constitution was that the writers took a pure cost/benefit approach to issues, instead of one that also might also be explicit about underlying moral motivations. In the excerpted response, Obama posits this approach to issues (cost/benefit) is how slavery (or a direction towards less slavery) was dealt with. He gives a second example — that of environmentalism — as an issue that politicians and judges have taken a cost/benefit approach, e.g. weighing the negative consequences of introducing some chemical into the environment with benefit of using that chemical (fertilizers are notable in this class of chemicals). That he gives this second example in spite of the question asked being directly about slavery and race in early America suggests to me his answer was rooted in a more general principle — his perceived deficiency in a pure cost/benefit approach to doing politics (as opposed to one that involves morals, too). Regardless of which morals one thinks are important for Americans to embrace, I do think he has a point — if we are to be unified by some set of principles, somewhere morals substantiate those principles, and I think it’s important to be open an honest about which morals one subscribes to, and perhaps even good if we are more explicit about them in the policies made (i.e. not try to hide the underlying morals of judicial decisions, as Obama includes in a response to an earlier question in the interview). In the context of his second example — that of environmentalism — I suppose morals along the lines of whether we should view the environment only as a tool for material human ends (as a resource) or have some other belief about the environment (e.g. whether we should protect a species out of personal belief, like the Bald Eagle for the sake of symbolism) would be competing approaches to how politics should approach treatment of the environment. So to cap, I don’t think he’s calling for a change of the Constitution, but instead a call for being more explicit in future political/judicial decisions about the roots for making those decisions, particularly to be prepared to accept whether we want to take a pure cost/benefit approach to an issue or one that is explicitly based on morals. Interesting topic indeed! When I get some free time I’ll dig some more into the historical context, and try to read more about how Obama’s responses here tie into his philosophy of law and approach to politics. Cheers!

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