If youve been successful, you didnt get there on your own. . . Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If youve got a business you didnt build that. Somebody else made that happen. Barack Obama

The presidents defenders have claimed he either misspoke last week or that what he said is true. Both defenses have merit.

No mans accomplishments are entirely his own; were all indebted to others, and we all rely on government to provide some basic things. If the presidents praetorians want to defend him on grounds of platitudinous banality, fine.

But even they have to know in their hearts that this is a pathetic maneuver, given that the reason theyre rushing to defend Obama in the first place is his commitment to the very philosophy they deny hes espousing.

Obama is a progressive ideologue and a passionate believer in social justice, and thats a large reason why his fans love him so. But if you ever say that he is what he is if you take his words seriously they ridicule you for believing hes anything other than a pragmatist and moderate.

Yet many conservatives dont appreciate that Obama fits within an old American intellectual tradition. Indeed, you might even call him a reactionary progressive; he seeks to restore the assumptions and priorities of the Progressive Era.

Herbert Croly, the godfather of American progressivism, spoke for a generation of progressive intellectuals when he wrote that the individual has no meaning apart from the society in which his individuality has been formed. For the progressives, society and government were almost interchangeable terms.

John Dewey, the seminal progressive philosopher, believed that organized social control via a socialized economy was the only means to create free individuals. For the progressives, freedom wasnt the absence of government coercion, it was a pile of gifts from the state.

Progressives invented the idea of the moral equivalent of war as a means of inciting citizens to drop their personal priorities and rally around the state for a government-defined cause larger than themselves. Obama came into office under the motto a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and has been looking for Sputnik moments ever since in a search for a way to rationalize his agenda.

To the extent Obama ever speaks the language of religion, it is to justify, even sanctify, the works of government. He often invokes the Hallmark-ized biblical teaching that I am my brothers keeper, I am my sisters keeper as a means to rationalize not personal action but government action.

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