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Obama Between the Extremes of Excess and . . . Excess?

To balance out Obama's association with Ayers, Sunstein points out that Obama hung out with libertarians: (h/t Frum)

I know for a fact that Obama has actually played basketball with Richard Epstein, a libertarian on the law school faculty who has written some pretty controversial things on property rights and government regulation.

This is the new centrism, I suppose. It's nice that Aristotle's understanding of virtue as "the mean between the extremes of deficiency and excess" still has some sway in our society. But it seems to me that Sunstein's balancing attempt is like saying Obama is okay because he hangs out with both Bad Prince John and Robin Hood. Sunstein seems to think that both domestic bombing campaigns and libertarian thinking are excesses.

But there are two problems with that: First, having two forms of excessive companions doesn't make you a centrist. There is no mean at the extremes, as Aristotle himself points out. You can't commit adultery at just the right amount (not too much, not too little) says the Stagirite.

Second, libertarians are much more like pacifists than Robin Hoods (i.e., libertarianism is much more like a deficiency of action rather than an excess thereof). But if Sunstein said, "Obama hangs out with people who did too much, and with people who don't do enough" -- which would be more plausible -- the argument would lose it's force. It's always worse to be Prince John than to be an absolute pacifist; pacifism can't balance out tyranny.

And then there's the portrayal of libertarianism as being a right-wing ideology, tout court. After all, if Ayers is left-wing, we've got to balance Obama's friends with a right-winger.

I'm confused, obviously.

-MT

Posted by Micah Tillman on April 21, 2008 12:51 PM |

Comments

Yes, Micah, dualistic thinking leads to silly conclusions. (Hey, wait a second, this comment is dualistic, then, too, no?)

Hanging with Epstein is evidence that Obama was a free thinker of sorts, back in the day. That's about the only thing we can conclude from that factoid.

Posted by: Robert Capozzi | April 22, 2008 06:23 AM

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