His Majesty, the King

“…this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

How very far we have come since that day long ago when the English king Canute had a throne placed on the seashore, sat in it, ordered the tide to go back, and duly got his feet wet. Canute, being a down-to-earth man, was annoyed by fawning courtiers who tried to tell him that he was all-powerful, and the tide stunt was to demonstrate that he was not.

When Barack Obama was crowned (I mean inaugurated), there was a widespread sense that the messiah had arrived. One news anchor said he "felt this thrill going up my leg” while Evan Thomas, the Newsweek editor, noted:"In a way Obama is standing above the country, above the world. He's sort of GOD.” President Obama was called the “Son of promise, child of hope, our American prayer” and even the “Platonic philosopher king we’ve been awaiting for the past 2,400 years.” Michelle Obama said she was proud of America for the first time in her life.

Is there any wonder that the new president felt he had a mandate to remake America to his liking? Indeed, he cheerfully proclaimed that he intended to “fundamentally change America.”

Now progressives had been fundamentally changing American culture for several decades, and the European culture wars (the “Kulturkampf) go back to the time of von Bismark. The origin traces to the anti-Catholic “May laws” that intended to “suppress it (the Church), to destroy it, to crush it with violence,” since it was seen as standing in the way of German nationalism and progress. With the Nazis the anti-Catholic sentiment morphed into opposition to all religion. In 1935 school prayer was abolished and by 1938 Christmas carols and Nativity plays were banned. A Hitler youth song rang out:

We are the happy Hitler Youth, We have no need for Christian virtues ,….

Meanwhile, Hitler purchased popularity with lavish social welfare programs, national healthcare, environmentalism, and a fixation on organic foods and obesity (“Food is not a private matter.”)

The American Kulturkampf began with the 1960’s effort to eliminate prayer in public schools and state aid to parochial schools. Abortion was legalized on the basis that religiously informed morality had no place in public affairs. Roe v Wade merely extended the “right to privacy” found in an “emanation to the penumbra to the Constitution” that had been used to legalize contraception. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that moments of silence at the beginning of a school day constituted a government endorsement of prayer. How far we have come!

Now we have Obamacare. Charles Krauthammer enumerated its constitutional wreckage. (Daily Breeze 2/19/12)

Obamacare forces religious institutions to provide medical insurance that guarantees free birth control, tubal ligation and morning-after abortifacients, supposedly free of charge through the generosity of the religious institution's insurance company. On what authority can the president unilaterally order a private company to provide a service at no cost to certain select beneficiaries? This is government by presidential fiat. In Venezuela, that's done all the time.

Obamacare is an assault on the free exercise of religion since church schools, hospitals and charities will be forced into doctrinal violations commanded by the state. It is an assault on free enterprise since the state treats private insurers the way it does government-regulated utilities, determining everything of importance including risk ratios (for age, gender, smoking, etc.) and what is to be included in the basic policy (abortions will be next). It is an assault on individual autonomy since every citizen without insurance is ordered to buy it, again under penalty of law.

Many thought it was merely political hyperbole when Obama promised to stop the seas from rising. Others saw him as “the product of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence” and “not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh.” I think Obama meant it when he said he would fundamentally change America. The Platonic philosopher king has spoken.