Obama vs. the individual

Creepy collectivism in these lines from the classroom speech?

If you quit on school, you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country….

Don’t ever give up on yourself, because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America [is] about people…who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best….

What will a President who comes here in 20 or 50 or 100 years say about what all of you did for this country?…

Someone like him, he means, making it explicit:

I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down. Don’t let your family down or your country down.

I? Us? Then family and country. Wow. “Creepy” is right, “the president as national dad.”  Straight from the shoulder of the Maximum Leader.

Or as Dr. Helen asks, “Who Cares What Presidents Think?”

Rather than this “What can you do for your country?” stuff, she refers to Milton Friedman:

The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny.

The organismic, ‘what you can do for your country’ implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.

He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors, and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.

Can you imagine getting elected representative of the 7^th Illinois district on such a platform?  Telling people about their glorious personal responsibility?  After 70–plus years of creeping creepy collectivism?