Obama’s Marxist predestination v. Trump’s free will future

The video that Trump showed to Kim Jong Un is a direct challenge to Obama’s Marxist predestination; it promises the triumph of great men with free will.

Trump peace North Korea PredestinationPresident Obama always had a lot to say about history. More specifically, he had a lot to say about future history.

As Obama made repeatedly clear, he believed that has a “right” side that will inevitably unfold if the world implements Obama’s policies. History also has a “wrong” side, which means doing anything counter to President Obama’s beliefs about how the world should be run. I won’t bore you with his “wrong” side critiques, but I find it quite instructive to see assembled in one place all his “right side of history” statements he made during his presidency:

  • Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.” The President’s News Conference, June 23, 2009 (remarks about those who died in Iran protesting the mullahs, a protest Obama refused to support).
  • I think history will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation in Egypt, that we were on the right side of history.” The President’s News Conference, February 15, 2011 (speaking of the Obama administration’s support for the radically Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, a political leadership so vile that millions of Egyptians later turned out to overthrow it).
  • Those around him have to understand that violence that they perpetrate against innocent civilians will be monitored and they will be held accountable for it. And so to the extent that they are making calculations in their own minds about which way history is moving, they should know history is moving against Colonel Qadhafi and that their support for him and their willingness to carry out orders that are direct violence against citizens is something that ultimately they will be held accountable for.” The President’s News Conference With President Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa of Mexico, March 3, 2011 (justifying his decision to betray an ally — admittedly an ugly ally, but still an ally — during the Iraq War).
  • And I think that the region [the Arab Middle East] will be watching carefully to make sure we’re on the right side of history, but also that we are doing so as a member of the world community and being willing to act on behalf of these values, but doing so in a way that takes all the various equities into account.” The President’s News Conference With President Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa of Mexico, March 3, 2011 (justifying, again, the decision to throw American weight behind the Muslim Brotherhood).
  • And whether it’s helping the people of Haiti or it’s helping the people of Japan, whether it is being on the right side of history in the Middle East and North Africa or making sure that innocents who are seeking their freedom aren’t slaughtered by tyranny, what we’ve been able to do is to once again form the kind of American leadership that brings people together, as opposed to drives them apart, and that renews old alliances and creates new coalitions.” Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Fundraiser in New York City, March 29, 2011 (justifying yet once more his decision to throw America’s weight behind the Islamists during the Arab Spring).
  • That’s why we’re on the right side of history now throughout the Middle East, because we believe in preventing innocents from getting slaughtered, and we believe in human rights for all people.” Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Fundraiser in Chicago, April 14, 2011 (Obama seems to be getting a tad defensive about allying himself with the Islamists).
  • And as Clay has said, nothing is going to stop us from getting this done, because we’re on the right side of history. It is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do for our economy, our businesses, and our families.” Remarks at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, November 6, 2013 (after the disastrous Obamacare launch, trying to get people to sign up).
  • But we’re on the right side of history on that issue.” Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Reception in San Jose, California, May 8, 2014 (expressing befuddlement at people who don’t like Obamacare).
  • We’re on the right side of history.” Remarks on Signing an Executive Order on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Employment Discrimination, July 21, 2014.
  • What gives me confidence is that we’re on the right side of history here.” Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Fundraiser in Baltimore, Maryland, September 12, 2014 (commenting about the fight against ISIS, a fight, incidentally, that he barely waged for, as he later told Americans, it was enough to contain it. Trump, of course, thought it was enough to destroy it completely).
  • We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression, and we will counter falsehoods with the truth. And we call upon others to join us on the right side of history.” Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, September 24, 2014 (offering bold criticisms about Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, a situation about which Obama ultimately did . . . nothing).
  • America is leading the effort to rally the world against Russian aggression in Ukraine. Along with our allies, we will support the people of Ukraine as they develop their democracy and economy. And this week, I called upon even more nations to join us on the right side of history.” The President’s Weekly Address, September 27, 2014 (see comment above).
  • My fellow Americans, I am confident we will succeed in this mission because we are on the right side of history.” Address to the Nation on United States Counterterrorism Strategy, December 6, 2015 (speaking about counterterrorism efforts after the San Bernardino attack — efforts that expressly included refraining from conflating Islam with terrorism, while conceding delicately that a subsection of Muslims are not nice people).
  • If we don’t do what’s required now, I think future generations are going to look back and ask why we failed to act when the right course—the right side of history and of justice and our best American traditions—was clear.” Remarks on Closing the Detention Facilities at the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, February 23, 2016.
  • And so it’s important for the U.S. President—and the U.S. Government—to be able to work with people who are building and who are creating things and creating jobs and trying to solve major problems like climate change and setting up educational exchanges for young people who are going to create the next new, great invention or scientific breakthrough that can cure diseases. We have to make sure that we lift up, and stay focused, as well, on the things that are most important to us. Because we’re on the right side of history.” The President’s News Conference With President Mauricio Macri of Argentina in Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 23, 2016.
  • By the way, what’s happening with respect to her position on refugees here in Europe, she is on the right side of history on this.” The President’s News Conference With Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Hannover, Germany, April 24, 2016 (proving to his own satisfaction that Merkel was right to open Europe’s gates to millions of Muslims, a policy that has not turned out well, both because it turned the 1683 Battle of Vienna to save Europe from Islamic imperialism into a delayed defeat and it led to a populist uprising that horrifies Obama and his fellow ideologues).
  • You will never be strong enough to destroy America or our way of life. You are going to lose. But part of that is because we’re on the right side of history, and part of it is because we can mobilize others to work with us.” Commencement Address at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, June 2, 2016 (applauding his ineffective anti-ISIS policy).
  • In every position he held, Ab’s integrity and wisdom consistently put him on the right side of history, from fighting against prejudice and discrimination and for free speech and civil liberties. He reformed Illinois’s criminal code, defended consumers’ rights, and although his decision striking down the ban on gay Americans serving in our military was overturned, history proved him right.” Statement on the Death of Former White House Counsel Abner J. Mikva, July 5, 2016.
  • Standing here now, in retrospect, I think what I can say is that the United States was on the right side of history when it came to the cold war.” The President’s News Conference in Vientiane, Laos, September 8, 2016 (Finally! Something about which Obama and I can agree, although he seems strangely disappointed in being forced to make that statement).

It’s easy to lead from behind if you already know where the parade is going to end.

As with all things Obama, there’s nothing original in his “right side of history” idea. It’s simply a shorthand for Marxist historical predetermination. If you believe in Marxist theory and act accordingly, history is already written, with the winners (the proletariat and their wise leaders) and the losers (anyone who gets in the winners’ way on this march to predestined future history). Murray Rothbard explains:

Thus, to be moral means to be “progressive,” to be in tune with the inevitable future workings of the laws of history, whereas the harshest condemnation is reserved for those who are “reactionary,” who dare to obstruct, even with partial success, such allegedly predestined turns of events. Thus Marxists are particularly vehement in denouncing revolutionary moments in which the existing rule of “progressives” is replaced by “reactionaries,” and the clock is, miraculously, in the metaphor of historicist inevitability, “turned back.” For example: the Franco revolution against the Spanish republic, and Pinochet’s overthrow of Allende in Chile.

But if a certain change is truly inevitable, why is it important for human agency to lend a hand, indeed to struggle mightily on its behalf? Here we turn to the critical matter of timing. While a change may be inevitable, the intervention of man can and will speed up this most desired of happenings. Man can function, in one of Marx’s favorite obstetrical metaphors, as a “midwife” of history. [Footnote omitted.] Man’s intervention could give the inevitable a helpful push.

Obama couldn’t have put it better himself. Marxist historic predestination holds that the world is moving in an inevitable direction that will see pure Marxism dominate. Still, it helps to have a midwife and Obama saw himself in that role. As he understood things, when future history is finally written, historians will say that Obama, with his exquisite understanding of Marxist dynamics, midwifed this inevitable future into being. In other words, the Marxist baby was always going to be born, with Obama’s greatness lying in the fact that he took rigorous steps to ensure a swift, safe birth.

Thankfully, Obama is no longer president. In his rush to be on “the right side of history,” he committed a variety of political sins, including but not limited to:

  • Paying off tyrants in Iran and Cuba;
  • Abandoning America’s allies in freedom, whether in Israel or the streets of Tehran during the Green Revolution (and all points in between);
  • Slowly strangling the U.S. economy; devastated American healthcare;
  • Attempting to destroy U.S. sovereignty by opening the borders to swell the ranks of Democrat party voters;
  • Inflaming racial divisions that were steadily dying a natural death;
  • Relentlessly attacking our inherent rights as set forth in the Bill of Rights;
  • Refusing to fight Islamism, which is an existential threat to the free world; and
  • Corrupting our civil service (or, perhaps, just completed its corruption).

Obama’s acts may have been “right” for Marxist predestination, but they were a lousy deal for the American people and for liberty-loving people around the globe.

Now that Obama (thankfully) has finally become part of the history he kept anticipating, it’s reasonable to ask why I’m bringing him up in this post and, moreover, doing so at such great length. The answer is that the video that President Trump showed Kim Jong Un reveals that our past and our current president could not be more different in their understanding of their role and of history.

To reiterate, Obama sees history as already written (predestined), with his sole job being to accelerate the inevitable. And then there’s Trump. President Trump sees the future as unwritten. There are myriad paths the world can take and it behooves the bold and creative leader to take a path most likely to result, not in an inevitable outcome, but in the best possible outcome. This is the triumph of individual free will over Marxist predestination. People matter. They’re not just mindless cogs driven by Marx’s fatally flawed economic understanding.

Watch and see:

Here’s the transcript:

Seven billion people inhabit planet Earth. Of those alive today, only a small number will leave a lasting impact. And only the very few will make decisions or take actions that renew their homeland and change the course of history.

History may appear to repeat itself for generations, cycles that never seem to end. There have been times of relative peace, and times of great tension. While this cycle repeats, the light of prosperity and innovation has burned bright for most of the world.

History is always evolving, and there comes a time when only a few are called upon to make a difference. But the question is, what difference will the few make?

The past doesn’t have to be the future. Out of the darkness can come the light. And the light of hope can burn bright.

What if, a people that share a common and rich heritage, can find a common future? Their story is well known, but what will be their sequel?

Destiny Pictures presents a story of opportunity. A new story, a new beginning. One of peace. Two men, two leaders, one destiny.

A story about a special moment in time, when a man is presented with one chance that may never be repeated. What will he choose? To show vision and leadership? Or not?

There can only be two results: one of moving back, or one of moving forward. A new world can begin today. One of friendship, respect, and goodwill.

Be part of that world, where the doors of opportunity are ready to be opened, investment from around the world, where you can have medical breakthroughs, an abundance of resources, innovative technology, and new discoveries.

What if?

Can history be changed? Will the world embrace this change? And when can this moment in history begin?

It comes down to a choice. On this day. In this time. At this moment.

The world will be watching, listening, anticipating, hoping. Will this leader choose to advance his country and be part of a new world? Be the hero of his people? Will he shake the hand of peace and enjoy prosperity like he has never seen?

A great life? Or more isolation? Which path will be chosen?

Featuring President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un, in a meeting to remake history. To shine in the sun.

One moment, one choice, what if?

The future remains to be written.

Those references to “history” in a video that Trump certainly approved and perhaps helped write reveal the opposite of Marxist predeterminism, which sees a “great man” defined merely as the one who speeds the inevitable. Instead, Trump’s video articulates the “great man” theory of history in a free world. This approach holds that history is something we see in the rear view mirror, not something we predict and, indeed, write in advance. Instead, free people make choices as we stand the millions of crossroads throughout our lives.

The more powerful the people making these choices, the greater their ability to effect changes that will be historically noteworthy. We act in the present; we hope that the future looks back on these acts with approval.

Trump is offering Kim Jong Un, a man steeped in Marxism yet raised in the West, the opportunity to get off a dead-end Marxist historic predestination treadmill and, instead, to create something entirely new and unanticipated. He’s saying to Kim, “Don’t just strut like a great man; BE a great man.”

We are at a very exciting time in the world in large part because Trump, unlike the Leftists who helmed American from 1993 through 2000 and from 2009 through 2016, understands that real change comes from seizing the moment, rather than using a script drawn from history books that have yet to be written.

I can think of two ways to end this post, so I’ll do both. The first way to end this post is to suggest that you view Scott Adams 18-minute-long video raving about how brilliantly persuasive the Trump summit video is. I agree — and I would add only that part of the persuasion is that Trump has abandoned stale, failed Marxist predestination in favor of the exciting possibilities inherent in the free will, great man school of history:

The second ending is a poem that I learned in fifth grade and have never forgotten, Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. Obama, constrained by his Marxist vision of a predestined future, could not take any but predestined roads. Trump, notwithstanding all the advice given him by experts steeped in the same rut of historic predestination, took a different road, and that may make all the difference:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.