A Laboratory of Reason

Face it, kids - he basically said - Americans are losers. Pathetic, needy dependents who can't make it without help. So forget your dreams, dear graduates. Go forth and aid your fellow deadbeats.

Never mind "The Audacity of Hope." Obama was trumpeting "The Ubiquity of Failure." "The Equality of Need." "The Endlessness of the Dole."

OK, I exaggerate - a little. Here are his actual words: "Our collective service can shape the destiny of this generation . . . Individual salvation depends on collective salvation."

That is, unless we come together and fix America's myriad flaws (like poverty, which never disappears), we're all doomed.

This went well past the standard graduation calls for community service and voluntarism. The senator chided those who seek life's material rewards: "Fulfilling your immediate wants and needs," he insisted, "betrays a poverty of ambition."

In fact, Obama himself was betraying a poverty of understanding US history.

After all, it's not too many Americans pursuing their dreams that threatens the nation's greatness - it's too few.

Obama's America has two groups: those in need - and those who care for them. Missing are the folks who produce real wealth - the goods and services all Americans enjoy.

Sure, helping others is a noble pursuit. And Obama's GOP rival, John McCain, certainly honors public service. But America's success owes much to its high regard for individualism - personal rights and responsibilities, and individual self-advancement. If Obama truly appreciated that, he might have challenged the students to dream big. And to pursue those dreams with gusto.

America didn't rise to great wealth and power because its population was steeped in social work, political agitation and collective care-giving.

Yes, a strong social fabric was vital to our national growth. But it was the competitive drive - the lure of money, fame, influence - that led to the automobile, mass production, wonder drugs, personal computers . . .

It was the individualist spirit - that drive to seek out one's destiny, even perhaps to the exclusion of all else - that spawned superstars in science, business, sports, the arts.

The highest achievers - the Bill Gateses and such - became unfathomably rich. But everyone benefited from their work.

Obama could have galvanized the grads, urging them to follow in the paths of these heroes - to take a job, say, with Big Oil and invent a cheaper way to make cars run. Instead, he ladled out soggy oatmeal.

But his speech was more than just recycled graduation clichés. Obama, who worked as a community organizer in his youth, was describing his world, his vision.

Yes, he's sometimes paid rhetorical homage to American capitalism, acknowledging that it has "led to a standard of living unmatched in history."

But his record betrays something else: He favors higher taxes, "fair trade" over "free trade," a higher minimum wage, bailouts for subprime "victims," penalties for "predatory lenders," bigger subsidies for health care and housing.

For Obama, such stands - and a communal spirit - offer "change" and "hope."

"All it takes is one act of service," he says, "one blow against injustice, to send forth what Robert Kennedy called that tiny ripple of hope."

But America is neither unjust nor bereft of hope. Far from it.

And if Barack Obama thinks the next generation of Americans needs to spend its time dwelling on this nation's "wrongs" and catering to the "underserved," he's got a sad vision for America indeed.