Do you think Auguste Comte or John Stuart Mill had more influence on Obama?
Do you think Karl Marx had any influence?
After having my laughs at the responses in this thread, for the moment I'll throw in M2C's although I hope you don't mind if I withhold the cheese.
As to Comte, yes in the sense that it seems to me that like Comte, Obama accepts the premise of some technocratic elite. I've no doubt in other areas there may be agreement as a result of Comte's impact on the Social Sciences but I'll just leave it there.
As to Mill, yes again. No doubt Mill's impact on the subject and idea of Liberty has been great, Mill still believed and even asserted that "backwards peoples" could even justly be ruled by a despotic state as a means of controlling them for their good as well as the good of the other "enlightened" people's. Ironic that I always saw a bit of Mill when western nation states went about the world crushing indigenous populations under the banner, "for their own good and betterment". "Spread of global democracy" for example, high ideals acting as mask for economic gains.
Obama it would seem IMO has embraced that agenda, both globally and nationally and in the case of the nationstate peoples, it hinges on how one would define what a "backwards people" actually means. Are we generally speaking seen by the technocratic elite of Washington as "backwards people"?
Marx like Mill seems to embrace the idea of using State monopoly and power, even despotic forms, to achieve his social engineering ends. Bakunin objected to this use of the state to achieve socialism ends and as a result, as I pointed out elsewhere, Marx had Bakunin kicked out of the First International. Like Comte, Marx also adapted Saint-Simon's 3 Stages concept into his own method of society moving into a communistic form. And as with Mill, Obama seems very comfortable in using state power and compulsion, even in very despotic form to achieve a "betterment of mankind" ends.
Comte, Mill and Marx believed in the use of force and compulsory means as control in order to achieve their own ends and I've seen nothing to dissuade me from thinking that Obama also shares this ideal and belief. I've always like the saying, "if your good idea requires the use of force on others to achieve it, then it is not a good idea."
Maybe the next question might be how Obama shares the ideas of Herbert Spencer. Spencer was influenced by Mill and although there is great debate about Comte and Spencer, I've often liked this quote taken from the Journal of British Studies, Vol. 7, No.1 1967' under "Herbert Spencer and the Spectre of Comte" in regards to that matter:
"It is very interesting to compare Spencer and Comte," wrote George Sarton in an essay lauding their efforts to embrace all knowledge in a grand synthesis.
The "grand synthesis" being the key.
Yes indeed. And this avenue if traveled leads one to ask the question that no one wants asked, in the context of political economy, "is capitalism communism in another form?" I'm more and more concluding the answer to that question is yes.
I'll now return to the shadows from which I emerged so the thread can return to discussing the varieties of good cheese. Like my butter and beef, I'm purely a "grass fed" cheese type myself.