Further, we understand that the only reason there is government is that individuals get together and decide that there are certain things they can't do by themselves (national defense, infrastructure, etc.) so they will have to organize and pool resources to do those few things that would otherwise not get done. But still, of course, individuals are the primary unit, though they choose to gather in groups for different purposes. Overall, we have the right to be left alone except for those few things that we delegated to government. So we have rights like the right to speak freely, move freely, defend ourselves, freedom of the press, freedom to congregate, etc. We have a Constitution to guarantee that we retain the right to act freely except for those few things we delegated to government. Everything else we keep for ourselves, as it should be. They were ours to start with.
Obama disdains these rights and calls them "negative liberties." That is, they say what government can't do, which then ensures our freedom from control and interference. What he has proposed for the past ten years or so are "positive rights." These are things that the government gives you, like the right to a job, the right to high speed internet (That's not a joke -- they think it's a basic human right!), the right to medical care, the right to a college education. Naturally, this includes seizing resources from no good people in order to dole out goodies to more "deserving" people. (Fortunately, often one only needs to have the correct skin color in order to "deserve" someone else's property.)
Notice, these are all things that the government needs to control and dole out. It is diametrically opposed to the American system of "natural rights" that are based on logic and nature. These are based on Friedrich Hegel's concept of Der Stadt. The State, or central government is everything. Without them you would have nothing. The individual has no reason to exist but to serve the government and be thankful for the crumbs they get back for giving the state all their rights, money, and freedoms.
A practical real-world look at what Hegel's ideas look like in practice would be to study the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. The government is everything; the individual is nothing but a worm churning out as much as they can for the state.
Again, in the American system the individual is everything. We own ourselves and what we produce. We allow government to exist to fill in the cracks between the things we can do ourselves. Hegel's idea is that when you are born you belong to the state. Therefore, anything you produce belongs to the state. Anything they give back to you is a gift. This is the idea behind government being able to seize as much of what you have as they want and to "spread it around," as Obama likes to say. It's not his to spread. It's stolen from the rightful owner who produced it. If he wants to spread something around he could feel free to start being generous himself, and at the very least help his aunt in Boston and brother in Kenya who live in abject poverty. In actual fact he gives the tiniest percentage of his income to charity of any president -- he's a selfish miser. BUT, he will make damn sure that you are forced to help people that he wants to cozy up to.
This divide between American ideas and Hegel's idea that was part of the excuse for Marxism is huge and is being crammed down our throats daily. He wants us to believe we are born owing the government something, and are lucky that we have the government there to dole out absurd rights like high speed internet while denying us our most basic rights that he disdains as "negative liberties." No thanks, buddy, you can keep your command and controlled handouts and I'll keep my constitutionally guaranteed rights that I was born with.
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