Former President Barack Obama urged Americans to resist the policies of President Donald Trump, asserting that the current occupant of the White House wants to throw off the international order established after World War II.
The former commander in chief delivered a speech on Thursday at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, during which he made the call for Americans to “possibly sacrifice” while opposing Trump, according to a report from The Washington Post.
The newspaper, pulling quotes from CNN reporter David Wright obtained from the unrecorded event, noted that Obama claimed Trump is acting “contrary to the basic compact we have as Americans.”
Obama, according to Post, never used Trump’s name, but said he is “deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech.”
He insisted that universities should even dig into their endowments rather than buckle under Trump’s threats to cut their funds.
Obama also defended the global system that grew up in the aftermath of World War II and indicated that Trump was seeking to undo the status quo of the past eight decades, according to a report from WKTV in Utica.
“All of you have grown up in an international order that was created by America after World War II,” he told his audience.
“This is an important moment because, in the last two months, the U.S. government has been trying to destroy that order,” Obama continued. “Democracy is pretty recent in its vintage. An international order where you cooperate instead of fight is new. It’s fragile.”
That means citizens need to “fix this,” according to the former president.
Is Trump a better president than Obama was?
“It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are a progressive, or say you are for social justice, or say you are for free speech, and not have to pay a price for it,” Obama added.
“It’s not enough just to say you’re for something,” he warned.
Obama’s speech was part of the college’s “Sacerdote Great Names Series,” which features “national and international leaders in government, business science and the arts,” according to the school’s website.
Despite his exaggerated language, Obama is not completely off base when claiming that the Trump administration is at least in some ways skeptical of the postwar order.
The decades since the Allies’ victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan have seen unprecedented prosperity for the United States, but the global status quo has also imposed certain burdens on the American people.
Americans have seen the country’s industrial jobs shipped overseas, and they have been expected to pay the bill for various worldwide skirmishes to keep the Pax Americana, both in terms of treasure and in blood.
Trump has openly questioned some of those costs through his policies, such as by imposing tariffs to protect American manufacturing and by seeking to wind down foreign wars. It’s one of the many reasons he was elected in November.
The Beltway elites who have benefited most from globalism and the postwar order, represented perfectly by Obama, have therefore been losing their collective mind over the past several weeks.
Obama did not have the best interests of Americans in mind when he urged them to oppose Trump.
He only had in mind the establishment, and the threat to its power when the postwar order happens to be questioned.
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