Understanding President Obama's Language

by Arnold Kling

"I don't regret making the statement. I believe it," Giuliani said. "I don't know if he loves America," he added.¹

The controversy ignited by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani illustrates the difficulty that many people have understanding where President Obama is coming from, particularly in his views on recent acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam. I believe that the source of the Administration's views is not some peculiar abnormality in Barack Obama as an individual. Here, I want to offer a guide to the Administration's language.

Imagine that you are in the faculty lounge of the sociology department at a mediocre university. While the faculty can have vigorous disagreements over esoteric matters of theory and methodology, they share a basic outlook on the world.

The central concept of the sociologists is privilege. Privilege is like status, except that it is based on membership in a group rather than in characteristics of the individual. One's privilege is based on his her membership in a economic class, race, religious group, or sexual category. Rich people enjoy a lot of privilege, while poor people are underprivileged. In America, whites are privileged, while African-Americans and Hispanics are not. Similarly, Christians are privileged, and Muslims are not. Male heterosexuals are privileged, and people with other sexual orientations are not.

For the sociologists in our faculty lounge, every issue can be boiled down to privilege. Just as a core dogma of economists is that incentives matter, a core dogma of sociologists is that privilege matters.

Privilege matters so much that it even explains the phenomenon of conservatism, which only exists outside of the sociology department. Some people become conservative as a reaction to being underprivileged. As President Obama put it in 2008,

So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.²

On the other hand, highly privileged people also can become conservative, by unwittingly taking views that are based on their membership in advantaged groups. On campus, the phrase “Check your privilege!” is employed to spotlight the illegitimacy of conservative views coming from such groups. A more traditional way of saying “check your privilege” is to say that you should not “get on our high horse.”³

Suppose that the discussion in our faculty lounge turns to the subject of terrorism. The department chairman might say something like

We know from experience that the best way to protect people, especially young people, from falling into the grip of violent extremists is the support of their family, friends, teachers and faith leaders.

...groups like al Qaeda and ISIL exploit the anger that festers when people feel that injustice and corruption leave them with no chance of improving their lives. The world has to offer today's youth something better.⁴

A senior faculty member adds,

[T]errorists don’t exist in a vacuum. They require acquiescence from the broader population, if not outright support. They recruit among the disaffected and disenfranchised, but also among those of all backgrounds on a misguided quest for meaning and empowerment. They exploit anger, ignorance and grievance.⁵

A young assistant professor chimes in,

We can not kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium and longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it is lack of opportunity for jobs--⁶

In short, the Obama Administration's approach to terrorism is perfectly comprehensible. Simply imagine that the leadership of the free world has been given over to the occupants of the sociology department's faculty lounge.

Arnold Kling is the author of The Three Languages of Politics, an essay available as an e-book.