The more interesting part, I thought, involved the president's linkage of governmental action with moral responsibility, and his explanation for why the first is necessary to fully implement the second.
"There's only so much a church can do to help all the families in need, all those who need help making a mortgage payment or avoiding foreclosure, or making sure their child can go to college," Obama said. "There's only so much that a nonprofit can do to help a community rebuild in the wake of disaster. There's only so much the private sector will do to help folks who are desperately sick get the care that they need. "And that's why I continue to believe that in a caring and in a just society, government must have a role to play; that our values, our love and our charity must find expression not just in our families, not just in our places of work and our places of worship, but also in our government and in our politics."Obama's remarks resonated because I've been bristling recently at conservatives' dual hijacking: morality and the Constitution as the domain of small-government conservatives.
I'd like them back.
At the Washington Post, Ruth Marcus says what I wish I could have.