DAVID HARSANYI: Are Obama’s Ideas Un-American? “If not un-American, the ideas that propel Obama’s re-election campaign are certainly unprecedented. . . . The president’s central case rests on the idea that individuals should view government as society’s moral center, the engine of prosperity and the arbiter of fairness. Traditionally speaking, that’s not a very American notion. Surely, he’s not the first president to think it, but he’s probably the first to say it — and he says it over and over again.”