More on Obama Mania

Confession: I attended the Dems' caucus on Tuesday night with the intention of voting for Obama, but the crush of humanity (the vast majority of whom did vote for him) made me give up and return home.  Against that background, consider this op-ed forwarded to me by a student about the virtue of contemplation on Super Tuesday:

As soon as politics, for the sake of politics, becomes a society’s principle passion — its object of hope, its pearl of great price — that society has already subjected itself to a type of totalitarianism. Unwittingly, it has relinquished a citizen’s and a people’s privilege and responsibility of self-determination. It has bet the outcome of the common pursuit of happiness on the eventual good actions of chosen elite.

And consider this post from the ABC News blog about the cult of Obama.  Here's the opening:

Inspiration is nice. But some folks seem to be getting out of hand.  It's as if Tom Daschle descended from on high saying, "Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of Chicago a Savior, who is Barack the Democrat."

UPDATE: A reader forwarded me this related op-ed on Obama (titled "Barack Obama is not Jesus"), and he (the reader) makes a broader point:

isn't it true that at the very heart of progressivism lays the desire to subject all (or most) or human life to politics?  That seems to lie at the base of Historicism which is the philosophical expression of progressivism: as the State becomes more and more "rational," experts are more and more able to govern the minutiae of human life in the name of the common good.  There is less room for "little platoons" of civil society as their functions are swallowed up in the all-encompassing State.  This in turn leads to greater "democracy" because the whole people are able to govern the whole of everyone else's lives through the State.

This is not to say that all modern-day progressives wish this to occur, but at the very least it needs to be addressed and explained by those who seek to take up the mantle of progressivism today.