Obama Dreams Hope And The American Tradition Summary

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Examine and analyze Kloppenber's argument that Obama changed from a perspective of Particularism to one of Universalism.
Introduction
Americans generally feel intransigent to change to new ideas, cultural changes, and new perspectives. James T. Kloppenberg has stated that Obama’s worldview changed from a narrow one of particularism, one of American exceptionalism to one of universalism, one of global participation. The author of the book “Reading Obama Dreams, Hope, and the American Tradition” has analyzed Obama in the most distinctive way possible. The author has gone through each aspect of how Obama is committed to providing democratic deliberation which comprises of the books he has read, the people who have inspired him, the social movements …show more content…

Kloppenberg’s mentions in his book that Obama wrote in his own book “Dreams from My Father”, that his parents had a universalist view; however, they eventually realized that this view would not work and so they decided to install this theory in their son the young Barack Obama (Butler, 2012). Kloppenberg states that had that book was not written or those view were not instilled in Obama, there are chances that he might have not turned to have a universalist view at all. It is further stated that President Obama, even though, travelled around a lot; but, his views used to come around to the importance of neighbourhoods and church groups. Obama always stated, and he did this repeatedly, that it was necessary for oneself to sacrifice for a greater amount of good. This view got him labeled as a conservative. In another argument, the author states that Obama was also termed as a socialist because he continuously stated that there should be wealth redistribution and the greed of plutocrats should be highlighted. However, the author disagreed with both sets of terms and said that Obama was neither but he was a “civic