I think that the US and US citizens take great care to preserve both. It's an admirable trait. But not totally unique

Not "unique", but the first country to truly and formally embody individual rights, political freedom - based on the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason - and leading to the U.S. Constitution:

A country's philosphy determines its history.

Kant, Hegel, Marx....led to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Paine, John Locke...led to the United States

No country is purely free (and even those living in dictatorships have "rights", though simple ones) - many countries are mixed bag.

However, it is clear that Mr. Obama's views are much closer to the former than the latter.

Does that mean I think Obama will kill 6 million Jews? Of course not. But he represents the most collectivist views of any man elected in the 20th/21st century, and his views are far from those that made the U.S. the freest country on earth. You can't enact the types of laws he wants without the use of force, which contradicts the role of a government in a free society.

Individual rights (and the corresponding economic rights) should not be compromised - they are an irreducible primary.

I am not joking when I say that Atlas Shrugged will turn out to be a prophetic novel. Those who are the most capable, the strongest, the best, don't exist by mandate for others. You can try to dance around these concepts all you want, but it all comes down to whether individual rights are upheld as the law of the land.