September 1, 2009 - 7:32 pm
Watch it in its entirety here. Reminding Pres. Obama where he lives. Steven Crowder undercover.
News
Directly To
Your Inbox
Directly To
Your Inbox
PJ Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that PJ Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. Please note that comments are reviewed by the editorial staff and may not be posted immediately. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pjmedia.com.
8 Comments, 8 Threads, 2 Trackbacks
Leave a Reply
2 Trackbacks to “Bill Maher, Barack Obama, and the Truth About American Exceptionalism”
Brilliant!Suddenly Ron Paul sounds like a leftist to me!LOL!Good video.
This is really incredible. In an online publication known for unfounded and mendacious statements, this really takes the take. No, you dunce, the question wasn’t whether Obama thought that America was “exceptional”. And no, his answer wasn’t that he loved his country.
Here is the actual exchange:
Q Thank you, Mr. President. In the context of all the multilateral activity that’s been going on this week — the G20, here at NATO — and your evident enthusiasm for multilateral frameworks, to work through multilateral frameworks, could I ask you whether you subscribe, as many of your predecessors have, to the school of American exceptionalism that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead the world, or do you have a slightly different philosophy? And if so, would you be able to elaborate on it?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don’t think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.
And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.
Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we’ve got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we’re not always going to be right, or that other people may have good ideas, or that in order for us to work collectively, all parties have to compromise and that includes us.
And so I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can’t solve these problems alone.
I assume that you think you can get away with this because you think your readers are too ignorant to understand the political meaning of the word “exceptionalism” and its real implications for the world. And you’re probably right. The only question left is whether you are equally stupid, or simply playing them for fools.
American exceptionalism simply postulates that when America does things, it is right, even if those same actions are considered crimes by America when other countries do this. No evidence or reason is needed, simply anything that the US government does is good by definition. That is what exceptionalism is. For the record, anyone who believes in exceptionalism doesn’t understand political dynamics. What is true today, in terms of power balances, is not true tomorrow. Tomorrow, the US could be a very mediocre country, and its conception of itself will matter not a jot to a newly ascendant China or other world power, that will be insisting that we conform to their own ideas of exceptionalism.
In short, more stupidity from proven idiots.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000003093531
There is one area I’d agree with the President that we are far from exceptional – our politicians. Interesting perspectives, I really appreciate the bit about how we could have taken over the world after World War II but opted instead to pick up our tanks and go home.
While Bill Maher is just a clown who’s making a living from exciting liberals, Obama is a serious problem because he deeply resents America and the Western civilization and is actively undermining both.
Obama’s answer at the American exceptionalism question is yet another riff on Clinton’s obfuscation: “It depends on what do you mean by IS”, or Dr. Fukino’s issuing fog “I … have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen.”
As far as Mojo, Obama’s official hologram purveyor at PJM…
Now who wouldn’t enjoy picking Maher up by the ankles and use him to beat every other “progressive” in the room senseless?
MOHO is wrong on two points.
1) American Exceptionalism is reasonable and the evidence, as cited by Bill Whittle, proves it. No other country in the known universe has spent so much of its treasure and lost so many of its children for the good of others. Period. This buys the moral capital to do things other countries simply don’t have. Or to put it more simply, We haz the gold, We make’s the rules.
2) It’s not what the ‘government’ does. It’s what America does. It is not surprising that the government is addressed as the sole source of action and moral guidance. Liberals are government centric. To them, government does not exist to serve society. It is society. Government is the One True God. But the moral compass of the United States does not emanate from the Godvernment. It emanates, sometimes brightly as we are seeing in the streets today, and sometimes not so brightly, from We The People. The government may be the agent of action, but it’s the people of the United States who said, “We don’t want an empire. Let’s beat the swords back into plowshares.”
The only reason that the United States may become a mediocre country would be the ascendancy of the anti-American nihilists, again as so eloquently described by Bill W.
Transcript? I’d love to send that along to shoot down a lot of idiocy bandying around out on some of the lists I’m on.
Mojo, didn’t you just redefine what exceptionalism is, disregarding the actual question posed, which defined it precisely as the school of belief ‘that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead the world’.
You’ve incorrectly defined it in the context of a far-left, hate America first world-view. Read what you posted as the original question.
Furthermore, you CAN NOT simply ignore Obama’s redefinition of exceptionalism as mere national pride. It’s clear throughout the piece.
Given that there is no way this wasn’t a very carefully pre-written answer to a pre-approved question, my take is that this is trying to have it both ways in a single answer. It redefines exceptionalism as national pride, AND maintains that America is ‘uniquely qualified to lead the world’.