Here in Canada to-day, there are people celebrating the election of Barack Obama. For those Americans, who require the approval of those in other lands this is, no doubt, wonderful news.As Lincoln said, “for those who like that kind of thing,it will be the kind of thing they like” The celebrants think that this is a truly wonderful thing.
The bad news here is that the celebrants tend all too often, to be the people who hate Americans and most of what America means. Americans should not therefore expect them to think well of them because their conceits have been indulged. They are pleased for themselves and their paradigm not for the United States.
The celebrants are pleased because they sense in the President Elect a kindred spirit who shares their world view that most of humanity’s problems have been made in the USA. That American capitalism that has fueled the republican experience for two hundred and twenty one years is evil and that the government bureaucrat is the highest form possible of human evolution. They also resent the uniqueness that has come to be explained as American Exceptionalism and yearn for the leveling of nations just as they yearn for the leveling of people
Reading between the lines, one can’t help but believe that the revelers in other places are motivated by many of the same considerations as those in Canada and Europe. Many but not all. In Tehran .In Caracas. In Havana and Moscow and no doubt, somewhere in the mountains of Western Pakistan, the celebrants have additional reasons to toast the “transformational” and possibly mystical event that we are assured has happened before our very eyes.
Those who wish America ill had no reason to expect that, as a society, it would turn against the man who immediately recognized that the flames and death that appeared, quite literally, out of the blue on that sunny September morning more than seven years ago, represented a paroxysm of medieval intolerance and not a “coming home to roost” of America’s evil deeds. Nor did they have reason to hope that, despite being kept safe since that day, Americans in sufficient numbers would turn now instead to a man espousing the ancient and consistently discredited idea that “engaging” violent and implacable foes in “dialogue” will dissuade them from murdering you when their ideology mandates exactly such murder.
Nevertheless, Americans have provided their enemies with just such bribe. Hoping that they will be better disposed toward them in the future and that the chattering classes both under their own roof and around the world will write and say nice things about how bold and egalitarian the American people have become in four short years. One fears that this is a vain hope. Like the Jews of Israel, America is hated, in the end, not for what it does or does not do, but simply for what it is. Osama bin Laden was honest enough to clarify that and it is a foregone conclusion. The only variable matter is whether or not America will be respected and, dare I say, feared, enough to be passed over by the global predators that prey on the weak and irresolute.
Mr. Obama, whatever many shining attributes he may posses, inspires neither respect nor fear in those from whom the United States must have at least one of these. His narrative that has so inspired and obsessed the global media will not impress them .On the contrary. His election is, metaphorically speaking of course, the blood in the water that serves notice to the circling predators that the prey is injured and that the hunt will soon be brought to a successful conclusion.
Despite the gaucherie of the idea that conflict that cannot be discussed away does exist, one cannot help but note that some things are simply by their very nature, zero sum games. So it is in this case. Bringing comfort to America’s enemies brings an approximately concomitant degree of discomfort to it’s friends
Those in other places who to-day, have not joined the celebrants refrain, not because of what Mr. Obama may devise domestically. This would be, by definition, a domestic issue and problem. We decline the celebration because we see both the tragedy and the irony that a nation and polity founded upon the accumulated wisdom of Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton now adheres to the advice of bad comedians.
The political axiom that ,as goes Ohio goes the nation ,was once again validated last evening. We must now come to terms with a much larger axiom which is that as goes America so goes freedom.
