Totalitarian Temptations from Carter to Obama
I keep having flashbacks to Jimmy Carter. The Cairo speech was in many ways a throwback to Carter’s famous “we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism” pronunciamento at Notre Dame. Those old enough, will recall that President Carter in essence said the Soviet Union and international Communism were really nothing to worry about, that the Cold War was over, and that we would henceforth conduct a suitably modest foreign policy instead of the strident, aggressive, morally improper kind that his predecessors had waged. We would support human rights everywhere, but not in such a way as to threaten hostile tyrants.
Thereafter, throughout what used to be known as the Third World, Carter not only abandoned several friendly tyrants (the most famous was the shah of Iran) to insurrections organized by our enemies, but piously acted as if we couldn’t do anything about it anyway, nor should we wish to do so. After all, we had sinned by supporting those tyrants, and it was only right for them to be overthrown.
In like manner, in today’s Third World, Obama has shown great sympathy for anti-American “revolutionaries,” and abandoned friendly tyrannies such as Mubarak’s Egypt and ben Ali’s Tunisia. And just as Carter was reluctant to challenge Communist control in the Soviet bloc, Cuba, and Nicaragua, so Obama has been reluctant to support the domestic opponents of Islamist regimes in Damascus and Tehran. One of the best short summaries of the dangerous foolishness of our current foreign policy goes like this:
Inconsistencies are a familiar part of politics in most societies. Usually, however, governments behave hypocritically when their principles conflict with the national interest. What makes the inconsistencies of the Obama administration noteworthy are, first, the administration’s moralism, which renders it especially vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy; and, second, the administration’s predilection for policies that violate the strategic and economic interests of the United States. The administration’s conception of national interest borders on doublethink: it finds friendly powers to be guilty representatives of the status quo and views the triumph of unfriendly groups as beneficial to America’s “true interests.”
I made one change in the original text. I inserted “Obama” in place of “Carter.” The paragraph comes from Jeane Kirkpatrick’s essay, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” which appeared in Commentary magazine in November, 1979.
Kirkpatrick’s critique of Carter is presciently appropriate for Obama. Like Carter, President Obama is very vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy (if it was right to intervene in Libya, why not in Syria and Iran, two regimes that kill Americans in addition to slaughtering their own?), and there is an additional convergence: both have instinctive sympathy, even enthusiasm, for self-proclaimed anti-American “revolutionaries.” Here’s Kirkpatrick again:
…a posture of continuous self-abasement and apology vis-a-vis the Third World is neither morally necessary nor politically appropriate. No more is it necessary or appropriate to support vocal enemies of the United States because they invoke the rhetoric of popular liberation…Liberal idealism need not be identical with masochism, and need not be incompatible with the defense of freedom and the national interest.
Indeed, if you’re really interested in advancing freedom (which those of my ilk believe is of a piece with the American national interest), you should fight against our vocal enemies. They invariably turn out to be real enemies once they’ve consolidated power. Barack Obama, say hello to Hugo Chavez. Try getting along with Ali Khamenei or Bashar Assad. We told you it wouldn’t work.
But both, to repeat, had a curious sympathy with our enemies. Carter told the dictator of Poland that he had not given up on bringing the Communist “back to Christianity,” and Obama bows deeply to the Saudi king and has striven mightily to make a deal with the Iranians.
As with the 20th century Fascist and Communist totalitarians, the current crop of Islamist and secular (think Baathist) totalitarians in the Middle East say what they mean, and act on it.
What works? Ironically, Reagan — the so-called arch-conservative — proved to be the true revolutionary. While liberals like Carter invited the success of radicals who installed totalitarian regimes that worked against us, Reagan supported democratic forces in both friendly and unfriendly tyrannies, from the Soviet Union to Argentina. Reagan knew what both Carter and Obama reject: that America is the one truly revolutionary country in the world, and part of our national mission is to support democratic revolutionaries against their oppressors.
Late in the third year of his presidency, Jimmy Carter had an epiphany when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. At which point, fear of Communism was suddenly no longer irrational in his eyes. Whereupon, he began the expansion of our military budget that ultimately made the United States so powerful that the grey men in the Kremlin did not dare to lash out at us when the bell tolled for the Soviet Empire. Obama is now at a similar juncture. Does he now see the urgency of responding to the anti-American tyrants in Tehran and Damascus? Will he support their opponents?
Strange things do happen. Nobody thought Jimmy Carter could turn around and start fighting totalitarian Communism. But he did. Can Obama at least support those fighting totalitarian Islamism?
Not bloody likely, but you never know.
Great stuff.
It DID take the USSR invading Afghanistan to wake Jimmuh up. What would have to happen to awaken Obama, who’s about as close to a hardcore believer in socialism as you can find? He reminds me of Ortega, the Nicaraguan “bunny rabbit” who just keeps on keeping on.
No. I highly doubt Obama is about to have an epiphany.
Pace your earlier “shuttered White House” posting, even though reading the inner workings of the BHO “Kremlin” is tough, a bottom feeder on the information pyramid such as moi knows that Obama is living in a bunker. That is, the people he takes advice from are yes men. His actions in the realm of economics prove he is programmed beyond “facts” as a “spread the wealth around” FAIRNESS robot.
Remember the hoary “seeing the world through rose-colored glasses” saying?
Well, essentially, among other irrefutable facts concering the ONE, BHO, he is the product of SPIN. Yes, think of him as ALL SPIN ALL THE TIME.
It reminds me of one of the most basic lessons my parents taught us.
Honesty is the best policy. Of course, growing up requires SOME lying, and certainly wise cynicsm about the tendency of others to lie, especially politicians. But, it is so much easier to be a straight shooter!
Integrity literally means to be WHOLE, to be ONE.
Now, a liar who has mastered the political “crafts”—I’m thinking of a Carville type—always suffers from a kind of do-or-die schizophrenia. After a lifetime of saying one thing to some people and the exact opposite to others, the strain on the memory has to lead to a form of insanity.
In short, spinners like Obama have no integrity, when it comes to TALKING and DOING!
And, to boot, his whole rise to power rested on a GLIB MOUTH!
Hubris always bites.
Anyway, it’s like something the Zen popularizer, Alan Watts put it, years ago, when asked if he still did drugs—”No. It’s like once you answer the telephone and get the message, you don’t need to.”
I believe the mass of Americans has “got the message” about Obama; that is, they have, one by one, had the epiphany that came from his hellish behavior. And, once you get THIS epiphany, there’s no going back. It seems to me that over time, even those who still “like” Obama will “get the message”.
Obama—over and out!
I hope you are correct about the American people. Maybe we just have to exhaust all other possibilities before we can correct our problems, as I have heard.
well Churchill said it so it is probably right…
My first thought was that maybe a iranian nuke going off under his butt might wake him up, but then I realized, that it would just be George Bush’s and the Israeli’s fault.
“The Won” has no capability to have an epithany. He is incapable of admitting mistakes.
Epiphany? Who could believe in that? Even our brilliant political writers rarely recognize the truly revolutionary nature of the American experiment in democracy. If ONLY they would start writing about how we can’t spend OUR MONEY supporting regimes that don’t believe in the First Amendment then we’d see progress to universal freedom. I tink. Or not. When we can’t demand that our citizen’s lives and treasure be used to support only the freedom loving then we’re spending our future building up the tyranny that will eventuall sharia us. Afganistan is the prefect example. Their parliament is full of people that would vote to behead a Christian convert yet billions are flying their way to give them a chance to democratically decide to behead. Great!
“Human Rights” expressed in the indefinite semantic really says nothing at all. And so does being “For”…”Human Rights”. It only starts to mean something when the bottom line is Individual Human rights.
Carters sloppy pandering indefinite nomenclature opens the door to interests groups to hide behind the imprimatur of political tribes and ward bosses, and institutionalizes it. We need to close that door.
When “Human Rights” comes up as a topic I always ask, “Which Human, What Rights, When”.
“Human rights” is the new race card. See: [LINK]
After watching Obama for 3 years, I believe it really would take a literal epiphany – a St Paul on the road to Damascus moment – for him to change his mind about anything, because ordinary reality doesn’t seem to have much of an effect.
Buck:
How ’bout someone literally drops BO on any road to Damascus TODAY and see what happens?
Why, they will simply embrace a fellow Muslim. That’s what would happen….
The thing we always have to remember about 0bama is this: There was some point in his life at which he stopped learning. “Now I know everything I need to know, and no longer have to listen to other people’s ideas.” Exactly when this occurred isn’t known, probably fairly early in his life, but there is no doubt that it did occur. There will not be an epiphany for him. He will go to his grave with exactly the same contents in his brain that are there today, and that were there twenty years ago.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Obama and his minions are products of the post-Maharishi Beatles era of the counterculture, to whom the “mystical, spiritual” East is infinitely superior to the “cold, unfeeling, materialistic” West.
Just as The One believes that we must be punished for our “sins”, He also believes that the gurus of the East will help Him lead us to Utopia. By a ring in our nose, on a chain leash, like a recalcitrant cow, if need be.
As for His seemingly schizoid behavior in North Africa, it’s not hard to figure out at all. Once you understand that He regards anyone who ever sided with us, on anything, as a personal enemy He must destroy. As an example to the rest of the fate awaiting anyone who falls short of His definition of “perfection”.
Which looks a lot like a cross between the old Soviet Union and the Muslim Brotherhood, from all the available evidence.
clear ether
eon
Inflation increased markedly under Carter. How much do you want to bet that defense spending did not increase significantly in inflation adjusted dollars? Don’t forget that Reagan increased defense spending to rebuild the military and was pilloried by dem-controlled Congress for it. Of course Congress controls the purse so the hypocrisy is truly rich.
What is the point of pretending Carter became a hawk? He was a wimp plain and simple.
This candidate did not just get the benefit of the doubt, he got the benefit of the wish! I agree with Who Knows?. In the realm of painful learning, it seems the electorate is absorbing the lesson faster than the president. To internalize new concepts foreign to one’s pre-conceptions, one needs the considerable time required for mourning the loss of the well-entrenched abstractions of his formative years. A president does not have this kind of luxury. If you have lived in an alternate reality for the best of 50 years, you need more than 4 years to reconnect your thoughts. If smoke and mirrors have been the object of your virtuosity, it will take longer, if it is even possible.
“Can Obama at least support those fighting totalitarian Islamism? Not bloody likely, but you never know.”
I wonder. The administration’s strategic weakness (They’re “shocked, shocked” to find Pakistan plays a double-game?) has made a difficult situation much worse. Even if Obama does have an epiphany (and I suspect he’s too narcissistic to admit he was wrong), it will be up to the next occupant of the Oval Office to clean things up.
Has Obama’s promise to launch a U.S. invasion of Pakistan reached its expiration date yet?
In re: a totalitarian epiphany + the bunker mentality.
I do not believe that Obama will have one in the sense that Carter did. He may well have one in the sense of seeing it as an opportunity. In the last 24 hours we have had a Democrat governor suggest openly that the 2012 elections be canceled so that members of Congress could operate without fear of consequences for their actions. We have had Obama’s former Director of the Office of Management and Budget publish an article calling for less democracy in the country, less of Congressmen doing what their voters want and more “depoliticized” panels of experts governing. And of course, we have Thomas Friedman constantly opining that the world would be a better place if Obama did not have to deal with that pesky Constitution and could govern like the Communist Chinese Politburo.
Politicians do not say things by accident. Especially reinforcing each other. And they say nothing publicly, that they have not been talking about privately for some time.
There seems to be a pattern. Obama is in his bunker. He is listening to those people and no one else. Can’t have him contaminated by American reality. Totalitarian temptations indeed.
We may not be worrying about human rights anywhere but here. And doing far more than worrying.
Subotai Bahadur
Correctamundo, Subotai. I am thinking along those same lines. This kind of talk precedes this kind of action. If it escalates, it writes a whole new chapter in our history.
They can try to cross the Rubicon but, unlike Caesar, the One will have no army at his back. The whole nation would become Tea Part members and drag every fool that tried to suspend democracy out of the capitol and White House by their heels.
Might be fun to watch them try. Such a thing would be the death knell of the Dem party. You would end up with a 3 party system. Conservatives, Libertarians, and a withered untrusted Dem party.
Unfortunately, I think you’re right. This stuff only leaks out after becoming the consensus of the cocktail parties. Even a lot of Repubs wouldn’t mind suspension of elections until further notice.
Spot on. Bring on the rabid swimming rabbit & Uncle Joe peeing on the tarmac.
“My, God, what have I done?” the song says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wg1DNHbNU
i remember ole jimmah, and especially billy. took a leak out on the airport
by the runways. had his own beer. don’t remember the taste of it. can’t afford a can of it now. i always respected jimmah, being some sort of nuclear scientist, and a farmer. one day i heard him talk about a rabbit running him out of one of his fields. guess it went nuts or something. the more i thought about a rabbit chasing anything… i still get a good laugh. but you know, that all made sense once we got a load of the ‘b.s.’ he was pushing. it was a sad time for America, like now. times got very hard, like now. jobs were scarce, like now. inflation was bad, like now. houses were empty everywhere, like now, and he got his arse handed to him in the next election cycle, like now?
then came a Great American to the rescue. nobody expected anything great from an actor. did the times make him great, or just what in his character made him great? maybe we will survive this idiot long enough to find a new Great Citizen. hope so. hope and change! now i get it!
I was in the Navy during the Carter years. It is true we had an increase in Military spending, but that was mainly due to Comgress and not Carter. Once the build up began Carter was not up to the task of using it. In fact Navy staffing was so bad at the time some ships could not even get underway due to lack of Boiler Techs. Things were so bad that huge re-enlistment bonuses were being offered and few takers. Sailors with 12 years or more were getting out. Moral was lower than whale crap at the bottom of Challenger Deep. Carter was a total failure. Carter never learned a thing, but Congress did. Congress however can not give orders to the military, the President must.
Sorry to be so strident about this but Carter nearly destroyed the Navy and the rest of the Military with his stupid and naive policies. He was an incompetent dangerous President then and as long as I am alive I will fight any effort, however small, to rehabilitate his record.
Sorry for sounding offf Dr. Ledeen. I still agree with the gist of your article, but after serving under President Carter in the Submarine Force and knowing both enlisted and officers who served on subs with Carter I have lost all respect for the man. As long as he confined himself to Habitat for Humanity I was happy to forget him. Carter cannot leave well enough alone and has demonstrated time and time again by interfering in International affairs he has no respect for the legitimate elected government of this country. His actions have bordered on treason and if he were not a former President I am sure he would have been charged and prosocuted.
sound off! you’re entitled.
I hear you, brother.
I was on a boomer in the same period; USS John Marshall SSBN611.
Jimmy Carter and his commie mole National Security Advisor Brzynski(sic) were trying to get the best surrender terms they could from Breshnev for his entire inflation ridden, completely failed term.
There are more parallels between the Carter twink and Obama than you think. Neither can do the job, but both thought they knew how to run for the office. That is really all Carter ever did, and Obama is following in his wake. As icing on the cake, they are both virulent, pathological Jew haters.
i certainly don’t want to “rehabilitate” the SOB. Anyway, it’s way beyond my pay grade; only the Almighty can do that…
Jimmy Carter, for all his faults, still saw himself as an American President, leader of a great nation. Barack Obama sees himself as a Citizen of the World, where America is just another unexceptional country, probably dirtier than most.
This is not history repeating itself, or even rhyming as the saying goes, because we are at the edge of a dire financial cliff, and down below are religious madmen who see the literal end of the world as a good thing proclaimed by Allah.
Will Congressional Democrats find a way to get Obama to do an LBJ next spring? LBJ was nothing if not a politician and could read the political handwriting on the wall even if it was written in invisible ink. Obama, the blind ideologue, can’t even see the wall.
Not bloody likely is right. If you add the calculation that Obama is a pathological narcissist, it implies that he will be unable and unwilling to accept any possibility that his perceptions and conceptions could be twisted or invalid. In fact, most of us have noticed that he is getting very pissed, that he’s being dissed.
Temptation?!?! Its not a matter of temptation. The left side of the bell curve is totalitarian by virtue of their ideology. Bow down or be mowed down is their agenda. If we fail to understand this simple truth we are lost. Resistance is not futile, what is futile and unforgivable is to misunderstand the nature of the enemy. Their agenda can only be achieved by totalitarian means. That is all you need to know.
It’s a pun, based on Jean-Francois Revel’s great work, “The Totalitarian Temptation”…
Even if, in the most extremely unlikely event imaginable, Obama were minded to “see the light”, I believe he would be actually prevented from doing so by his implacably “blame-America-first” Praetorian Guard: Valerie Jarrett, Samantha Power, and of course She who he once called his “closest adviser”, the sullen, resentful and thoroughly sinister First Lady Underbite herself.
Say what you want about Jody Powell and Hamilton Jordan (or even Zbig), but they at least weren’t overt anti-Americans.
Not so Obama’s coven.
To paraphrase Madeleine Albright, sometime Secretary of State: “What’s the point of having this wonderful Constitution if we can’t just tear it up?”
Presidents, Congress, and the Court have been tearing up the Constitution for generations. Since we don’t really care about it, why not make Obama a divine right monarch, send Congress and the Court home, and get it over with. It is coming, folks. Anyone that reads history knows it. It is inevitable, so lie back, assume the position, and learn to love it.
I do not think Obama can have a soul-wrenching, Carter-like epiphany. Examine the differences in the backgrounds of the two men. Carter was an actual submarine commander. He had no radical, dubious, murky upbringing by communists as Obama had. Carter was an otherwise nonentity whom the Democrats perceived as a handy tool for their own statist agendas. It is doubtful Carter attended a church whose pastor who delivered racist, anti-American sermons. Carter’s political career was not launched by a former Weatherman terrorist gone academic, as Obama’s was by Bill Ayers. It is doubtful Carter ever heard of Saul Alinsky, Obama’s (and Hillary Cllinton’s) mentor in political strategy. Carter has, since leaving office, become a gadfly for peace and has endorsed left-wing causes around the world and expressed sympathy for Islamic causes. Obama, however, genuinely hates this country and has done his best to bring it down. No epiphany is possible to him, except to make certain gestures that only seem to indicate a change of policy. He is doing this to garner support and to save his evaporating fund of supporters and cheerleaders. Obama is a totalitarian at heart. His actions over the last three years are evidence of that. Take away his power, and he vanishes. In a more just world, he would be ladling out gruel in a soup kitchen as a career choice. Face it, people: We have seen the naked face of evil, of unbridled power-lust. It is not a removable Halloween mask. It is the real deal. Cut him no slack. It is a matter of justice.
In order to have a soul-wrenching moment, it is first necessary to have a soul.
I miss Jean Kirkpatrick.
Mr. Ledeen – Thanks for pointing out the Carter epiphany. Obama will Not have one because, bottom Line HE IS ONE OF “THEM.”
dR. sHALIT
Obama is very vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy (if it was right to intervene in Libya, why not in Syria and Iran,
and why nothing about Sudan’s slaughtering of people in the south – Darfur
you bet. Sudan is his Burundi, and Samantha Power surely knows that.
Yeah and both Carter and Obama said their actions would turn the worlds hate for the US to love. Sorry, ace, it don’t work that way. No matter who is president and no matter what the US does, sections of the world will hate us if for nothing more than jeolousy. The best you can hope for is to be respected, and they’ll respect a country looking out after it’s own interests and being consistent. You don’t get respect by fawning over them, kissing up, and acting against your own interests for them.
Laying down and making noises like a rug doesn’t get people to love you. They still hate you but now they lose all respect for you.
Nothing will begin to change until all-out war consumes the middle east.
Remember, all socialists LOVE violence. They love WAR. It’s in the socialist DNA of the EU and Obama. Blood must be spilled to validate the ‘revolution’, the only acceptable fertilizer for the ashes on which to build utopia. Western socialists CAN’T WAIT until the Arabs start a multi-front war against Israel – it’s what they’ve CRAVED OPENLY for years. The destruction of Israel, and the extermination of Jews from the middle east. As soon as it breaks out, middle-class, socialist pr*cks the world over will be marching in support of it, kafiyehs at the ready, because socialists always support war against The West. We deserve it. All the problems in the world are the fault of western culture and civilization. No-one else on the planet has EVER done anything wrong. The ‘two-state’ solution is a stepping-stone to the one-state ‘Final Solution’ for the middle-east. One Islamic middle east, one slide back into a retarded dark-ages (as if it’s not far enough back already), and no filthy-dog, kafir Jews and their democracy to spoil it…
“Does he now see the urgency of responding to the anti-American tyrants in Tehran and Damascus?”
He doesn’t think they are anti-American. He agrees with them.
Carter at least went to Annapolis, was a governor and ran a business. The Whine has none of those qualities, he’s purely steeped in marxist theology. No epiphany.
$83 Mil To Give Convicts Second Chance
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/sep/83-mil-give-convicts-second-chance
Carter is just a little (or a lot) slow and his heart and mind are full of a kind of religionism (religion reduced to ideology).
Obama is a stern leninist ideologue: America is the empire that must be crushed to allow for a successful worldwide fight against capitalism.
Redistribution of power is his main goal.
Following your logic, if we define our Republic as the true revolutionary power, we can define Obama and his administration (as it is correct when talking about any totalitarian) as counter-revolutionary. Professional counter-revolutionaries.
They will not have any change of heart.
PS And we must say that people who give weapons to the narcos just have a way to fight the Second Amendment are way beyond “machiavellian”, they are border-line psychos.
yes, Obama is a counter-revolutionary. no doubt. just ask the Iranian and Syrian peoples…
The Obama regime did not fall on the right side of Democracy with Honduras either , their president seeked to usurp their Constitution and install himself as a dictator . When their Supreme Court stood for the Constitution and over ruled the would be dictator , Obama cut off their aid . Honduras is a very poor country and has always relied on American aid and this imbecile cut them off because they cast the man aside . I don’t know if this aid was ever restarted . Looking at what Obama does , it seems as if he truly throws our allies under the bus , while helping and even promoting the so-called Arab Spring bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to rule in Egypt. It is almost as if he is helping Muslims to built their Islamic Caliphate with Shariah Law , God help me if I’m right because this spells danger for the people in Israel and the people here in our country.SOMETHING IS FISHY WITH THIS GUY.
OBAMA AND HILLARY WISH JEWS A HAPPY NEW YEAR BY DECLARING JERUSALEM THE ILLIGITIMATE CAPITAL OF ISRAEL.
You heard me. In what is an outrageous reversal from candidate Obama’s disingenuous AIPAC speech three years ago (where he boldly declared Jerusalem “the indivisible capital of Israel”), and Hillary Clinton’s support of Israeli ownership of Jerusalem as Senator, now these two perfidious
snakes have gone to the opposite extreme stating in a State Department brief filed with the Supreme Court that Israel has got it all wrong; that it has no sovereignty or territorial rights over Jerusalem; that Jerusalem is a city belonging to no state or people; that it’s a city state unto itself; that the people of Jerusalem aren’t Israeli citizens; that, in effect, they are Jerusalemites; and that Israel’s claim that Jerusalem is its capital is bogus and illigitimate.
Click my name to continue reading.
I’m led to believe that the State Department has an American Consulate in Jerusalem that only caters to Palestinians. Is that correct?
As for Hilary and her perfidious behaviour she has a perfect marriage with Bill recently blaming Netanyahu for the problem in the region.
They go together like a horse and carriage.
Love the title. I still miss Jean-Francois Revel.
Mr Obama now is supporting totalitarian Islamism. As you see, He has supported those Islamists or so-called “rebels” whom publicly glorify Allah and Jihad, and their motto is (Allah Akbar) instead of (Viva Freedom).
I think Mr president Obama is the only American president who is accomplice to evil after Mr. Carter. As we know that Mr Obama, is the only American president who is pretty sympathetic to Islamic countries and to tyrants of that countries and also to communist dictators in Latin America.
‘The Cairo speech was in many ways a throwback to Carter’s famous “we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism” pronunciamento at Notre Dame.’
Sounds like a liberal Dem all right. First the liberal Dems put us into a cold war wityh the Soviets, then they round up all kinds of American communists and throw them into prison just for being commies, then they get us into two wars where around 100,000 American kids get killed fighting commie aggression.
Then they tell us communism is no big deal.
Obama will never oppose the Islamic totalitarians because he and they share the same core values: the twin goals of the destruction of the Capitalist System and the dismantling of The West.
I’d like to hear someone of note say something to the effect that in the recent past there has been an inordinate fear of rolling back the welfare state and entitlements. THAT’s when you’ll know the tide has really turned.
What scares a lot of people about Obama is not just that he is a socialist, a grotesque fool and the sort of Countercultural excresence who loves having his lips surgically attached to the rear ends of anti-American thugs simply for the pleasure of giving “the finger” to ordinary Americans – the flag-waving yahoos and “booboisie” to whom the Left delight in feeling superior – who actually love this country. Many members of the Democratic party answer to that general description. I think Obama creeps people out because they fear that his indoctrination into Black Liberationist theology makes him a hater of white people, who after all, comprise the great majority of the American population. So, ironically, race does play a role in why many people fear and hate him, but it doesn’t play a role in the way we are told it does by Hollywood’s dimwits, or by those totally unbiased “journalists” at MSNBC who have an orgasm every time Obama makes a speech. People hesitate to say it out loud because they do not wish to be mocked and ridiculed by the liberal cultural establishment, but many Americans fear and despise Obama because they think he is a black racist pig.
This may ultimately prove to be unfair to the man, but given his background, it is not an unreasonable fear. My own impression of Black racist rhetoric, whether from Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright or some other moral maggot feeding on the cowpie of “Afrocentric” ideas and racial separatism, is that it tends to equate “America” with “white people,” because historically it was the latter who built the United States into the wealthy superpower that it is. For someone with this mindset bringing America down may offer the added satisfaction of “getting back at Whitey.” Never mind that ordinary Blacks will also suffer the terrible consequences of undermining America. For the Black racist, indulging one’s hatred of “the White man” is the itch that has to be scratched, the consequences to other Blacks be damned.
Nope.
What changed Carter were the internal political polls Pat Caddell did which indicated that he would not be re-elected unless he changed course.
It was, of course, too little too late.
One must give Obama some credit for his love of party. I’m sure his internal polling is showing that he cannot be re-elected in any conceivable scenario. So he is doubling down with the hope it will energize the base and, therefore, save some seats for his Democrats.
The smart money says that that too, is too little too late.
The only question is whether or not the next President, who will be a Republican, will have filibuster proof majorities in both the House and Senate.
I only wish the people of the United States, liberal or conservative, in a collective eureka moment would understand the magnitude of the encroaching danger resulting from the policies of an administration bent on helping our enemies and destroying our friends. For God’s sake, please wake up.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10482/pub_detail.asp
Indeed, if you’re really interested in advancing freedom (which those of my ilk believe is of a piece with the American national interest), you should fight against our vocal enemies. They invariably turn out to be real enemies once they’ve consolidated power. Barack Obama, say hello to Hugo Chavez. Try getting along with Ali Khamenei or Bashar Assad. We told you it wouldn’t work.
Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael….
Surely you are aware that everything President Obama does, both domestically and internationally, is in the name of “fairness” (see recent Krauthammer essay). Real, longer-term outcomes of policies are secondary – the primary outcome of leftist policy-making is how well such policy is received by domestic and international elite opinion (the UN, foreign dignitaries, academia and the conventional media). In short, all that Obama needs to satisfy in his foreign policy (and domestic policy, for that matter) is the notion that he meant well. What actually transpires from such policy pales in importance to the perception of the policy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/return-of-the-real-obama/2011/09/22/gIQAf7dsoK_story.html
you think? heh.
Historically the Democrats had dictatorial tendencies. From Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, FDR and to Obama they sought greater governmental control over
peoples lives. They never understood markets and business and peoples’ freedom
in exercising their individual rights.
Mr. Ledeen, way O T, but can we expect any comments from you on Epstein’s new book on James Angleton?
not for a while; i’m at a family retreat for a few days…
many thanks to Instapundit for this link. long live the instafamily!