Obama's Quote of the Day

Here’s what the presumptive Democratic candidate for President said on July 2, 2008:

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

Got that? As reported by WorldNetDaily, this little bijoux was sandwiched into a speech Obama gave earlier this month in Colorado Springs. But don’t look for it in the published transcripts of the speech. It’s not there. But it is in the speech itself, which you can watch on YouTube here (the passage in question comes about mid-way through minute 16).

A “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the United States military.

What would that mean? It is, surely, a remarkable statement. Why was it not reported by the Dry Creek (formerly the Mainstream) media?

Reflecting on Obama’s comment and the absolute lack of notice it received in organs like The New York Times, Hugh Hewitt observes that “Obama represents the most inexperienced, risky major party nominee in American political history, and he is demonstrating that with at best inscrutable off-the-cuff rhetoric on a daily basis, but the MSM bigs are covering for him. Astonishing.”

It is indeed astonishing. Being a generous-spirited chap, Hugh Hewitt allows that Obama’s inscrutabilities (not to mention his inconsistencies, contradictions, and simple gaffes) are at least to some extent the product of “inexperience.” I wonder about that. I suspect Obama knows exactly what he means when he suggests that “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”I think he understands what he means when he suggests implementing a government administered program requiring high school and college students to participate in “national service” programs. I think he understands what he means when he proposes, for example, to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, to eliminate the cap on social security taxes, and to increase taxes on dividends and capital gains. I also think he understands what he means he inserts a line about creating a “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the United States military–a project, by the way, he would undertake while significantly disarming the United States military. Today, Powerline recaps some of Obama’s proposals on that score:

I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems…

…I will not weaponize space…

…I will slow development of future combat systems…

…and I will institute a “Defense Priorities Board” to ensure the quadrennial defense review is not used to justify unnecessary spending…

…I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons…

…and to seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons…

…I will seek a global ban on the development of fissile material…

…and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert…

…and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals…

But even as Obama is racing to diminsih the capabilities of the United States military–the institution that protects us from foreign aggressors–he seeks to establish A “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the United States military.

Whom or what would such a security force police? Whom would they protect? Whom would they intimidate?

I think Obama knows exactly what he is doing. As Paul Mirengoff at Powerline notes, “Liberals aren’t less militaristic than the rest of us. They just differ as to who it is that needs to be confronted by our forces.”

Remember this: A “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the United States military. And remember what Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, said about that curious “mixture of gullibility and cynicism” that is “prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements, and the higher the rank the more the cynicism weighs down the gullibility.” In The Road to Serfdom , Friedrich Hayek chose a wise but also widely neglected observation by David Hume for one of his epigraphs: “It is seldom,” Hume wrote in 1742, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Worth bearing in mind, is it not?