Up The Long Ladder

Austin Bay asks, “What Kind of Action in the World Justifies a Nobel Peace Prize?”

Obama’s Nobel is the result of the Left’s “long march through the institutions,” a phrase encapsulating the route ’60s hard left political radicals took to gain control of universities, media, religious organizations, arts and literary associations, and businesses in order to break the chains of “bourgeois” hegemony and bring about “true revolution.” If this sounds neo- or semi- or vaguely Marxist, well, indeed it is — secular utopians dedicated to creating paradise on earth once the politically correct people are in control.

The “long marchers” belong to the permanent grievance clan that insistently claims its members are repressed and oppressed by (fill in the blank) capitalist, traditionalist, colonialist, sexist, Western or (when they are really on a roll) “Amerikan” values.

Now it’s 2009, they’ve marched, sagged in the belly and jowls, and Obama’s Nobel is a clue they’ve created a self-rewarding circle of cronies, giving attaboys and prizes to their pals. The joke is on everyone except the classicists –geniuses like Sophocles, Shakespeare and Faulkner — who understand the permanent grip of human flaws, especially self-aggrandizing power.

What kind of action in the world justifies a Nobel Peace Prize? Averting nuclear war between India and Pakistan ought to earn one, and a good case can be made that George W. Bush’s administration did just that in 2002.

An Islamo-fascist terror attack on India’s parliament in New Delhi ignited the confrontation. The administration’s intricate diplomacy helped defuse that Armageddon (and it may have done so again following the terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008). However, long marchers don’t give Nobels to Republican presidents because Republicans are (fill in the blank) capitalist, traditionalist, et cetera.

Jonah Goldberg adds:

The Nobel Peace Prize has renewed prestige in my book. No, not because Barack Obama won it for accomplishments to be determined later. It’s got new luster because Shirin Ebadi has, at great personal risk, effectively come out for regime change in her native Iran.

Ebadi, who won the Peace Prize six years ago (under the old rules whereby recipients were expected to do something to earn the prize before receiving it), is Iran’s premier human-rights lawyer. In an interview with the editors of the Washington Post, Ebadi “suggested that the nature of Iran’s regime is more crucial to U.S. security than any specific deals on nuclear energy.”

Her point is precisely the same point made by so-called neoconservatives for years. The problem with Iran is its regime; its nuclear program is merely a symptom of that problem.

Via Steve Green, who’ll be holding down the fort at Blog World this weekend, while I’ll be here.