Perfecting The Human Condition

While frequent Commentary contributor Abe Greenwald believes that Obama is “Going Neocon”, Victor Davis Hanson spots quite an interesting “tell” in President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:

Obama offers us, “But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.” That thought of the perfectibility of the human condition, in lieu of deterrence and military preparedness, throughout history has gotten millions killed. The human condition can be improved, but only by acknowledgment of the lethal propensities of some — and by readiness to prevent those propensities’ becoming manifest. Most of the great wars of the 20th century were fought against those who were convinced that “the human condition can be perfected.”

Which isn’t the first time Obama and his wife have used such eschatological rhetoric, of course.

(Via Jude Christodal, guest-blogging for Hugh Hewitt.)

Related: “Barack Obama as a person is a fantastic individual, but Barack Obama as an idea marks an evolutionary flash point for humanity,’ gushed actor Will Smith, who will co-host Friday’s Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo.”