Insights to Obama

Insights to Obama
cinops be gone Saturday, August 16, 2008
“Reagan’s universalism: …Freedom is not the sole prerogative of a chosen few; it is the universal right of all God’s children.” Reagan’s universalism was a mark of confidence in American values. In Obama’s rhetoric, by contrast, you hear a deeply romantic cosmopolitism. He says the world wont tolerate our eating to our hearts content and air-conditioning our homes as we please, and argues that we should stop caring whether immigrants learn English and instead make sure our kids learn Spanish. He has agonized like Prufrock (“Do I dare?”) over whether to wear a flag pin. *

“His presumptuous and quickly withdrawn mock presidential seal had no room for E pluribus Unum. He explained to San Francisco fat-cats that rural American bitterly “cling” to their bizarre rituals, unnecessary weapons, and ancient sky god, all because they’ve been left out of globalization. There are many problems with the worldview that these statements bring into focus. Let us concentrate on three.

“First, there’s what could be called Obama’s arrogant Manichaeism. “My rival in this race,” he said early in 2007, “is not other candidates. It’s cynicism.” Cynics are, naturally, those who disagree with Barack Obama. Again and again, he dismisses critics and criticism by castigating “divisiveness.” Then there’s his slogan “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” part of his persistent messianic rhetoric….

“Second, what about those walls? (When Obama talks of walls, he often sounds like he’s really talking about differences – differences between nations, peoples, religions, and their not-always- harmonious interests.) ,,,, Remember John Kerry’s “global test”? The over-arching principle of Democratic foreign policy seems to be that it’s better to be wrong in a group than to be right alone.

“Third, If we’re all citizens of the world, what is the point of being a citizen of anyplace else? He speaks not of America’s burdens, but of the burdens of global citizenship.

“Already Obama has made it clear that the his view of the Constitution is entirely open, and can be molded to whatever conception of justice fires the hearts and illuminates the minds of transnational progressives. He says he agrees “with Justice Breyer’s view that the Constitution – that it is not a static but rather a living document, and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world.”…

“Obama has also confessed that his foremost criterion for selecting judges will be that they have “the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”…

* The above poignant analysis is from “National Review,” “Citizen of the World – The Obama Conceit” by Jonah Goldberg. (August 18, 2008) p. 20-21

George H. Kubeck, Duplicate and or translate into Spanish and Vietnamese.