The Dip of the Iceberg

Friday, April 10, 2009

Yesterday, I noted with dismay the fact that Barack Obama kowtowed to a barbarian king and then had a minor functionary lie about it. Today, I find that Charles Krauthammer has painstakingly cataloged the damage Obama has done (so far) on his overseas tour. Here are highlights:

  • After vowing to achieve a world without nuclear weapons, Obama responded to North Korea's missile launch by calling for a "strong international response." What he got was, in Krauthammer's words, was, thanks to China and Russia, "not even ... a U.N. statement that dared express 'concern,' let alone condemnation."
  • "The very next day, [Obama's] defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. Such is the 'realism' Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy."
  • "Obama seems not even to understand that [renewed disarmament] talks are a gift to the Russians for whom a return to anachronistic Reagan-era START talks is a return to the glory of U.S.-Soviet summitry."
  • "Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world."
  • "He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing."
  • "From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea."
  • "And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?"
Obama isn't just style, he's substance, and I clearly don't mean that as a compliment.

Whether Obama is deliberately trying to sabotage our nation as an unadmitted leftist radical or his mind is completely addled by his self-sacrificial ideals -- or both -- is immaterial. He will sell us out as a matter of principle, and it is this principle -- that self-sacrifice is noble -- that we Americans must renounce, once and for all.

In the meantime, we have a columnist at home chiding Obama for bowing -- but conceding the false premise that the Saudis "own" the oil he chalks up as an impetus for the bow. Much of that is actually our oil, which makes the bow even worse. This "king" has no business being in charge of anything but a bunch of half-starved, superstitious nomads.

Before our body politic will stop electing Bushes and Obamas, it will have to re-learn the proper purpose of government, which will require it to better grasp the actual meaning of the term, "individual rights" as well as accept their moral basis in selfishness. In other words, we Americans will not have a Commander-in-Chief until we begin to stand up for ourselves consistently, as a matter of principle, and on the grounds that our lives are sacrosanct.

At the moment, this looks like an uphill battle, with many showing a slippery grasp of the message in Atlas Shrugged, the book which best expounds these prinicples and demonstrates their goodness and efficacy.

But the word is out, and the battle is on.

-- CAV

4 comments:

z said...

Lately I've read what seems like hundreds of articles, LTE's, blogs, and blog-comments, all claiming that Ayn Rand is irrelevant. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife. How many hundreds of people does it take to prove an irrelevancy?

Speaking of the slippery grasp of Atlas by so many, I'm never sure that these people have read the book. But AS peaked recently at #20 on Amazon, I know SOMEONE is reading it. That makes me happy.

A few posts before the one you link to on VfR, Onkar Ghate made a speech on AS being America's second Declaration of Independence. Supplementing AS with that speech would make it hard on anyone to miss the revolutionary moral aspects of the book. I found it to be an excellent speech.

I think our body politic is healing itself, but its going to take some time.

Gus Van Horn said...

I agree with your last sentence.

A backlash was inevitable and, compared to what things were like when I was in college, a welcome change.

Back then, it was as if people simply refused to acknowledge that Rand existed. You almost never heard her mentioned, let alone her ideas represented correctly, let alone discussed in so much the same breath as the word, "relevant." Now, the confederacy of dunces has has to say SOMETHING, even if to snidely dismiss her.

The problem with that is what explains the earlier silence. Even the negative reaction keeps her name out there. That's how I first heard of her.

Ryan said...

I first heard of Rand through negative comments as well yet I found that I agreed with Rand on what they were making fun of her for. Hopefully, other people are seeing things like I did.

As for Obama's foreign policy choices, it's been stunning how consistently bad he's been though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

Gus Van Horn said...

It's the consistency, in this age of pragmatism, and the fact that Obama always seems to err in the worst possible way regarding our national interests, despite the fact that until now, most Presidents at least seemed to have SOMEW degree of patriotism, that are so jolting, I think.