BARACK
OBAMA AND NATIONAL DEFENSELESSNESS
I don’t know as if I could vote for Barack Obama—all that talk about creating heaven on earth is scary and the time that would have to be spent in reeducation camps could probably be put to better use filling potholes and curing disease, and as for Michelle Obama, I guess Mary Todd Lincoln at her worst would be as good a choice.
I remember the first time I was proud of my country. I hadn’t heard of Audie Murphy yet, but General Anthony McAuliffe at Bastogne had just told the Nazis to go to Hell, Pattons’ tanks were rolling across Europe, Churchill was urinating in the Rhine and FDR was all smiles. There were a lot of things to be proud of in those days and since. There was the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine; there were Hula Hoops and Pet Rocks, imagination and entrepreneurship marching stride by stride. The Korean War wasn’t as successful as it might have been but half of Frozen Chosen has been free for fifty years and that is nothing to sneeze at.
There have been improvements in just about everything else. People are living longer and enjoying better health. They own more stocks and bonds than ever before, travel as much as Daniel Boone ever did and if the Chicago Cubs should get into the World Series someday, well, the millennia in human endeavor will have been attained. There are a lot of things to be proud of.
But it wasn’t until her husband appeared on the way to the Democratic Party Presidential nomination that Michelle Obama felt the urge to say something nice about America. “For the first time in my adult lifetime,” she said, “I am really proud of my country.”
That raises the question: How long has Michelle been an adult? Long enough to graduate from Princeton, get a law degree from Harvard, marry Barack and earn a lot more money than Howard Cunningham did in his hardware store in Milwaukee—the benefits of being a citizen of the United States. She should have been able to find something to be proud of in there somewhere.
Sergeant Frederick Fuger, an immigrant from Germany, won the Medal of Honor on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. He was 27 years old. He found much to be proud of in America. He never went to Princeton or Harvard and neither did any of the farm boys or immigrants who served in his Artillery battery. But they were all proud to be Americans. Maybe it was a different age—people worked harder, expected less, suffered more and died earlier.
Of course, Mrs. Obama was proud “not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”
Ah, change! There is something in the air! The media senses it! Barack Obama mania is sweeping the country like the second coming of the Beetles. The nation’s youth has been energized. They want change. How does one explain this emerging phenomenon? It is a spontaneous children’s crusade got up on the spur of the moment by a fresh new face spouting some very old ideas or is it the result of a half-century of political indoctrination beginning in preschool and continuing through grad school that at every opportunity has trashed Capitalism and everything America has ever done in the hope that some day a Liberal electoral landslide will usher in the Socialist Nirvana? It’s probably the latter.
Fortunately, even politicians who want change don’t want too much change—that “throw the rascals out” talk can become grating.
But the Obamas have said other things. Americans are “guided by fear,” said Michelle. America is “just downright mean.”
Abe Lincoln was often embarrassed by what his wife said. Was Barack Obama embarrassed by what Michelle said about America? Not so as one would notice. In fact, he agreed with her. America is a bully he said. That’s right. He would rely more on diplomacy and less on bluster if he were President—none of that Texas gunslinger stuff. It has divided and isolated America from the rest of the world. Maybe he is on to something. Why not give peace a chance? “We’ve had an administration that thinks the only tool is a hammer, and as a consequence, everything looks like a nail.” That is what he said. The key is to engage in direct talks with Iran, open a dialogue with the terrorists and, of course, to bomb Pakistan.
Oh, yes, bomb Pakistan—in a sort of positive way! Ignore the railroad spike and the ten-penny nail and give the thumbtack a whack on the head. Diplomacy is a complicated game.
Barack would pull the troops out of Iraq by the end of 2008 if he were able. That’s nine months and counting. Camp Swampy is short-handed and the Mexican border needs tending. Who will check illegal alien drivers to make sure they have licenses? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Hillary Clinton? If FDR and Churchill had started talks with Hitler after the fall of Paris who knows what the world would be like today! The Amazing Kreskin?
Ahmadinejad appears to be a cut below Hitler but he could acquire nuclear weapons someday and it would be madness to encourage him in his pathologies. If Obama wants to open direct talks with someone he could start with Mexico, something George W. Bush hasn’t done to any serious extent. And there is that illegal alien drivers business. Where does Obama stand? “Undocumented workers do not come here to drive,” he says. “They’re here to work. We can make sure that drivers who are illegal come out of the shadows, that they can be trained, that they are properly licensed, and that they will make our roads safer.”
Isn’t that what US troops are doing in Iraq—making the roads safer by rounding up homegrown terrorists and illegal al-Qaeda immigrants from all over the Middle East? Sort of...
If Obama thinks Bush is a blustering bully what does he think of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez? Even up, either one of them could handle Mussolini. Would he use Kid Gloves? Do they come in his size? The Neville Chamberlain approach still has many devotees in the Democratic Party.
Thinking about creating heaven on earth can make a person giddy, so Obama can be given a pass for his failure to grasp the negative impact Marxist dialectics can have on any economy larger than that of Lower Slobbovia. Chalk it up to youthful exuberance and inexperience but all that talk of surrendering the initiative in the Middle East to the tyrants and terrorists, of bowing and scraping to the Mad Mullahs, would scare the pants off George S. Patton.
From Truman to Kennedy, to LBJ to Clinton, the decline in the Democratic Party’s faith in America has been precipitous. Chances are, if Harry Truman were still around he would sit out this election cycle. Oh, he would still be proud to be an American—he was as American as a Missouri mule—but this talk of cutting and running, of retrograde movements, of withdrawing to fortress America…
Shameless! Shameless!