Does the President Make You Angry?

He does me.  I’m not talking about Obamacare or other liberal pursuits.  For those paying attention, his leftist orientation was never effectively concealed by his “moderate” campaign rhetoric.   You can be unhappy but shouldn’t be mad when someone does what’s expected.

 

Instead, I am referring to the President’s comments – and inactivity - on foreign affairs.  Barack Obama, to the world, is America.  He’s our leader; he speaks for us.  Outsiders, taking the measure of our President, are superimposing that evaluation on America as a whole.

 

So when he refers to “lines” being crossed in Ukraine, I have to hold my temper.  Doesn’t President Obama understand the term “embarrassment”?  Does the “red line” in Syria ring a bell?   Why does he feel compelled to resurrect the image of America as a paper tiger from the Carter years?

It is truly amazing that he still thinks, apparently, that words – without a record of follow through – will generate anything other than contempt.

I had hoped that the latest “line” remarks might have generated an appropriately derisive response from the media.  Dream on.  But there were some notable exceptions.  CNN’s Kate Bolden (the morning show co-anchor) was interviewing Fareed Zakaria, the network’s foreign affairs commentator, and was incredulous that the President was still talking about lines.  Zakaria replied, in an apparent effort to defend the President, by claiming that words were the only tools Obama has.  (A self-imposed impotence, I would suggest.)

 

Think of the task confronting our next president.  How is the authority of the U.S. to be re-established?  Respect flows from an appreciation that promises are kept and threats are carried out.  When America is respected, we are not challenged because the might of the world’s sole super power is feared.

However, when our will is doubted, we are compelled to back up our word.   People needlessly die and suffer because we previously projected weakness.  Obama’s legacy will be to blame.

What a cruel irony.  The President abhors the use of force (unless the target is a drone victim).  But since Barack Obama underestimates (“unexceptional”) America and condemns the arrogance of efforts to project its authority, he has set the stage for its increased use.  His successors will have no choice but to resort to violence to protect our national interests.

Alas, our President has succeeded in devaluing America’s word.

And that, as an American, makes me very angry, indeed.

  

Is Liberty Sometimes At Odds With Equality?

In American popular culture, the French anthem of revolution, La Marseillaise, is a stirring tune bringing to mind the quest of all mankind for “Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite”.

It is little appreciated, however, that there is an historical conflict contained in that catchy expression.

Liberty speaks for itself – freedom from control or, in a positive sense, the right to do what one wants in expression or deed and to keep what one owns (inherent in the term, politically, of course, is that liberty does not include the right to interfere with the rights of others).

Equality, on the other hand, in practice, can have different meanings.

 

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson penned the expression “all men are created equal” when plainly children entered the world under vastly different circumstances.  But what he and his fellow signers of the Declaration of Independence meant, most probably, is that each person had the right to be considered of equal value as a fellow human being.  So what does that mean in practice?

Karl Marx and Frederich Engels expressed the view in The Communist Manifesto of "from each according to his abililty, to each according to his need."

That sentiment is appealing.  (Leave aside the fact that communism in practice in the 20^th century led only to equality of misery.)

If each of us is of equal worth to one another, why should some of us who have more in material goods not give our excess “over the mean” to those below it?

 

Implicit in it is the belief that inequality results from exploitation, happenstance and good luck, none of which is morally justifiable.

 

It is as if each person enters life and is assigned a lottery ticket.  Some entitle the holder to become rich, while others are consigned to life-long occupancy of welfare rolls.

Given such assumptions as to the variable outcomes in life, leveling the  results for individuals simply makes sense; equality of outcome is an appropriate and desirable goal.

This analysis of inequality may be appealing to those on the left - but it’s simply false.

Luck, happenstance and birth location are facts affecting the variables of human circumstance, to be sure.  But so are other aspects.  Of course, the person born with a higher IQ is more likely to succeed in life than a person of lesser intelligence.  Is that fair?  No.  But maybe the difference in success is mainly attributable to motivation and character, not luck.  Is a mandatory equalization of outcome fair then?

Simply put, to focus on equality of results (as opposed to opportunity as conservatives insist) is to misjudge or ignore human nature.

 

To take from the rich to give to the poor robs each of initiative.  Neither has the incentive to use their abilities.  For the former, self-interest compels inaction.  Why expend effort without the prospect of reward?  For the latter, what sense does effort make when one can obtain the same result by doing nothing?

For the socialist, human nature poses an intractable problem.  It puts liberty in potential conflict with equality.  Without the suppression of liberty, the acquisition of the socialist idea of equality is unobtainable.  With the suppression of liberty, the equality acquired is of the sort that was found under Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot.  

Why Is the Left Anti-War?

Two weeks ago, I discussed the change in the attitude of the left toward military action to advance or protect American interests in the world.  Prior to Vietnam, all the way back to our nation’s founding, the left was supportive; during and after, the attitude was negative.

What happened?

The superficial answer is that the World War II generation was supplanted.  But why did the new generation view American military action differently from predecessors?  During the mid to late Sixties, college campuses across America were sites of anti-war protests, some violent.  Surely a catalyst was the fact that the draft then in effect exposed many to compulsory military service they wished to avoid.  (Bill Clinton, for instance.)  So for some, opposition had nothing to do with opposition to American policy in Indochina but, rather, was motivated by self-interest.

But there was more.  The spread of mass media in the Sixties gave Hollywood and New York (long centers of liberal and leftist ideology) opportunities to affect popular culture which had not previously existed.

[The reason why such cities are centers of leftist sympathies is a topic for another time.]

Thus, when CBS anchor Walter Cronkite famously intoned on a nightly broadcast that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, the national consensus previously backing the war effort collapsed.

Hollywood reinforced the anti-war sentiment with such films as The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now.  (Green Berets, staring John Wayne, premiering in 1968, was an exception to the anti-war trend).

The hostility to the Vietnam War led not only to a distrust of the U.S. military but also to a suspicion of U.S. military intentions in the world more broadly.  Watergate, coming at the tail end of America’s involvement in the Southeast Asia conflict, heightened opposition to U.S. government activities in general.

 

For this generation of liberals, opposition to war entered the catechism of the left.  This attitude survived the end of the Vietnam conflict.

 

As time went on, the Sixties generation entered academia, the general media and Hollywood, reinforcing each other’s anti-war beliefs, conveying  suspicion of American military efforts wherever contemplated in the world.

 

As World War II generation cold war liberals such as U.S. Senators Scoop Jackson and Hubert Humphrey and columnists like Walter Lippmann passed from the scene, they were replaced by politicians along the lines of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and media types like Paul Krugman of The New York Times.

 

As a result, to be liberal in the twenty-first century is essentially synonymous with being anti-war.  This is so despite the lack of a philosophical or legal connection between a domestic agenda favoring the expansion of big government and a foreign policy opposing the employment of the government’s military arm.

Barack Obama and His Personal Reality

Last month, the mainline liberal magazine, The New Yorker, ran a lengthy – and interesting – piece by a reporter who accompanied the President on a recent political fundraising trip.

 

During the travels, the reporter had several opportunities for conversations during which Obama came across as relaxed, candid and thoughtful.

 

My reading of the article left me with the impression that the President was genuinely speaking his mind to a fellow liberal.  It was an unclouded view as to how he thinks.

 

Most of the media commentary has focused on Obama’s attribution of racial prejudice to some of those who oppose his policies.  But in the next breath, he acknowledged that some support him because of race, too.

 

But that portion of the article was really only an illustration among many of his views.  More revealing, I thought, was his description of himself as a non-ideological president who is focused on finding practical solutions to the nation’s problems.

 

Does he believe that self-characterization?  I suspect that, at the very least, he wants to.  Why say now what he truly doesn’t believe?  He will not be running for political office again.

 

The cynic can say with abundant evidence that President Obama has made a career of saying what is politically appealing but practicing something else.

 

Barack Obama, the candidate, promised hope and change and to be the “post-partisan” president.  That’s not the record of the past five years. 

But is it unusual for anyone to have a view of himself which is not shared by others?  Hardly.

Who wants to think ill of himself?  To the extent that a person feels compelled to take action contrary to his genuine beliefs, his self-regard will  incline him to rationalize the apparent contradiction.  So, as an example, the President blames Republican intransigence, not his own, for gridlock in Washington.

Obama’s insistence on his still being non-ideological seems incredible – and insincere – given Obamacare, and other Administration programs and proposals from the liberal wish list.  Maybe he’s just a hypocrite.

 

But look at things from his perspective.  A man of the left is usually arrogant.  The President certainly fits the mold.  As such, he knows what’s right.  Policy should not be affected by conflicting beliefs (“ideology”).  Therefore, doing the right thing cannot be an appropriate subject for debate.

 

Of course the President would reject this analysis.  Above all, he chooses to see himself as fair and open-minded.

Thus he says, with a straight face, that he is sympathetic to Ronald Reagan’s antipathy to the expansion of government:

“This is where sometimes progressives get frustrated with me   because I actually think there was a legitimate critique of the welfare       state getting bloated, and relying too much on command and control,       top-down government programs to address it back to the seventies.       It’s also why it’s ironic when I’m accused of being this raging socialist       who wants to amass more and more power for their own government.”

Does he not see the disconnect between these words and Administration actions?  I don’t think so.  He wants to believe what he wants to believe despite the inherent contradiction among them – mental gymnastics psychologists call “cognitive dissonance”.

 

In the same vein, the article quotes Barack Obama at the end as endorsing limited Executive authority:

“The President of the United States cannot remake our society and that's probably a good thing... not probably, it's definitely a good thing."


                            It's not as if he hasn't tried.