Posted on 04/06/2009 8:55:07 AM PDT by Borges
I have been watching an interesting phenomenon on the right, which is beginning to cause me concern. I am referring to the over-the-top hysteria in response to the first months in office of our new president, which distinctly reminds me of the "Bush is Hitler" crowd on the left.
Conservatives, please. Let's not duplicate the manias of the left as we figure out how to deal with President Obama. He is not exactly the antichrist, although a disturbing number of people on the right are convinced he is.
I have recently received commentaries that claim that "Obama's speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history" and "never has a politician in this land had such a quasi-religious impact on so many people" and "Obama is a narcissist," which leads the author to then compare Obama to David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein. Excuse me while I blow my nose.
This fellow has failed to notice that all politicians are narcissists. So what? Political egos are one of the reasons the Founders put checks and balances on executive power. As for serial lying, is there a politician that cannot be accused of that? And once, a recent president set a pretty high bar in this category, and we survived it. As for Obama's speeches, they are hardly in the Huey Long, Louis Farrakhan, Fidel Castro vein. They are in fact eloquently and cleverly centrist and sober.
So what's the panic? It is true that Obama has shown surprising ineptitude in his first months in office, but he's not a zero with no accomplishments, as many conservatives seem to think -- unless you regard beating the Clinton machine and winning the presidency as nothing. But in doing this, you fall into the "Bush-is-an-idiot" bag of liberal miasmas.
It is also true Obama has ceded his domestic economic agenda to the House Democrats and spent a lot of money in the process. But what's the surprise in this? After all, George W. Bush and John McCain both proposed (and in Bush's case pushed through) massive government giveaways (which amount to government takeovers as well). This is bad, but it doesn't make Obama a closet Mussolini, however deplorable the conservatives among us may regard it. Moreover, he has run into political resistance even within his own party. Charlie Rangel has made it clear that the itemized deduction tax hike is not going through his committee -- and that should tell you the American system is still in place.
Even as astute a conservative thinker as Mark Steyn has been swept up in the tide that thinks Obama is a "transformative" radical. But look again at his approach to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, he is carrying out the Bush policies -- the same that he once joined his fellow Democrats in condemning. And that should be reassuring to anyone concerned about where he is heading as commander in chief.
In other words, while it's reasonable to be unhappy with a Democratic administration and even concerned because the Democrats are now a socialist party in the European sense, we are not witnessing the coming of the antichrist. A good strategy for political conflicts is to understand your opponent first -- not to underestimate him, but not to overestimate him, either.
As we move forward, Obama faces increasingly tough choices in the wars against Islamic fascism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza and Iran. Hopefully, he will make the right choices, and should he do so, conservatives will need to be there to support him. If he makes the wrong choices, conservatives will need to be there to oppose him. But neither our support nor our opposition should be based on hysterical responses to policies that we just don't like. Let's leave that kind of behavior to the liberals who invented it.
I think you clicked on the wrong post. I have no idea what you are talking about.
I see no limit to the grounds for castigating this tyrant, I see no horizon beyond which it could be considered unreasonable to oppose him, and I see no possible universe in which his presence would be considered beneficial.
I note "temporarily" because that was the intent Bush operated under but BHO is not credible in say he intends to relinquish control; see my title
Right on Alice, very good Summery of the last 3 and a half years.
IMO, we need to be more “over the top”, in other words more strident, more vocal and more activism, if that is what it takes to get this communist traitor to our country out of the WH.
No can do; I keep my brain elsewhere.
>> What you seem to be advocating now is a relaxed, “let’s just see what happens” posture
I advocated no such thing. I simply urged conservatives to relax A LITTLE BIT. There must be a middle-ground between “lets see what happens”, and “life as we know it is over”. We can simultaneously take the threat seriously, while not blowing it out of proportion.
People on this forum seem to think anyone who doesn’t think the world is coming to an end is advocating surrendering, giving up, or conceding territory. We can fight the good fight without all the “chicken little” nonsense.
SnakeDoc
It’s rare when I am in such profound disagreement with David Horowitz.
It'll save us some self-delusion, I suppose, which is generally a good thing, but there is, to all of this screaming, a definite element of giving the Dems back what they gave Bush all those years. It's fun, it's healthy, it blows off steam, and they have it coming in spades. I wouldn't go making any policy decisions on its basis, though, but I don't get the general sense that people are doing that. Could be wrong, of course.
What people are shouting is less indicitave than what they are doing. For one thing, people may shout that Obama is the Antichrist but nobody's really barricading the churches yet (although I must point out that him sacrificing those goats on the White House lawn might have been a tipoff). On the other hand, Obama has not made any overt anti-gun moves to date and yet firearms and ammunition are flying off the shelves like party favors on New Year's Eve. Clearly people are taking action on that, hence that is what they really believe. (And I happen to agree).
I do think Obama is an uninformed internationalist when it comes to foreign policy, advised by equally uninformed internationalists, and that this might commit the United States to erroneous and harmful policies. That's a cause for considerable personal anxiety. Others' mileages may vary. Domestically he's a redistributive Democrat but we knew that going in. His approach toward mandatory voluntary student universal service/labor/whateverthehell the current flavor is, is nothing short of grotesque but I suspect the native American skepticism toward youth regimentation will serve as a corrective. That doesn't mean I don't reserve the right to object to it with vigor and enthusiasm.
So I'll take the middle course. I'll scream calmly. Come on, Dave, buddy, take your own advice. Politics isn't any fun if you can't demonize your opponent just a little bit. ;-)
Perhaps not, but he's anti-capitalist, anti-Bill-of-Rights, anti-American sovereignty....
Just plain anti-American.
Ugh. Indicitave = indicative. Who needs spel chekc?
When the Obama admin finally does something that elicits a "hysterical" response from Horowitz (an inevitiability), I'll be sure to send to this little quote back his way.
“Even as astute a conservative thinker as Mark Steyn has been swept up in the tide that thinks Obama is a “transformative” radical.”
Steyn gets excited when he and other people are sued or investigated by the Canadian “Human Rights” Commmissions for expressing politically incorrect views. It seems to me that Horowitz dismisses the fact that “the Democrats are now a socialist party in the European sense” too lightly.
I think that Steyn really gets it and Horowitz doesn’t. European ideas of “rights” and “freedom” are profoundly different from ours. Our Constitution is premised on the idea of limited government while Europeans have always believed in unlimited government. That’s why protracted crises in Europe inevitably produce Hitlers and Stalins. Here in the US, our kids have been brainwashed since the sixties on the idea that all good comes from our wise leaders in government while all evil springs from private greed. The “change” that that generation has voted in that generation has brought to power is antithethical to the principals that the US was founded on.
Obama and Co. are already exploiting the current financial crisis by committing funds far down the road toward a welfare state, forcing states to accept federal funds that they don’t want, taken over the management of big businesses, and are moving toward surrendering our sovereignty piecemeal to Brussels. That makes him a “transformative” radical.”
Whatever. I’ve seen you going back and forth with a bunch of other posters and frankly, you’ve not made a convincing arguement. I’ve got “brain-melt” and I’m “hurting us” because you say so and thats it.
I forgot that not pulling the party line here is a big no-no.
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