Posted on 10/14/2009 6:29:18 PM PDT by Steelfish
A Decadent Nobel A prize for soft moralism.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
So Donald Rumsfeld was right about Old Europe.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has taken it in the neck for awarding this year's Peace Prize to a nine-month old American presidency. There's been much mockery of pencil-necked Norwegian academics in faraway Oslo. This is unfair.
The committee said it chose Barack Obama for his "vision of . . . a world without nuclear weapons" and for "meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting." I'd say that completes the argument over old and new Europe. This is a Nobel of decadence.
Let's be clear. This decadence isn't primarily about Roman Polanski or Silvio Berlusconi's playboy club or French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand's adventures in Thailand. Though these are not irrelevant.
This Nobel is about political decadence.
"Decadence," an enduring word, emerged from the Latin "de-cadere," which means "to fall down." Decadence stripped bare means decay.
Daniel Henninger discusses the Norwegian committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama and what it says about Europe. •Podcast
The unanswered question at the center of this odd Nobel is whether Barack Obama admires Old Europe for the same reasons it admires him.
When it was a vibrant garden of ideas, Europe gave the world more good things than one can count. Then it discovered the pleasures of the welfare state.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Dan Henniger is up there with Mark Steyn, except his humour is purely intelectual. Excellent read.
Mr. Obama is at a crossroads in his presidency. As George W. Bush departed the White House, he said his successor would one day arrive at the need to make a decision that made clear the reality of being the American president. That moment has arrived.
Whatever one's opinion of Mr. Bush, this is correct. And it appears more and more that Mr. BamBam's answer is a sorry & lacking "Present."
No, no. no.
Henninger, Will, Krauthammer, Kristol, and Lowry form a unique class of writers. That’s the top tier.
hooray-for-Dan bump
So why wasn't IKEDA Daisaku honored? He's been pushing this for a long time now.
The above link is pure drivel and propaganda, but no more so than the major "news" outlets in the US have been spewing.
Obama has less stature than the nutcase Ikeda has. The Nobel committee should have "honored" them both. Ikeda and Obama are alike in ways which should strike fear in all of our hearts.
Mark Steyn is also from that class of writers when he writes serious pieces.
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