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.
Ohh, I was like HUH?
Gotcha, I was the reply you happened to click on. LOL
So do you agree with the socialism he`s pushing on America?Would it be too much to ask him to try legitimate constitutional methods?
Oh, I agree with you completely. I just don't like to see him called RINO, communist, etc. He was a communist. No more. I too read Radical Son.
“We”?
Has he got a mouse in his pocket?
I wouldn’t call him a RINO just because I think someone who has come as far as he has on the political spectrum demands my respect even if I don’t agree with him.
I think people don’t understand how remarkable that is to undergo, the change from being an organ of the Black Panthers to the point where someone COULD even threaten to call him a RINO.
Sure, by many standards he IS a RINO. If one reads his books, it is no surprise. I personally have begun to detest the label, but...we all gotta have our labels. I’ve got mine.
Sorry, David, but you’re about as mistaken as can be regarding 0bama (ptui).
Never before has such an empty suit held such esteem in the public eye for so long.
XXXlintoon was a piker compared to the .625blackman.
Only G_d can save America, and He may have been driven away.
Thank you for sharing.
By experience, he evaluates someone like Obama in comparison to the worst of the criminally insane communist vermin the world ever produced. Compared to them, Obama doesn't sound so bad.
But that may be a false basis for judgment. When Horowitz's old colleagues shouted "End the War now!" they didn't mean in ninety days. They meant this afternoon. And they were ready to burn baby burn by dinnertime if it hadn't happened yet.
You don't need to get anywhere close to those diseased filth to have lethal posture against freedom, and those of us who never got personally exposed to totalitarian leftism are a lot more sensitive to it than he is.
This is not a criticism of David Horowitz. Like I said, he's one of the good guys. It's just human information processing. But I think it adds up to an explanation of why imo he may be taking Obama too lightly.
That said, I do not agree with the following:
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.
Creating perception is not an accomplishment. Marketing is not a hard product. Engineering and subsequent manufacturing is. Marketing is not. Perception is a light projection on a wall, devoid of substance.
Objectivelly, Obama's main accomplishment is graduating from Harvard. A real accomplishment to be sure, one of which Obama should be proud.
Being a community agitator, fanning the resentments of the whining masses instead of inspiring them to make use of the opportunities afforded by the greatest and freest nation on earth, is not an accomplishment: encouraging whining is not an accomplishment.
WTF are you and what have you done with David Horowitz?
American isn't bankrupt, it is the richest society in world history, if a bit less rich than a year or two ago. And civilization isn't going away.
I explained several years ago the right tack to take on the unsustainable policies of the left, and it isn't standing on the street corner shouting doom, doom, and betting against the US economy. The US economy has buried everything ever thrown at it with worse policy responses than this, it is a fool's bet. No, the left has no workable foreign policy and no workable sense of security. The right should remind people of that and then wait for the left's feel-good non-policies to fall apart. Notably on Iran.
But short-sighted men think they have to chase yesterday's headlines to be relevant or heard, so they pretend an ephemeral economic circumstance is permanent and all important. It isn't, it too shall pass. After which you'll be left with your partisan hyperbole and the American people won't get what the big deal is anymore. In the meantime, though, with nobody much watching, Obama will have let Iran get nukes while defunding the military etc.
They just need a candidate who can get elected.
Someone other than those previously touted.
Hyping any Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy memes does not seem to have any advantage for conservatives. The best defense against Obama and extremists is a good offense. His tax policies, deficits, and dissing of America and American values ought to be sufficient to make him a one-termer. But it's up to the GOP to find a good candidate. It's entirely possible they will repeat the mistakes of '08 and nominate a dud again. It is unlikeley backwoods survivalists worried about phantom UN helicopters will be to blame for that. You have to balance out the negative factors of the kookier fundamentalists and defeatist moderates very carefully. As well as the liberals in large cities who worry about them excessively.
It doesn't seem like too much criticism of Obama is a real problem in the current cycle. Is he as scary and demented as some would want to believe, with reeducation camps ready?No, probably not. But the analogy may be that out of order. They are following a reeducation campaign with statist socialist themes. He thinks in statist terms. The Orwellian/Big Brother 1984 jokes are on target.
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