Our New Friends Are Really Not Very Nice People [Victor Davis Hanson]
After listening to Ahmadinejads U.N. rant and seeing his goons shout at Elie Wiesel, hearing Ortega go on his 50-minute rant, and listening to the antics of the thuggish Chávez and Morales at the Latin American summit and collating all that with Obamas praise of the courageous Saudi royal (replete with bow) and the Turkish governments demands to derail the new Danish head of NATO (who courageously stood up for free speech) does anyone really believe that Obamas glad-handing, push the reset button, were listening now, Bush did it, I was only (fill in the blank) then overseas script constitutes morality, wisdom, or the advancement of our national values and interests? Or has the thin ethical veneer almost completely worn away from this narcissistic, Bono-like celebrity tour?
Multiculturalism Trumps Morality [Victor Davis Hanson]
The great threat to global morality, to paraphrase Aristotle, is the notion that you can be moral in your sleep that by condoning any and all, under the guise of tolerance of the other, you are ethical rather than amoral. Take the bankrupt U.N. secretary general Ban Ki Moon, who in Geneva sanctions the uber-racist Ahmadinejad even as he preaches tolerance from his U.N. soapbox. I fear that todays economic crisis, if not handled properly, could evolve into a full-scale political crisis marked by social unrest, weakened governments, and angry publics who have lost faith in their leaders and their own future, Mr. Ban said. Thus he cowardly ignores the concrete moral felony in front of him as he cheaply and easily goes after a putative moral transgression in the abstract.
We have forgotten that the clichés that have been so loudly on display during the recent Obama global tours such as tolerance (for what?), multilateralism, partnerships, etc. while often therapeutic, avoid the harder and often tragic choice to stand up to the glad-handing multicultural thug who wants a photo-op with an American president, who in turn wants a photo-op emphasizing how well he is liked abroad and resonates with the global masses all at the expense of the poor soul thrown into a Cuban jail, or beaten up by the Chávez goon squads, or slaughtered by the Ahmadinejad religious police, or shut down and hounded by the Ortega thugocracy. When all paths are equal, there are none better or worse than the others and we really are on the road to perdition.