The Real Danger of Obama
Many people have an instinctive reaction about Obama that makes them think there is something worrisome about his worldview. Understandably, in the age of terrorism, they look to his thin resume on national security issues and his habit of cavorting with anti-American leftists, and focus on that as the source of their anxiety. While that is valid, I don’t think that’s where the real threat lies.
I think the real danger with Obama is that he may give the elites exactly what they want: a push into the post-American, post-western world. His entire life story points to this, from his seeking out of marxist professors in college (which he describes in his memoirs) to his relationship with Bill Ayers (the LA Times is apparently refusing to release a video of Obama and Ayers at a dinner toasting a PLO activist, btw) to his 20 years of attendance at Rev. Wright’s church to his 2001 radio interview discussing his disappointment that courts have not allowed redistribution for the sake of redistribution.
He has joined the elites in rejecting the founding premises of our government: that there is a presumption of liberty and limited government, that taxes are intended to fund the operations of government not to spread the wealth around and that the nation is best served by a population with an ethos of self-reliance and a can-do spirit rather than a population that defers to government for everything. Whether they want people dependent on government because of good intentions or out of a desire for power, it amounts to a rejection of what made America uniquely American.
He has also joined the elites in rejecting the fundamental premises of western civilization: that there is an objective right and wrong, not a relative morality for all actions, that we are the master of our fate, not the beneficiary or victim of factors outside of our control, that freedom is the natural state of existence and liberty is a worthwhile goal in itself, that the world is rational and can be studied and described empirically, that progress is possible only when it is rooted in a recognition that much of what came before was good and a benefit to us all.
Obama and the elites reject all this. They are seemingly so lost that they are actively seeking to undermine the culture that brought us here. But what will replace it? Who will lift a finger to defend a culture defined by narcissistic navel gazing? They will be too busy living the good life to deal with the barbarians at the gates. And barbarians have a way of showing up at inopportune moments.
While it is not perfect, is there a better alternative to western civilization? Is there another culture that produces so much prosperity for all? Is there a culture that leaves as much freedom intact? Is there another culture that is as tolerant of ethnic, religious or lifestyle minorities?
There lies the real danger of Obama. That he will hasten this civilizations demise and in the process invite the barbarians to our gates.
And if western civilization falls, what will replace it? Will it tolerate the elites that usher it in? I wouldn’t be so sure about that. They might want to be careful what they wish for.