I said, a few days ago, in a private email….
But this leads me to a thought… political correctness has led us to this pass, where are are told all cultures are equal. The weeds, in effect, are equal to the flowers. And of course the weeds, which now have that leg up, if you will, are pushing the idea that the flowers are the problem.
Back when we fought the Nazis, one of the things we fought for was the American way of life. Our culture, in short. Sadly, we cultivate that garden, our culture, no longer. Is it any wonder the weeds are doing so well?
This is a theme that I will be returning to over the next weeks and months, because i think the concept bears on everything we do as a people, both in terms of government, (and therein both domestically and internationally_ ) as well as at a personal and interpersonal level in our daily lives. That concept being the culture and its values have given the world the most benefit, even with all it’s faults attached.
For the moment, lets look at the international and governmental side of things, particularly with regards to the rise of Islam
(Notice, please, I didn’t say “Radical Islam”. Reason being I find no “moderation” in Islam. This is a point I’ve alluded to in the past and I have some writings in the pipeline that will expand on this, which will be posted in the near future.)
To this point, a years ago, Bobby Jindal spoke to the AEI. Wherein, he said, in part:
When President Obama rejects American exceptionalism, what he is really doing is embracing the idea, long-held by progressives stretching back a century, that we are simply members of a global village, all of us sharing principles and cultures of equal merit.
No country has principles that are better than another’s. There is no nation, system of government or understanding of rights that is exceptional.
I wish President Obama had watched The Incredibles, because then he’d know that when everybody’s special, nobody is.
The danger of this idea is that it ignores the unique and distinct role the United States is called to play in the world, because of her strength, her resources, and her historical commitment to freedom and human dignity.
First of all, Bobby, Obama did know this. He was pushing the ideas he was pushing and what Democrats have been pushing for generations now, toward the goal of eliminating the concept of meritocracy.
And of course the idea that the traditional American culture is what drives that role, that strength.
Ideas have consequences.
It is only when you conclude that we are all just citizens of the world, with ideas that are just as valuable as anyone else’s, that you would come to the conclusion that the United States should “lead from behind” – which really means, of course, not leading at all.
It would take too much of your valuable time for me to list a bill of particulars of all of the consequences of President Obama’s failure on the international stage.
Today, we see a world in which the Obama Administration has neglected or abandoned America’s longstanding allies.
Our “special relationship” with Britain is gone, NATO is drifting, Eastern Europe is disaffected, and Israel has been purposefully alienated from the United States.
Consider the consequences of just the past year.
It has brought us the rise of ISIS and the capture of Mosul, Russia’s expansion and invasion in Crimea and Ukraine, new heights of crisis in the Middle East and Israel, genocide and destruction of religious minorities in Iraq, more Chinese aggression and conflict in the South China Sea, more bombing in Libya, more saber rattling from North Korea, a dangerous trend of anti-Semitism, and a refugee crisis on our own border.
For anyone with a degree of introspection, this would be a time to consider whether the ramifications of your ideas were leading the world to experience more chaos and less clarity.
But that is not what President Obama has done.
He has not reconsidered whether his approach to leadership is perhaps a part of the reason that the world seems to be spinning off its axis.
Instead, he once again views himself as a noble, deliberative thinker who takes his time and gets it right.
Peter Baker recently wrote an interesting piece in the New York Times about a series of off-the-record dinners President Obama has held with foreign policy thinkers.
Of course, as it always is in Washington, not even the president can really go off-the-record.
The attendees recalled the president “sarcastically imitating his adversaries,” saying, quote: “Oh, it’s a shame when you have a wan, diffident, professorial president with no foreign policy other than ‘don’t do stupid things,’ … I do not make apologies for being careful in these areas, even if it doesn’t make for good theater.”
I don’t get invited to the White House much. I wasn’t at that dinner. But if I had been, I can tell you what I would have said when he rolled out that straw man and set it aflame.
Respectfully, Mr. President, this isn’t about “good theater.”
This is about life and death, freedom and despotism, order and chaos.
This is about the role of the United States of America as the leader of the free world.
This is about nothing less than whether we will squander America’s ability to continue in that role, or whether we will pass on to our children a nation that is secure, well-armed, and confident in its ability to sustain a just peace in the world.
As Walter Russell Mead wrote in response to that anecdote, “The real criticism of the president isn’t that his foreign policy is too deliberative, it is that his deliberations don’t seem to end with policies that, well, work.”
The truth is that none of us would care how long President Obama takes to make a decision if it were the right decision.
As the great military strategist Colonel John Boyd once said, “Decisions without actions are pointless.
Actions without decisions are reckless.” Time and again, this president has managed to do both.
The problem with the “smart diplomacy” that was supposed to make everything better isn’t that it doesn’t make for “good theater.” It’s that it isn’t very smart.
This isn’t about disliking how long it takes him to come up with an idea.
It’s about the ideas and what follows from them. The Russian reset. Iraq. Afghanistan. Israel. Egypt. Iran. Libya. Europe. China.
In each of these areas, it’s not just that the President took too long to come up with an answer. It’s that the answer was wrong.
If only he’d had the help of a wise steady hand, a policy expert in dealing with foreign affairs, he’d have come up with better answers. But instead he just had Hillary Clinton.
How did we get to this point? Just ask the people who can be honest about what happened.
Ask former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who says he and others advised the president to negotiate a Status of Forces agreement with Iraq that could’ve forestalled the rise of ISIS… but says the White House refused to lead. Ask , former Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill, who says he was abandoned and ignored by Secretary Clinton. Or ask the outgoing chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn, who says the world today is more chaotic than any time since the 1930s.
Today, we are living with the consequences of the Obama-Clinton ideas when it comes to foreign, domestic, and defense policy.
And those ideas have set America on a path that will create more chaos, more conflict, and more wars.
All of this leads directly back to the misbegotten notion that our culture, and the principles that have historically driven that culture are no better than any other… a mindset that has driven leftist thought for decades. Yes, even Islam, which gives us ISIS, which gives us the beheading of the week on YouTube.
As I said the other day, all of this is because we have entrusted the power of government to those who don’t believe in traditional American culture, who are using the power of government to over-ride and debase that culture.