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  • Douglas Murray: The War on the West

    Douglas Murray: The War on the West
    "It is now in vogue to celebrate non-Western cultures and disparage Western ones. Some of this is a much-needed reckoning, but much of it fatally undermines the very things that created the greatest, most humane civilization in the world. In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows how many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric. After all, if we must discard the ideas of Kant, Hume, and Mill for their opinions on race, shouldn’t we discard Marx, whose work is peppered with racial slurs and anti-Semitism? Embers of racism remain to be stamped out in America, but what about the raging racist inferno in the Middle East and Asia? It’s not just dishonest scholars who benefit from this intellectual fraud but hostile nations and human rights abusers hoping to distract from their own ongoing villainy. Dictators who slaughter their own people are happy to jump on the 'America is a racist country' bandwagon and mimic the language of antiracism and 'pro-justice' movements as PR while making authoritarian conquests. If the West is to survive, it must be defended. The War on the West is not only an incisive takedown of foolish anti-Western arguments but also a rigorous new apologetic for civilization itself."

The Political Conventions

"No Labels" Indeed

  • “‘In America we have a two-party system,’ a Republican congressional staffer is supposed to have told a visiting group of Russian legislators some years ago. ‘There is the stupid party. And there is the evil party. I am proud to be a member of the stupid party.’ He added: ‘Periodically, the two parties get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. This is called — bipartisanship.’” – Peter Brimelow

One Hundred Million Dead

  • "The West accepts an epochal, monstrous, unforgivable double standard. We rehearse the crimes of Nazism almost daily; we teach them to our children as ultimate historical and moral lessons; and we bear witness to every victim. We are, with so few exceptions, almost silent on the crimes of Communism. So the bodies lie among us, unnoticed, everywhere." -- Alan Charles Kors, Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

Che-Worship

  • "The latest manifestation of Che-worship is a film by Steven Soderbergh called, simply, Che. It was screened in Havana, of course, under the approving gaze of the Communist dictatorship. The actor playing Guevara, Benicio Del Toro, was there, partying with party members -- Cuban officials. It must have been very cozy. And who was Che Guevara, the real one? He was Castro's number-one thug, presiding over summary executions at La Cabana. That was the fortress that served as his abattoir. He would administer the coup de grace -- a bullet in the back of the neck -- while his victims cried, 'Vivo Cristo Rey!' or 'Viva Cuba libre!' He liked to show off El Paredon, the killing wall turned red with blood. Furthermore, he established the labor-camp system in the which countless citizens -- dissidents, democrats, artists, homosexuals -- would suffer and die. This is the Cuban gulag. Anthony Daniels once remarked that the difference between Guevara and Pol Pot is that Guevara never studied in Paris." -- National Review, December 29, 2008, p. 12.

Progressive "Chic"

  • "Speaking of Lenin and Hitler, here is a story -- originating with Kingsley Amis and told recently by Charles Moore, the British journalist. Amis 'knew a man who was an interior decorator. One day, the man was commissioned to improve the house of a rich, left-wing woman in Hampstead. Above the main staircase was a huge portrait of Lenin. Kingsley's friend decided on a tease: "Who's that?" he asked . ... "Hang on, don't tell me, don't tell me. ... I know: Hitler!"'" -- Jay Nordlinger, "Undies, Comrade?" National Review, July 6, 2009, p. 25.

The More Laws The Better

  • Still today this January 7, 2001, Letter to the Editor of the Los Angeles Times from a woman in West Hollywood remains a classic of the liberal mindset: "SPONSORING NEW LAWS: Re your Jan. 1 article on some of the state's most important 2001 laws: By my count of the 81 new laws, two were bipartisan, 70 were sponsored by Democrats and nine by Republicans. No wonder Republicans can cry 'too much government' -- they just don't bother to do a thing."

Our Next President

  • At the CNN-hosted "debate" held today, June 3, 2007, in New Hampshire, Wolf Blitzer asked the Democratic Presidential candidates whether "English should be the official language of the United States." All but Mike Gravel answered No. Barack Obama objected that "this is the kind of question that is designed precisely to divide us." Hillary Clinton responded with concern that "if it becomes official, that means in a place like New York City you can't print ballots in any other language." Pray for the nation.

El Presidente de los Estados Unidos

  • "I don't understand when people are going around worrying about, 'We need to have English only.' They want to pass a law, 'We want just, uh, we want English only.' Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But, but, understand this. Instead of worrying about whether, uh, immigrants can learn English -- they'll learn English -- you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish." -- Senator Barack Obama, July 8, 2008

Blaming Whitey

  • THE FOUNDRY blog at Heritage.org, April 3, 2009: BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA, MARCH 27, 2009: "This is a crisis that was caused by white people with blue eyes. And before the crisis, they looked as if they knew everything about economics." ASSOCIATED PRESS, APRIL 2, 2009: During a lunch at the Group of 20 summit in London, Obama shook hands with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and said: “This is my man, right here. I love this guy."

The Benefit in Demeaning America

  • Paul Mirengoff at PowerLineBlog.com, April 5, 2009, considers various reasons why President Obama seems so compelled to criticize his own country. He concludes with a final possibility: "Obama's America bashing is the product of his ego. Scott [Johnson] suggested as much yesterday when he described Obama as 'bestriding the Western world in the guise of a philosopher king.' By distancing himself from America's foreign policy, he presents himself as something greater than a mere American president attempting to project American power and American ideas. Any president can do that. So grand is this American president that he will project his own special synthesis of world ideas, at least rhetorically. In doing so, not coincidentally, he will impress elites at home and abroad, and enhance his personal popularity, if not that of the country. His intellect will be admired and he will become a beloved figure throughout the world."

Noteworthy Books

The Book They Want to Keep You From Reading

  • Stanley Kurtz: Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism

    Stanley Kurtz: Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism
    "Kurtz makes an in-depth exploration of the president’s connections to radical groups such as ACORN, UNO of Chicago, the Midwest Academy, and the Socialist Scholars Conferences. He explains what modern 'stealth' socialism is, how it has changed, and how it continues to influence the Democratic Party. He sheds light on what the New York Times called a 'lost chapter' of the president’s life—his years at Columbia—and proves that Obama’s youthful infatuation with socialism was not just a phase. Those ideas have shaped his political views and set the groundwork for the long-term strategy of his administration."

Thought for the Day

  • "I have a million ideas. The country can't afford them all." Senator Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2007

« John Hinderaker on the Left vs. Ayaan Hirsi Ali | Main | WE NEED TO LISTEN TO STEVE WYNN »

June 09, 2010

Dorothy Rabinowitz on the Alien in the White House

Dorothy Rabinowitz, "The Alien in the White House," "The distance between the president and the people is beginning to be revealed," OpinionJournal.com, Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2010.

The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, were the charges from some of the president's earliest enthusiasts about his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill.

There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama's pronouncements. For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voice—and for good reason.

Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.

A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.

rabinowitz

One of his first reforms was to rid the White House of the bust of Winston Churchill—a gift from Tony Blair—by packing it back off to 10 Downing Street. A cloudlet of mystery has surrounded the subject ever since, but the central fact stands clear. The new administration had apparently found no place in our national house of many rooms for the British leader who lives on so vividly in the American mind. Churchill, face of our shared wartime struggle, dauntless rallier of his nation who continues, so remarkably, to speak to ours. For a president to whom such associations are alien, ridding the White House of Churchill would, of course, have raised no second thoughts.

Far greater strangeness has since flowed steadily from Washington. The president's appointees, transmitters of policy, go forth with singular passion week after week, delivering the latest inversion of reality. Their work is not easy, focused as it is on a current prime preoccupation of this White House—that is, finding ways to avoid any public mention of the indisputable Islamist identity of the enemy at war with us. No small trick that, but their efforts go forward in public spectacles matchless in their absurdity—unnerving in what they confirm about our current guardians of law and national security.

Consider the hapless Eric Holder, America's attorney general, confronting the question put to him by Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas) of the House Judicary Committee on May 13.

READ THE COMPLETE COLUMN: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703302604575294231631318728.html?KEYWORDS=rabinowitz

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

June 09, 2010 in American Politics, Clash of Civilizations, Culture Wars, Current Affairs, Fifth Column |

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