[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]Try to suspend an understandable impulse for a moment.
Consider that President Obama, the most powerful multiculturalist in the history of the world, truly believes that the United States did not have a manifest destiny, that we are no better, no worse, the utter equal, of Bulgaria, Cuba, Hungary, Venezuela, Belgium — pick any land on the globe.
Without hyperbole, it is shocking and disappointing — that he who speaks for us all over the world says we are an indistinct face in the crowd.
For skeptics, Mr. Obama has left a steadily swelling written record as recently as yesterday.
In both popular history and scholarly history, the West broke the back of Communism, ripped down the Iron Curtain and won the 70-year Cold War with the Soviet Union at the end of the Reagan administration.
Ever since, school children have been taught that three heroes of the 1980s brought the result about, President Reagan, the Pope and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Even in this era of acute partisanship, the most dedicated Democrat does not dip into a deep, dank bucket and pull out the name of a liberal politician who supposedly contributed heavily to the Soviets’ ignominious downfall.
Twenty years later, armed with a non-leaky fountain pen in each hand, along comes the deceptively slippery Barack Obama to say, with a tightly studied stutter, “No, no, no, no,” and begin, astringently, to rewrite the biggest non-Obama event in the late 20th century.
Who knew that we had been thrashing around in engulfing political darkness for the last two decades, that President Obama alone knew the identity of the real team that won the Cold War?
Here is an excerpt from his memorable interview last night with Major Garrett of Fox News:
GARRETT: In your speech this morning, you said the Cold War reached its conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years. Mr. President, are the Russian sensitivities so fragile that you can't say the Cold War was won? The West won it? And it was led by a combination of Democratic and Republican American presidents?
OBAMA: Well, listen, the — I think that you just cut out Lech Walesa and the Poles. You just cut out Havel and the Czechs. There were a whole bunch of people throughout Eastern Europe who showed enormous courage. And I think that it is very important in this part of the world to acknowledge the degree to which people struggled for their own freedom. I'm very proud of the traditions of Democratic and Republican presidents to lift the Iron Curtain. But, you know, we don't have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history.
A Little Here, a Little There
It is a stinging defect in Mr. Obama’s character that he is routinely unable to make up his mind, to reach a clear decision on both mundane and lofty subjects.
Addressing students in Moscow yesterday, he repeated a two-toned pattern that has become distressingly familiar:
• He cannot acknowledge a triumphant United States.
• He is unable to resist criticizing his homeland, probably for the obvious reason, that it plays well everywhere except in Israel.
Here is what Mr. Obama said about the closing act on the Cold War:
“Within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Now, make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.”
I was a young man when a wise rabbi told me that when you credit everyone you diminish the act and ultimately, you credit no one.
This, obviously, was the President’s intention.
Heaven forbid that Mr. Reagan, a Republican, should be acknowledged, even if the rest of the world applauds him.
Like a schoolboy who has been bad and can’t resist thumbing his tongue at his parents, Mr. Obama also unloaded this gem about the land we had hoped he loves:
“It is our commitment to certain universal values which allows us to correct our imperfections, to improve constantly, and to improve over time.”
There he goes again, making two prickly points that should nettle his fellow citizens.
He was saying this:
America is nothing special, and there is nothing distinctive about the values of freedom, liberty and individualism that America cherishes most.
Your values and mine are alike.
Mr. Obama’s perhaps larger point came in Words 12 through 15: “To correct our imperfections.”
Has the President delivered a talk since Jan. 20 when he has failed to underscore America’s defects and stress how much we are like every other shlub with two arms and two legs?
Hopefully he will mature before he leaves office.
