Archives
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The Real Obama Legacy
The
last music we'll ever hear. I knew there was a reason
behind the greatest all-purpose trailer track ever. Enjoy it.
behind the greatest all-purpose trailer track ever. Enjoy it.
YOU BET HE'S SMART. I got an email from Doc Zero about this post. So it must be important. Bails me out of a trap I've been falling into lately: I keep thinking what's happening is so obvious it needs no comment because you must already know. You do know, don't you? Don't you?
Historians will ask over and over why
yet another feckless Democrat was elected in 2008. How could Americans
be so blind to the circling jackals of this world?
Now Obama seems intent on reversing the Cold War and letting nuclear proliferation explode. In Congress, the Democrats are committing mass suicide for him. FDR gave us the New Deal, and Obama is giving us the Raw Deal...
Obama is now set to be the biggest loser of the last sixty years -- the man who let nuclear weapons explode out of control by fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the threat. The implications for the future are unpredictable, but just as World War II was more consequential than the New Deal, there is nothing an American president can do that is more important that his national security actions. When -- not if -- nuclear proliferation runs out of control, it won't look like the Cold War, when only two superpowers had usable missiles and weapons, and when, after Stalin died, both sides acted fairly rationally.
Instead, Obama's towering failure means a multi-polar race to get the baddest bombs, with the mullahs racing the Sunni Arabs and a very real chance that Hezb'allah or al-Qaeda will get enough material to build a dirty nuke. Only advanced missile defenses will save us, and if America doesn't speed up our defense development, then the saner nations in the world will do it. They are not going to wait for us.
When unstable tyrannies like Iran, North Korea, Libya, and even Venezuela have nukes, Obama's self-glorifying ego trips will fade by comparison. The only question Americans will ask will be: How well did he protect his country? We forget that for the last ninety years, America's military power has been kept at the razor's edge -- not because we somehow decided to conquer the world, but because we had to resist the imperialistic aggression of the Kaiser, Hitler, Stalin, Mao (by proxy in Korea and Vietnam), and the Soviet Empire. Liberals pretend that war is all the past, but history hasn't ended.
Now Obama seems intent on reversing the Cold War and letting nuclear proliferation explode. In Congress, the Democrats are committing mass suicide for him. FDR gave us the New Deal, and Obama is giving us the Raw Deal...
Obama is now set to be the biggest loser of the last sixty years -- the man who let nuclear weapons explode out of control by fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the threat. The implications for the future are unpredictable, but just as World War II was more consequential than the New Deal, there is nothing an American president can do that is more important that his national security actions. When -- not if -- nuclear proliferation runs out of control, it won't look like the Cold War, when only two superpowers had usable missiles and weapons, and when, after Stalin died, both sides acted fairly rationally.
Instead, Obama's towering failure means a multi-polar race to get the baddest bombs, with the mullahs racing the Sunni Arabs and a very real chance that Hezb'allah or al-Qaeda will get enough material to build a dirty nuke. Only advanced missile defenses will save us, and if America doesn't speed up our defense development, then the saner nations in the world will do it. They are not going to wait for us.
When unstable tyrannies like Iran, North Korea, Libya, and even Venezuela have nukes, Obama's self-glorifying ego trips will fade by comparison. The only question Americans will ask will be: How well did he protect his country? We forget that for the last ninety years, America's military power has been kept at the razor's edge -- not because we somehow decided to conquer the world, but because we had to resist the imperialistic aggression of the Kaiser, Hitler, Stalin, Mao (by proxy in Korea and Vietnam), and the Soviet Empire. Liberals pretend that war is all the past, but history hasn't ended.
I don't know. Help me out here. I'm more upset about the scrapping of the United States (the link I sent Doc Zero in return). Why? I think you can all see that InstaPunk hasn't offered any thoughts on foreign policy lately. Perhaps I'm succumbing to the Ron Paul view of the world: if we shut our eyes very tightly, it will all just go away. Or something like that.
The bigger question. How much of this stuff do you want us to talk about? Do you need us to keep repeating the alphabet? In order? So you won't forget it? Or do you prefer, like Penny, to pretend that eventually we'll all wake up from the bad dream and everything will be fine? Is that what I'm doing behind a screen of distractions?
OR do you crave analysis? Picking through the entrails like a Roman soothsayer. I can do that. I think. But let me put it in perspective for you. I love Doctor Zero. He's a very fine writer. But I haven't been able to read his posts of late. I'm thinking, like, how much firepower does it take to prove the obvious? Surely not this much. Which is nothing against the Doc. I admire him more than any other blogger. But...
Well, let me put it another way... Just because no one mentions it and I don't propose it, does no one think that Putin wasn't behind the plane crash that killed the Polish government? I've just been assuming you knew. Give me some guidance, folks.
Is the Doc serving his folks better than I am serving you? If so, please tell me. I'll get with the program, I promise. No more movies, music, TV, sports, online Bibles, or delicious babes. InstaPunk will start getting relevant again.
UPDATE. A response from the Doctor:
You raised an interesting point about
the need to apply firepower to
reviewing the basics, and stating the should-be-obvious. I think
it's important. People who weren't exposed to important
essentials of liberty, the Constitution, and capitalism in school -
which is, sadly, most of us - are not well-equipped to resist the siren
song of the Left. They look at a complex world, filled with
crises, and they desperately want to believe the sales pitch from the
debonair super-geniuses of the Democrat Party. It seems
*reasonable* to believe that brilliant social engineers can design a
better society, an attitude that persists from the prewar era, when
early Progressives and Wilsonians promised to bring the scientific
brilliance of industry to bear on political issues. I'm actually
in the planning stages of putting together a book on that very topic.
Even presenting the evidence of socialism's historical failure to the average Obama voter has no impact, because they'll quickly assure you that bad people caused those failures. The new crop of compassionate maximum leaders, most especially our Historic First Black President, will succeed where others have failed. Besides, even if you persuade them to regard the success of collective programs as unlikely, they'll tell you that all competing ideas are immoral. If you get past *that*, they'll say it's best to shoot for Utopia even if the odds are against you, because you might just beat the odds... isn't that how dreamers are supposed to think? And following your dreams is the most noble of human endeavors, isn't it?
I believe it's essential to persuade people this stuff *can't* work. It always ends the same way, and inflicts the same horrors of poverty and tyranny on its subjects. To win that argument, it's essential to go back to basics, and rewrite the programming installed by a decade in the public schools.
We're in a bad place right now, and the only way to escape is to win the dedicated support of a *lot* of people. I don't think you can do that by telling them to carefully consider the pros and cons before they push the "Yes, We Can" button... because they're likely to think about the last tongue bath Obama got from the network news, squeeze their eyes shut, and stab the button.
- DZ
Even presenting the evidence of socialism's historical failure to the average Obama voter has no impact, because they'll quickly assure you that bad people caused those failures. The new crop of compassionate maximum leaders, most especially our Historic First Black President, will succeed where others have failed. Besides, even if you persuade them to regard the success of collective programs as unlikely, they'll tell you that all competing ideas are immoral. If you get past *that*, they'll say it's best to shoot for Utopia even if the odds are against you, because you might just beat the odds... isn't that how dreamers are supposed to think? And following your dreams is the most noble of human endeavors, isn't it?
I believe it's essential to persuade people this stuff *can't* work. It always ends the same way, and inflicts the same horrors of poverty and tyranny on its subjects. To win that argument, it's essential to go back to basics, and rewrite the programming installed by a decade in the public schools.
We're in a bad place right now, and the only way to escape is to win the dedicated support of a *lot* of people. I don't think you can do that by telling them to carefully consider the pros and cons before they push the "Yes, We Can" button... because they're likely to think about the last tongue bath Obama got from the network news, squeeze their eyes shut, and stab the button.
- DZ
