We are not the ones we have been waiting for.
That was the takeaway message of the recent “Restoring Honor” rally on the National Mall.
Unless you were on a strict no-media diet in the run-up to Labor Day this year, you saw a lot of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin in the coverage of the rally. But the rally Beck organized, and at which Palin appeared, honoring wounded military heroes, actually had very little to do with Beck or Palin.
Washington Post fashion reporter Robin Givhan, best known to many as Michelle Obama’s worshipful accessory to fashion, lectured Sunday to the dumpy masses of America. As most U.S. citizens have “blighted” the landscape in horrid summer clothes, they should really honor the First Lady for knowing how to dress on vacation — even if Mrs. Obama is wearing a French-designer top that most likely cost upwards of $500 as she took taxpayers for a ride with a fancy Spanish vacation.
Regular readers of this site need not be reminded of Barack Obama’s countless gaffes, aberrations, indulgences, prevarications, poor decisions, shady dealings and worrisome patches of biographical obscurity. These blemishes have been rehearsed in article after article to the extent to which we can say that, by this time, the issue of his competence and bona fides should have reached critical mass. Nevertheless, for the fence sitters, the undecideds or those of a different political persuasion who out of curiosity occasionally scan the conservative media, it might be expedient to revisit the Obama problem and set down a brief summary of the president’s track record.
Now that Barack Obama has decided to be for the Ground Zero mosque before being implicitly against it (perhaps), discussion about his faith has once again reached a fever pitch. To many, his stance proves he’s a Muslim, with a recent poll showing that almost 20 percent of Americans hold that opinion; to others, it just reflects a desire to be faithful to the Constitution (now, that would be change). The truth, however, is a bit more nuanced. Obama is not religiously Muslim. Culturally, though…well, that’s a different matter altogether.
If there is a right to health care, someone has the duty to provide it. Inevitably, that “someone” is the government. Concrete benefits in pursuance of abstract rights, however, can be provided by the government only by constant coercion.
It’s been a long time since Nietzsche announced that G0d is dead. But debates over the existence of G0d have taken on an urgency in the 21st century, mainly argued by atheists eager to take on those long-dead monks who counted the angels dancing on the head of a pin. Theology is not a popular subject at the dinner parties of urban political sophisticates; a host who says grace before a meal could curdle the gazpacho. But atheism is a fashionable topic in Washington.
The meteoric rise to the presidency of Barack Obama was fueled in no small part by the widely-accepted contention that he was one of the smartest men ever to seek the Oval Office. He is not the first leader to be oversold.
“As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that he’s a great military man — I want you to know that.” It is an article of faith among the mainstream media, even on the squishy right (Bill O’Reilly comes to mind), to start any discussion of the 44th President with a ritual expression of utter amazement at his enormous brain power.
History is a great teacher. It often provides clues that enable us to understand the present and future.
Ancient regimes’ concept of divine right of kings seems pertinent to today. Wikipedia offers as good a summary as any:
The Divine Right of Kings is a political and religious doctrine of royal absolutism. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving his right to rule directly from the will of God. The king is thus not subject to the will of his people, the aristocracy, or any other estate of the realm, including the church.
“We the people” are the central concern of the Constitution, as well as its opening words, since it is a Constitution for a self-governing nation. But “we the people” are treated as an obstacle to circumvent by the current administration in Washington.