PRESIDENT OBAMA AND AMERICA’S CORE VALUES: HERBERT LONDON
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7930/pub_detail.asp
President Obama and America’s Core Values
Whatever one thinks about the increasingly partisan politics in the United States, there are, or should be, limits to indecency. However, in my opinion, President Barack Obama has abandoned any semblance of decency in his desperate bid to help Democrats maintain their control of Congress.
Recently, in an attempt to appeal to Latinos about immigration, the president mentioned Senator John McCain as someone stressing border security and strict enforcement of the law. President Obama noted, “Those aren’t the kinds of folks who represent our core American values.”
While a difference of opinion on immigration policy is understandable and while one may appropriately cite McCain’s about face on this issue, the president’s comment smacks of the worst kind of pandering and the most extreme form of indecency. To say a genuine American war hero, someone who spent years in Hanoi Hilton facing grueling torture each day, doesn’t have “core American values” is beneath contempt.
At the time John McCain was captured, Barack Obama was a community organizer with a hard left political agenda that included working for ACORN. To imply he understood or represented core American values, while McCain did not is an exercise in political perversion.
As I see it, remarkable arrogance is on display. Even this president should know that putting one’s life on the line to preserve American’s core principles is the highest sacrifice one can make for his country. The fact that President Obama can make such a statement suggests he doesn’t understand or appreciate American values.
Alas, this president may act outside the boundaries of American history, a precinct of resentment and contentiousness. After all, the radicals house their views in a nation they want to see unfold, not one whose history you can take pride in. Wasn’t it Michele Obama who said “I did not have pride in my country until now (when Obama was elected president)?
Who is this president and what does he really believe? Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton calls President Obama a “post American” president. Whether that applies is difficult to say, but I do believe this president is a transnational progressive, someone who considers the larger global equation before considering American interests. That may explain the many apologies for U.S. actions abroad and the reliance on U.N. support. It might also explain the cavalier use of “core American values” which he seemingly does not appreciate.
As a transnational, Obama is as much a citizen of the world (an oxymoron to be sure) as an American national. It may even explain why there are many Americans who believe he is a Muslim, despite his denials. There is little doubt that he is the first transnational president, even though some historians pin that tag on Woodrow Wilson.
He is also probably the first president sufficiently arrogant to assume he possesses insight into the American character others do not possess. Perhaps this explains why he has called Republican opponents, “enemies” a characterization unprecedented from a president of the United States. From my perspective these statements and characterizations are beneath contempt, but obviously not beneath this president.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University. He is the author of Decade of Denial (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001), America’s Secular Challenge (Encounter Books) and Decline and Revival in Higher Education (Transaction).
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