Homegrown Terrorists

In a post in The American Thinker, its editor Thomas Lifson reports on the activities of two homegrown terrorists: the French citizen who murdered an Israeli couple (and two more people) at the Brussels Jewish Museum and an American citizen who blew himself up in Syria. Lifson points out how with a slight change of appearance, the American terrorist could have easily accessed say a US shopping mall to carry out his deadly deed.

Europeans have previously tasted the bitter vile of homegrown terrorism – for example, the perpetrators of the London tube massacre were British citizens. In America, with the exception of Timothy McVeigh, we have been largely spared this scourge. (I don’t count the Tsarnaev brothers as homegrown, but the Fort Hood Islamist, Major Hasan, certainly counts.) Yet there is every reason to be concerned that this deadly phenomenon – that is, homegrown terrorism – will be practiced on our shores with greater regularity in the near future.

This is a frightening development. But let’s be clear about a few indisputable facts concerning the issue:

  1. Future perpetrators are virtually guaranteed to be Islamists, newly radicalized by extremist elements found in US mosques and other Islamic organizations.
  2. Their targets are likely to be Jewish, but their hatred of America parallels their enmity toward Jews and Israelis – so domestic iconic landmarks (e.g., the Statue of Liberty) and mass venues (e.g., shopping malls) will certainly be on their hit list.
  3. The surest means to combat this plague include: (i) call it what it is – terrorism, not “workplace violence”; (ii) prosecute those caught before, during or after their heinous deeds and put them to death; (iii) infiltrate, disrupt and destroy domestic (and foreign) networks that support domestic jihad; (iv) bring the full weight of law enforcement (including military capabilities) to bear in the fight against domestic terrorism; and (v) combat the foreign entities that support and inspire domestic terrorists.
  4. It will be difficult to carry out the previous steps without impinging on the liberties of law-abiding American citizens. The effort will be concentrated in the executive branches of government; but it must involve the legislative and judicial branches as well in order to protect said liberties.

During the twentieth century, the United States led the free world in the ultimately successful battles against Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism. The sooner we recognize that we are now engaged with a twenty-first century totalitarian enemy – radical Islam – the quicker we will defeat it and spare our citizens future bloodshed at the hands of homegrown terrorists.

This post also appeared in The American Thinker

Obama’s Most Serious Scandal

My online Merriam Webster gives the following definitions of scandal: “an occurrence in which people are shocked and upset because of behavior that is morally or legally wrong; circumstance or action that offends propriety or established moral conceptions or disgraces those associated with it.” According to these definitions, many significant events that have occurred during the life of the Obama administration  clearly qualify as scandals. The point of this article is not only to summarize the most egregious of the Obama scandals, but also to highlight one – arguably the most serious one – that originates from the first moment of Obama’s presidency.

Benghazi. The administration located, for reasons that remain as yet unclear, a CIA operation in Libya’s eastern port city for which – despite repeated pleas from Ambassador Stevens – it failed to provide adequate security. In a planned and coordinated terrorist attack by al Qaeda elements on the US consulate and a CIA annex, the Ambassador – whose presence in Benghazi also remains unexplained, another member of the embassy staff and two CIA operatives were murdered. For months, Obama and members of his administration knowingly lied by asserting that the violence was sparked by a spontaneous demonstration against an obscure anti-Islam video. This lie was repeated by Obama and then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to the families of the murdered men in front of their caskets at Andrews Air Force base. The speculation is that the lie evolved from the belief that an acknowledgment of an al Qaeda attack before the 2012 presidential election would contradict Obama’s campaign mantra that al Qaeda was decimated.

IRS. Despite stonewalling, misdirection and an improper “taking of the fifth,” it is clear that since about four years ago, the IRS has been engaged in a systematic and sustained effort to harass and deny tax-exempt status to numerous organizations intent on political action on behalf of conservative causes and candidates. Once again, the goal was to maximize the re-election prospects of the president. Whether the motivation to engage in this illegal endeavor came from the White House is unclear, but evidence suggests that the idea originated at very high levels in the administration.

Fast and Furious. In a misguided and reckless  attempt to track Mexican drug cartels, US guns were allowed to pass into the hands of numerous miscreants south of the border. Some of those guns turned up at the site of the murder of a US border patrol agent. No one in the administration – not even the Attorney General, under whose auspices this harebrained scheme was carried out – can explain who concocted the operation, what exactly it was intended to achieve, and how it went awry.

Obamacare. Leaving aside whether the nationalization of one-sixth of the US economy is a good idea, and whether Obamacare will help more people than it hurts, there remain three irrefutable points: (i) This is arguably the only piece of major national social legislation in a century to be passed exclusively by one party – using parliamentary tricks, unscrupulous back room deals and subterfuge in the presentation of the details; (ii) Its passage was secured by the promulgation of bald-faced lies – If you like your doctor and your plan, you can keep your doctor and your plan, period; (iii) Since its passage, the president has illegally altered numerous clauses in the statute, usually to shield the administration from criticism sure to reign down failing the alteration.

Veterans Administration. Long delays, callous treatment, and falsification of records to cover up miserable performance – all of these abominable features of the VA have been present for decades. During his campaign in 2008, Obama made a major promise to fix them. Like so many of his other promises – for example, to run the most transparent administration in US history, it was forgotten the moment his hand slipped off the Bible.

AP Phone Records. The administration secretly obtained the telephone records of reporters and editors from this wire service. This represented an unprecedented government intrusion on the press and revealed a total disregard for first amendment rights. No explanation was ever given, and as in almost all the other scandals, the administration set about to “investigate” the event. No such investigation has ever concluded, put forth any results or held anyone accountable. The Obama administration’s investigations are uniformly stonewalling operations.

Illegal Immigration. In his – and in the Democratic Party’s – ardent quest to lock in a permanent electoral majority, Obama proposes citizenship for the 11+ million illegal aliens in our country. Unable to achieve this lawfully, he engages in all manner of deception and lawlessness to bring about the desired end: for example, essentially implementing the DREAM Act by executive order; refusing to deport illegals caught perpetrating crimes; and ensuring lax border security wherever possible.

Quite a record! If the reader googles “Obama scandals,” then a whole host of other major and minor Obama administration scandals come into view. Indeed this administration is more lawless than the Nixon administration; arguably more corrupt (cf Solyndra) than the Harding administration; comparable in incompetence to the Carter Administration (Jimmy set the bar pretty high, or was it low); and even more polarizing than its predecessor. But to my mind the most scandalous act performed by Barack Obama was when he put his hand on that Bible (twice) and swore to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” This was by far Obama’s biggest lie. Not only has he made absolutely no effort to protect the Constitution, he has worked assiduously – and at times quite effectively – to undermine that sacred document. His oath of office was the seminal lie from which flowed all other lies, misrepresentations and scandals.

Based on the books he has (had ghost-) written, the words he has spoken and the deeds he has committed, Obama clearly believes that the US Constitution and the organization of society that it commands are fatally flawed. He seeks to replace them with a creed founded on the ideas of people like Antonio Gramsci, John Dewey, Sinclair Lewis, Cloward-Piven and Saul Alinsky – although his goals are always couched in language that easily misleads all who only see his pleasant visage and hear his soothing voice without paying attention to his character and desires.

In some sense, he has made no secret of his intentions. In short, he pursues a centralized, government-controlled, amoral society in which coerced egalitarianism, multilateralism, collectivism and multiculturalism replace individual liberty, free market capitalism, traditional culture and American Exceptionalism. I reiterate: he scandalously placed his hand on the Bible and swore to protect the system that he is committed to destroying. It was duplicitous, diabolical, even treasonous. While also scandalous, the true scandal is that the American people handed him the keys to the realm, that is, they elevated him to a position from which he can bring to fruition his (only semi-surreptitious) betrayal.

This essay also appeared in Canada Free Press, as well as in The Intellectual Conservative

The Israeli One-State Solution

Caroline Glick has written a provocative new book entitled The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East. In it, she argues that the futile quest for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict over the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is misguided, ill-conceived and doomed to failure. As have many before her, she points out that the “two states for two peoples” mantra, which is promoted so mindlessly by clueless diplomats, statesmen and pundits, and whose outline is broadly ‘known’ to all who envision it, would result in a death sentence for the Jewish State. Those who favor the two-state solution are often untroubled by that prospect. Or they deny, in unconvincing fashion, that such an outcome is likely. Moreover, “friends” of Israel bemoan the fact that there is no other choice: If the two-state solution is not implemented, then Israel either loses its Jewish character or its democratic nature. This is inevitable – just ask that great friend of Israel, John Kerry.

Balderdash, replies Glick. She argues that the demographic time bomb that is supposedly ticking louder and louder is a myth. The estimates (provided by the PLO) of the number of Arab residents in Judea and Samaria (the biblical names of the two regions comprising the so-called West Bank) are wildly inflated. Moreover, they discount the substantial and ongoing Arab emigration from the area. Glick claims that the ratio of Jews to Arabs among all the peoples in the disputed area (that is, comprising Israel proper, plus Judea and Samaria, but not Gaza) is roughly 2-1. Moreover, she claims, the fertility rate amongst the Jews has now drawn even (at approximately 3.1) to that of the Arabs — and more critically, according to Glick, the Jewish rate continues to rise while the Arab rate shows no sign of abating from its recent steep plummet. She asserts that with the likely continuation of these trends, augmented by ongoing Jewish immigration, the ratio in the not too distant future could approach 4-1, even 5-1, that is, the current ratio within Israel itself.

Therefore, says Glick, Israel should assert sovereignty over the disputed territory, expel the PLO and offer citizenship to the remaining Arab residents. A one-state solution! But not the Judenrein one envisioned by Abbas, nor the one that haunts Jewish lefties in Israel (and the US) who foresee a demographic and political disaster if Israel continues to “occupy the West Bank.”

Glick’s plan is simple, bold, controversial and provocative. Her analysis of the current situation and of the preceding machinations that have led to the current “stalemate” is cogent, comprehensive, clear-eyed and convincing. Here are some of the main points she makes:

  • Virtually all of the proponents of the two-state solution (Americans, Europeans, left-wing Israelis; although perhaps not Russians, and certainly no Arab) envision that such an eventuality will be accompanied by a total cessation of hostilities and complete acknowledgment by both sides of the legitimacy of the others’ state. There is not a shred of evidence that the Arabs — either in the disputed area or outside of it — are at all interested in such a comprehensive and final peace. They view Israel’s existence — within any borders — as an affront and a catastrophe (Nakba) that can only be corrected by the disappearance (through either annihilation or suicide) of the sovereign Jewish State.
  • This is proven by the fact that several times in the last two decades, Israel has offered a deal that comports closely with the envisioned two-state solution. Arafat and/or Abbas flatly rejected these offers. Glick points out that such rejections have been going on for nearly a century. She cites the rejection and invasion of 1948 as well as previous rejections by Arafat’s mentor, Haj Amin el-Husseini.
  • The Arabs of Judea and Samaria will be far better off as residents (with or without citizenship) of Israel than they are as subjects of the kleptocracy that the PLO currently imposes on Judea and Samaria. Like their brethren in Israel proper, they would benefit from living under the rule of law and would profit from heretofore unimagined economic opportunities. To quote her:
    “An Israeli renunciation of the two-state solution and embrace of the Israeli one-state plan, which is based on actual Israeli rights rather than fictitious Israeli culpability, would liberate Israel to craft coherent strategies for contending with the rapidly evolving regional threat environment and the international assault on its right to exist. And at the more mundane level of the lives of individuals — Jews and Arabs alike — Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria will increase the security of all. It will transform the region from one governed alternatively by a military government and a terrorist kleptocracy into one governed by a unified, liberal rule of law. Civil and property rights of Muslims, Christians, and Jews will be protected rather than neglected or denied outright.”
  • Israel will be vilified — especially by the EU — if it implements Glick’s one-state solution. So what, says Glick. Israel is already vilified. Any economic sanctions the EU might impose on Israel will hurt the Europeans nearly as much as Israel. Moreover, such actions can be readily deflected by Israel’s burgeoning trade and relations with less anti-Semitic customers in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
  • America’s reaction. Here is a potential weakness in Glick’s presentation. She fails to present any estimate of how America might respond to Israel’s implementation of her one-state solution. She eschews any such conjecture in favor of outlining how she believes America should react to such an Israeli initiative. She makes a compelling case that US backing for an Israeli one-state solution is indeed in America’s interest. To wit:

    “The British failure in governing the Palestine Mandate was bipartisan: the Labour and Conservative Parties both got it wrong, consistently. Both failed to understand that their efforts to appease the Arabs were futile. Both failed to appreciate the value of their alliance with the Jews and to recognize that the Jews were not the obstacle to peace. Both failed to recognize that factors outside their control determined regional realities and informed the decisions of local actors, particularly in the Arab world.
    Eighty years later, had President Bill Clinton learned from Britain’s experience, and from the full history of the failure of the two-state solution, perhaps he would not have allowed Yassir Arafat to make him into a failure as well. But not only did Clinton not learn from Britain’s experience, he and his two successors embraced the same failed policy dream that the British had chased for decades. Clinton, Bush, and Obama’s failure to recognize the impossibility of the two-state solution played a significant, and arguably decisive, role in their difficulties in crafting successful policies not only toward Israel and the Palestinians but toward the Middle East overall.”

    “The consistent U.S. policy of treating the PLO and Palestinian terrorism as distinct and more legitimate than non-Palestinian terrorism against non-Israeli and non-Jewish targets has not enhanced the U.S. position in the Arab world. Rather, it has damaged that position. America’s consistent policy of accepting the narrative that the Palestinian conflict is the root cause of the Arab world’s conflict with Israel, and a central determinant of the policies of Arab governments, has caused great harm to overall U.S. national interests.”
    However, there are many ways that the withdrawal of American support for Israel could place the Jewish State in mortal peril. I think that, at heart, Glick assays that the fundamental sympathy for and identification with the people of Israel by the people of the US is so strong that even a hostile administration like that of Barack Obama could not bring about an American betrayal of the Jewish State. If so, Glick would have been well-advised to state this clearly. I generally share that assessment; but given the numerous blind alleys down which America has allowed itself to be led by the prophet Obama, I don’t share her implicit optimism.

Glick is a well-respected and influential commentator on the Israeli scene. She is clearly firmly entrenched on the right end of the Israeli political spectrum, but I imagine that her bold recommendation will get serious consideration in many quarters. Does it stand a chance of gaining enough support to render it a viable option that might be implemented? More importantly, should it?

In answer to the first question, I think the power and originality of her arguments will be hard to ignore. Twenty years of the Oslo process have resulted in a dismal failure in that peace with the Arabs of Judea and Samaria is no closer today than it was originally in 1993, or in 1967, or 1948, or 1929. And the concrete results of Oslo have been horrendous — in a soft sense in the keen disappointment felt by all at its failure; and in a hard sense in the more than a thousand Israelis brutally murdered in the so-called second Intifada. Moreover, our benighted Secretary of State has promised a third Intifada as a consequence of Oslo’s failure. The only sane conclusion: A different course of action should be pursued.

Now, Glick’s scenario has been denounced as unacceptable, unrealistic, and even delusional. But is it the right course of action? I believe that it will be studied and debated assiduously by the Israeli public. Will they adopt it?

In fact, Glick makes a powerful case that Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria is completely warranted by the terms of the Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and the San Remo Conference. Of that I have no doubt. But, despite its legitimacy, and in spite of the favorable demographics, the idea of amalgamating the Arabs of Judea and Samaria into the Israeli nation and rendering the resultant Arab population of Israel in excess of 35% is fraught with danger. I don’t know whether “second class citizen” is the right term to describe the Arabs of Israel, but there is no question that because they don’t serve in the Army and because they are non-Jewish residents of the world’s unique Jewish State, they are something less than full members of society. It is perhaps a bit of a miracle that the current 15-20% Arab population of Israel hasn’t raised a ruckus. The temptation to do so will increase dramatically if the percentage doubles. The state could be destabilized well before Glick’s friendly demographics kick in to reduce 35% back to half that amount — if it really ever happens.

Perhaps that is a risk that the Jews of Israel would like to take. The alternative is to persevere in the current unsatisfactory and inherently unstable political situation. But, life is good in Israel today and things have been mostly quiet for the better part of a decade. It is certainly the easier road to leave well enough alone. Is that the wiser choice? Or is Glick’s recipe the one to cook up?

This essay also appeared in The American Thinker

As If Israel Did Not Have Enough to Worry About

The tiny nation of Israel is beset by many challenges, some of them unique in kind among the countries of the world. The challenges are well-known to interested parties and a brief summary of the main ones will be assembled below. But here I wish to focus primarily on a crisis that apparently concerns only the Jewish population of the United States, but which, in fact, poses a severe challenge for Israel as well – a challenge that might be nearly as dangerous as any of the well-known ones to be described.

How is Israel challenged? Alas, the range and depth of her dilemmas are extensive. Let’s quickly summarize; placing them in three groups – foreign, domestic, special.

Foreign. Israel’s greatest foreign threat is undoubtedly Iran. The Jewish State faces a maniacal, genocidal foe that views Israel as a cancer on the world, populated by people who deserve to be exterminated like vermin. Moreover, the Iranian government expresses the clear intention to act on these insane beliefs. Given the long history of Jewish persecution, the Israelis take the Iranians at their word, recognizing that the Persian lunatics pose an imminent, existential threat to the Jewish nation. Israel’s options for dealing with that threat range from pre-emptive military action that could unleash convulsive horror on the Middle East and beyond to watchful waiting in the hope that the mad mullahs would not plunge the world into nuclear chaos. Which other nation in the world faces anywhere near as serious a dilemma?

But of course there is so much more on Israel’s foreign threat list. The surrounding Arab world persists in its refusal to accept a sovereign Jewish nation in its midst. Furthermore, the threat posed by hostile nation states is augmented – and perhaps even superseded – by the menace of non-state actors such as Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda. Complementing these threats is the anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism expressed toward Israel and its people by the nations of the European community. These manifest minimally as lack of support for Israel in its conflict with the Arab/Muslim world and, more commonly, as biased hostility, which at times crosses over into outright support of the violence perpetrated against Israel by the afore-mentioned bad characters. Rounding out this category is the increasingly tepid support from the US. The election – and re-election – of Barack Obama has been catastrophic for Israel. Although he has not totally abandoned the Jewish State, he has reoriented US policy in a direction that portends radically diminished US backing for Israel in its unending battle with the Arab/Muslim world.

Domestic. Israel’s greatest domestic problem is of course that nearly 20% of its population is Arab. Not too much is heard about this fact these days. But sooner or later, these residents of the Jewish State, who are culturally, ethnically, historically and religiously no different from their brethren in the neighborhood that are sworn to Israel’s destruction – sooner or later, they will pose an existential threat to the character of the State.

As with foreign affairs, the most critical internal challenge is only one of many. There is the Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) community, which comprises 10% of the population, but which contributes virtually nothing economically or militarily to society. There is Israel’s crazy political system, wherein one can only vote for a party, not an individual – virtually unique among parliamentary democracies – that leads inexorably to scores of parties and unstable coalition governments. Speaking of crazy, Israel has no shortage of leftist self-haters who work tirelessly to destroy the nation – a virus that is common in the Western World, including the United Sates – but it is particularly virulent in Israel. And of course, there is the never-ending quest for water – it is the Middle East after all – that poses a severe challenge in coming to any kind of accommodation with the Arabs of the region.

Special. Then there are the special concerns that confront the Jewish State—those not readily characterized as either foreign or domestic. Here I would cite the facts that: Israel is rather a tiny state with a burgeoning population and – at least until recent offshore discoveries – limited natural resources; Israel is the premier example of an ethnic nation-state exactly at the time that the world – at least the Western world – has decided that such nations have limited legitimacy in our post-ethnic, multicultural, multilateral, global environment; Israel, like the US, has far too many self-hating, left-wing lunatics who subscribe to collective national suicide; and finally, Israel retains to  a surprisingly large degree, the guilt-ridden, ghetto mentality of a Galut community that is scorned by its fellow man, and which makes it and its people susceptible to self-doubt and lack of resolve.

Well, that’s a rather hefty list of challenges that face Israel. But here comes a new one – a US problem that has been visible for some time, but only recently recognized as a problem for Israel.  The issue is the seemingly inexorable, painful-to-watch, and surprisingly rapid debilitation of the American Jewish community. The numbers tell all. In mid twentieth century, there were six million Jews in America. From then until today, while the population of the US increased by about 125%, the Jewish population of the USA stands at no more than five million souls – and probably less. Moreover, whereas in the first fifty years of that period, the Jewish population held steady at about six million, in the last decade or so, it has manifested a steady, and perhaps accelerating decline. Within two generations, there could be fewer than two million Jews in America.

The manifestations and the causes are the same: intermarriage, loss of identity, a dearth of children, alienation, ignorance, loss of faith and lack of interest and support for Israel. It is not my purpose here to dwell on or investigate these phenomena (such studies have been conducted and published by numerous sources – e.g., the Pew Research Center, A Portrait of Jewish Americans, published in Fall 2013), but merely to state categorically that the Jewish community in America is in decline – in numbers, but also in influence and impact.

So why is this a problem for Israel and not the US? We’ll it is clearly a problem for the Jewish community in America – that is self-evident. It’s also not a great thing for America in general either – but that is the subject matter for a different essay. However, in fact it is also a major problem for Israel. How?

  1. The most obvious reason is that Israel relies critically on the US as a strategic partner and robust patron in its never-ending war with the Arab/Muslim world. The presence of a large and influential Jewish community in the US is essential to help convince US leaders that it is in America’s interest to continue to play that role. When the Jewish “lobbying” entity shrinks and loses clout, who knows what happens to America’s support for the Jewish State?
  2. Reinforcing that development, if the American people see that the Jews of America care so little about their own Jewish identity, why should American gentiles care about the Jewish nation?
  3. Nearly 80% of world Jewry may be found in Israel and the US, in roughly equal proportions between them. Now imagine a world (two generations hence) when 80% of world Jewry is found in Israel alone. The forces in the world that contemplate the obliteration of the Jewish people did not perish with the Nazis. The Communists, the Jihadists, even the just run of the mill anti-Semites that populate European universities all relish the goal. Well how much easier the task will be if (nearly) all the Jews are concentrated in one place. The temptation to attack Israel may prove irresistible.
  4. Finally, if world Jewry is so heavily concentrated in Israel, its status as the world’s premier ethnic nation state will be greatly enhanced. Thus the ambivalent, non-visceral anti-Semites (in the UN, EU and US) will increasingly find favor with the idea of terminating the anachronistic last bastion of the ethnic nation-state. Israel will find itself even more isolated and under relentless attack than she currently is.

Assuming Israel isn’t totally consumed with addressing the myriad problems outlined earlier, what might she do with the limited amount of energy she could bring to bear on the problem of American Jewry? At the risk of seeming to shoot a small caliber pistol at an intercontinental ballistic missile, here are a few modest suggestions:

  1. Recognize the problem; articulate it; and bring it forcefully to the attention of American Jewish leaders.
  2. Convince the latter that the problem is calamitous for both communities, not to mention all the other Jewish communities world-wide.
  3. Jointly formulate a strategy whose goal would be the stabilization of the US Jewish community at no less than 1% of the US population – say, three million, but to grow thereafter according to the overall population in order to maintain the one percent (no pun intended).
  4. Implement programs to achieve the previous goal: for example, expanded birthright programs, expanded day schools, expanded religious opportunities (outside the family); increased proselytization (not our style, but desperate times call for desperate measures).

The western world is committing suicide as it loses confidence in its own cultural, familial, political and economic founding principles. This has been evident in Europe for nearly 50 years. The disease has spread to the US and is accelerating. The Jewish community of the US is afflicted with a similar malady. If the community is not inoculated with some strong medicine to reverse the progress of the disease, then like any seriously infected organism, it will wither and likely die. That death will have grave consequences for the vibrantly alive Jewish community in the beleaguered state of Israel.

This essay also appeared in Canada Free Press, as well as in The Intellectual Conservative

Obama: The Joke is on Us

Here is a joke, entitled “Looking for Work,” that has worked its way around the Internet:

An Israeli doctor says: “In Israel, medicine is so advanced that we cut off a man’s testicles, put them on another man and in 6 weeks, he is looking for work”.

The German doctor says: “that’s nothing, in Germany we take part of a brain, put it in another man, and in 4 weeks he is looking for work”.

The Russian doctor says: “gentlemen, we take half a heart from a man, put it in another’s chest and in 2 weeks he is looking for work”

The United States doctor laughs: “You all are behind us. Five years ago, we took a man with no brains, no heart and no balls and made him President. Now, the whole country is looking for work!”

How could the people of the United States perform such a reckless act: install the most manifestly unqualified presidential candidate as CEO of the US and leader of the free world? I will offer a brief and well-worn answer to that question and then attempt to answer two important follow up questions:

  1. What does the fact that we did elect – and re-elect – Obama say about America?
  2. Do the results of Obama’s presidency and the events of the last five years support the conclusions drawn in the answer to the first question?

Many theories have been advanced purporting to account for Obama’s election: he was exceedingly charming and intelligent; he represented a clear alternative to the style and policies of his unpopular predecessor; his competition was exceptionally weak; his organization ran an unusually innovative and technologically savvy campaign far beyond those of his opponent. But the most common explanation served up, and the one that I believe is the most accurate is the following. The country viewed his elevation to the presidency as an act of expiation that: was merited by the USA’s wicked history of slavery and segregation; would heal the deep wounds inflicted on our society by that bitter legacy; and would unify our country and cement our status as the most successful multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multicultural society in the history of the world. And it would grant us renewed moral authority to continue to pursue our American experiment to create the freest, most prosperous and most exceptional nation on the face of the earth.

It was impossible not to see that, in a formal sense, Obama was totally unqualified to stand for the job. He had no executive experience, no managerial experience, and he knew virtually nothing about business, economics, foreign policy or national defense. He had no military record, a meager congressional record, and what few positions he had were handed to him without his demonstrating any qualifications to justify them. It is truly correct to assert that by any objective measure, he was completely unqualified to be considered as a candidate for president. Moreover, that was totally obvious to anyone who paid the slightest attention.

Nevertheless, the people chose him to be their president. And the only explanation that makes any sense is the expiation one offered. Well, there is a second – namely, that the American people are overwhelmingly stupid, ignorant, myopic and self-destructive. I don’t buy that – although, sometimes I wonder.

Now let us deal with the two follow up questions. First, what does Obama’s election – and perhaps even more seriously, his re-election – say about America? Well, the expiation explanation certainly says that the stain of slavery and racial bigotry weighs heavily on our souls. We desperately wished to wash out the stain and the election of a black man to the presidency would go a very long way toward accomplishing that goal. But given that he was unqualified and that the likelihood of alternate possibilities arising in the near future were good (in fact, Colin Powell might very well have preceded Obama if he had had the courage to run), surely it occurred to many that the price of electing Obama might easily outweigh the benefit. If one allowed oneself to go beyond the atonement issue, it was also impossible not to see the radically left proclivities of the man, the sordid background of some of his closest associates and the intolerance and arrogance that characterized many of his attitudes. Yet America ignored these dreadful warning signs and installed him anyway. And then they re-installed him!

What that says about America is much more than that we were desperate to expunge our racial sins. It says that we were equally interested in expelling far more of our culture and character than just our racial biases. In short, it announced that the US is now infected with the same disease that has laid low our European cousins: the loss of faith in our own culture.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Europeans surveyed the wreckage of their twentieth century achievements: two world wars that killed tens of millions of people; a Holocaust that exceeded any genocide in history in its cold-blooded, meticulous planning and execution; and a legacy of corrupt and rapacious colonial regimes that they viewed as the cause of vast misery in Africa and Asia. The Europeans decided that their culture – more commonly known as Western Civilization – was to blame and resolved to cast it off. Finding little to replace it, the peoples of Western Europe have sunk into a motley group of centrally-governed, irreligious, amoral, meek, increasingly poor, social welfare states that bear little resemblance to the powerful and confident societies of the past (e.g., Spain and Holland in the 1600s, France in the 1700s, Germany in the late 1800s and England for roughly 300 years ending in the mid-1900s).

Despite the fact that the US had little to do with initiating any of the twentieth century misery created by the Europeans – indeed, we spent a good bit of blood and treasure cleaning it up, our country has, as of late, decided to join our European cousins in their march to oblivion. We too have seemingly lost faith in our own culture. That is the central meaning in the election and re-election of Barack Obama. Our dear president never manifests any love for or pride in the country that entrusted the oval office to him. He has made clear in his books and his utterances – and in the friends he keeps – not only that America has not been a force for good in the world, but rather its legacy of: slavery, discrimination against women and minorities, internment of Japanese-American citizens, military aggression in the Middle East, income inequality, and myriad other social evils are indelible stains that must be atoned for by redistributing American wealth, diluting America’s power and subjugating its will to that of the “international community.” He clearly holds in disdain: the Christian religion, middle American morality, success in business, the concept of American Exceptionalism, American military might and the Constitutional system upon which our society was founded. Therefore, by choosing him – and then re-anointing him, the American people have proclaimed a loss of faith in America’s traditional ideals and principles. The people are ready to cast them aside, or if not that, then not to resist as they are torn from our hands.

Now for the second question: Do the events of the last five years reinforce or subvert the allegations made above? The answer is unequivocally the former. For what are the signal events of the last five years? Let’s identify only those that can be tied in a significant way to the fact that Barack Obama has been president during that period:

  • Obamacare became the law of the land. One sixth of the US economy has been nationalized; tens of millions of people have had the cost and quality of their health care adversely affected; all to insure less than one-quarter of the 10% of the population that was previously uninsured.
  • The federal debt has exploded and has been set on a catastrophically unsustainable path that poses an existential threat to our nation.
  • America’s defenses have been eviscerated. At the same time, the nation has been repeatedly embarrassed and derided by its enemies; while our allies have lost faith in our ability to protect them.
  • The economy has as yet to recover in anything approaching a normal fashion from the economic tumult of 2007-2009.
  • Family structure is crumbling, religion is on the wane, smut and pornography saturate the entertainment media, but abortion and gay marriage are thriving.
  • We are witnessing the arrogant behavior of the most lawless administration, certainly since Nixon and perhaps ever.
  • Despite the discovery of new domestic energy resources, the administration is doing everything it can to cripple the domestic energy industry. In its stead, it seeks to put a green roof over every head and an efficient flush handle in every hand.

Moreover, with the exception of the first and fourth bullets above (Obamacare and the economy), the American public doesn’t seem to care very much. Obama and his henchmen are working as hard as they can to fundamentally transform America from a constitutional republic into a centrally-managed unexceptional, militarily weak, egalitarian, poor, social welfare state. The American people should be up in arms. Obama’s impeachment should be under serious consideration. But, as I said, with some exception, the public does not seem terribly disturbed about the coming fate to which Obama is leading us. Again, the only possible explanation is that a major percentage of the American people has lost faith in the classical American ideal and is content to see the country transformed.

The joke that opened this piece is very funny. But the real joke is on us.

This essay also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative