Barack Obama suffeers from an inherent policy contradiction, especially in foreign affairs.
On the one hand, as a leftist he despises the United States and sees it as a force for ill in the world. On the other, as president, is judged by how well the country fares during his tenure.
Logically, he cannot reconcile the contradiction of these two imperatives: If he wants to be reelected and celebrated as a great leader, he has to forward American interests; but if he wants to implement his preferred policies, he subverts the country and fouls his nest.
Ideology vs. interests — this leftist conundrum goes far to explain why Obama’s leftist comrades despise his time in office, for he has on occasion ditched his worldview to try to make things work (the base at Guantanamo) or has adopted a muddled middle ground that pleases neither side (the war in Iraq, Arab-Israeli diplomacy).
The same consideration applies to domestic policy as well (higher taxes or lower employment?) but not so starkly as in foreign policy.
He has done a superb job of stagnating America; the economy and unemployment rate tell the tale. Indeed, he has thrown an additional anvil around any possible future recovery with trillions in new crushing debt. Mission accomplished, as they say.
Re-election? Dear God man, how would any of this affect his chance of re-election? There is a fully compliant media available to blame all of this on Bush, Republicans in Congress, the Eurozone, and of course the "one percent." Combine that with labor union tactics, voting fraud, and millions of illegal overseas campaign contributions.... I don't think he sees a problem with re-election.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree. For its own incomprehensible reasons the GOP continues to cower in terror of Obama and the Democrat/media axis. In fact the Republican Party is poised to nominate a failed one-term leftist governor from a deep-blue state to run for President in 2012 - a candidate who will offer no real contrast with the Won. No one with an IQ over room temperature thinks there is any meaningful differences between RomneyCare and ObamaCare, or that a President Romney would do anything except "improve" (read: spend even more) ObamaCare if elected.
The good news is that the country will be spared the folly of a President Romney, since all he will do after securing the GOP nomination is alienate conservatives and independents while failing to attract the OWS Democrats his fall campaign will be aimed at. The bad news is the country will continue to pay for it racist idiocy in voting for Obama in 2008 by re-electing him in 2012. The ancients may well have been talking about the American voting public when they said: those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
It may be a 57-state Obama landslide in November 2012. All the Won will need to do is run a series of clips showing Romney flip-flopping on every issue from socialized medicine to global warming to abortion to gun control to illegal aliens - clips that will drive away all except the most brain-dead GOPer - and the election is pretty much in the bag. Heckfire: the Democrat/media axis will probably need only a minimal number of deceased voters (excuse me: corporally-challenged citizens) from Chicago in order to secure a second term.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"It may be a 57-state Obama landslide in November 2012. All the Won will need to do is run a series of clips showing..."
Thanks, but we in the "Democrat/media axis" prefer to spell it The One.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBush and GOP policies almost bankrupted this country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe stock market has gone up 50% since Obama has been in office you dolt.
You say that "as a leftist [Obama] despises the United States and sees it as a force for ill in the world." I absolutely doubt that Obama, or most leftists, "despise" the U.S. Acknowledging that sometimes U.S. policy has caused bad results, not least due to putting perceived U.S. interests above other countries' and peoples' legitimate interests. Leftists like myself would just say that using U.S. power (which is obviously the strongest in the world) selfishly can (and has) rebounded on us in serious ways; Obama's more nuanced policies are not as bellicose as those on the right would prefer -- and while some of those policies are not what we on the left would prefer, it is clearly hyperbole to say those policies are subverting the country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think Barack Obama does not regard re-election as crucial to the success of his venture.
Rather, I think he's confident that by the time he leaves the White House in January 2013, his revolution will have been so deeply woven into the federal bureaucracy that even total legislative repeal will be moot. His fundamental strategic principal is and has been one of practical irreversibility.
He may well have done enough already. I don't think he's interested in being regarded as a great President. I think he's interested in being celebrated, in certain quarters, as the revolutionary who used the Presidency to bring America to heel.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOut of curiosity, of which Obama "revolution" are you speaking? In the world of actual reality, Obama has angered his leftist base something fierce -- they feel he was elected as a leftist but has governed from the center-right. And quite frankly, if you weren't wrapped up in such a hardline cocoon, you might see that they're closer to being right than you are.
The problem with Obama isn't that he's a leftist, Paul, and he's CERTAINLY no revolutionary. A revolutionary would be trying to overhaul every single system. Obama couldn't even manage to get that done with healthcare (and don't even START with the whole socialism charge, because anyone who calls the healthcare reform for which Obama pushed "socialism" doesn't even know what socialism IS and has never once lived under an actually socialized system). No, Obama's problem is that he's a lead-from-behind president. In that way, he's much more in tune with Eisenhower than, say, FDR. Now, I love Eisenhower and am not a fan of the governmental overreach for which FDR stood, but that doesn't mean Obama has been as effective as the former; he hasn't been, and that's his main problem.
I don't adore this president; I probably won't vote for him. But this idea that he's somehow a revolutionary when you have Republicans running for the same office talking about dismantling the Fed, the Department of Education, the EPA, and a whole host of other government programs -- THAT'S revolutionary. Streamlining government and making it as small as possible while still allowing it to be effective is a conservative value; dismantling the entire federal government is a revolutionary one. Those who fail to see the difference are those who will fail to actually elect a real conservative instead of the farcical candidates who now populate the GOP. Nominating someone like the reactionary, non-conservative fools currently leading GOP polling is the fastest way to another four years of Obama.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"[A]s a leftist he despises the United States and sees it as a force for ill in the world."
This is not what liberals believe.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSadly, many do. And they do their best to teach young people to hate their country, too.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSimilarly, I could link to noted rightwing commentator Daniel Pipes' NRO post of Sunday, November 27, 2011, as evidence that — sadly — many conservatives believe the President of the United States despises the country he leads.
Or we could agree that a certain market exists on the left and the right for the ramblings of the batsh** crazy people.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI care nothing about Pipes and have no interest in defending him. I do care that Zinn's textbook is widely used in American classrooms by leftist teachers intent on inculcating anti-Americanism in their students. It is mainstream, not fringe as you imply. And my original post was a response to Welker's inaccurate statement. You're taking it in another direction of your choosing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIs it really widely used in classrooms? I'd honestly be shocked to hear that.
A brief google turns up evidence of it being used by university professors. I think that's dumb, but an order of magnitude less dumb than if grade school teachers were using it
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Zinn Education site says 12,000 teachers are registered and using their materials. They're current goal is 20,000. I don't know how many classrooms use Zinn books, I've always read that it's not uncommon. For whatever reason I have 11 teachers in my family, including both parents, and as close friends and the left wing education garbage I constantly hear from them is producing results like this:
35% of fourth-graders know the purpose of the Declaration of Independence.
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My fourth grade history lessons were pretty good, and inspiring, which is one reason I've got 18 books about George Washington sitting behind me as I type this. And I bet I know more about the faults of Founding Father #1 far better than any Zinn or Zinn-like ignoramus, plus unlike them, I'm able to weigh the blemishes against the rest of the man, who had a greatness about him that few anywhere in the world at any point in history can match.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"George Washington .... who had a greatness about him that few anywhere in the world at any point in history can match"
I find it hilarious that you think you know enough about the history and citizens of every other country in the world to make a statement like that! LOL
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI find it astounding that you know so little about Washington and American history that you would dispute such an obviously true statement.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAmen, Brother. Cordially, Bill
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe problem you have is that to date no one has found a single inaccuracy in Zinn's book
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePipes is indefensible. But the use of Zinn isn't. This only make sense if you are certain that the students in the classroom are not capable of making independent judgements about events and ideas, and if you are certain that the teacher is able and determined to "inculcate" them. This only makes sense if you think it is appropriate to ban or bar certain books based solely on a political judgement--that is, not on an educational judgement (leaving aside any notion of one book being "right" and another being "wrong," which is of course exactly Zinn's point.) Any teacher using only Zinn and asserting that Zinn's book is right and all other texts are wrong, or that Zinn's book is better than all other available texts and so should only be used--that teacher should be fired. But only if the same standard is used for those teachers who only use any number of different books--such as "A Patriot's History of the United States," for example.
If a school, a community, or a state operates a closed, politically biased state curriculum process that compels public schools to adhere to texts or standards that are overt partisan arguments--as Texas does--and restricts or hinders the use of a variety of texts in classrooms--as Texas does--that is far worse than any situation where a history course uses a variety of texts that include Zinn or other openly and overtly political documents.
For students over about 14 years old--I'd say 10th grade and up--inculcation is over; indoctrination is possible, but should be avoided in favor of guided critical thinking. Guided critical thinking requires dissent, discordant ideas, conflicting evidence, and room to evaluate and discuss. Demanding the disqualification of Zinn (just as an example) in the presence of the word 'inculcation' indicates a failure of critical thinking and an unsuitability to discuss education with any objectivity or intelligence. It reveals instead a book-burner, a repudiator of the Bill of Rights, a one-dimensional thinker, an ideologue. In other words, a conservative calling the kettle black.
Schoolteachers are generally more liberal than the population at large. There are several reasons and good evidence for that. But liberals are also more likely to offer a variety of texts in a history or English class, and to include texts that offer a political perspective they disagree with personally. There's one reason for that: it makes much, much better education. But conservatives hate it because it breaks the monopoly on information that is the body and blood of a conservative perspective. Simple fact: given choices, vastly larger numbers of 17-year-olds from conservative families become liberals than vice versa. There are lots of reasons for this and not all of them are flattering to liberals, but it's true. The response is, and has always been, to prevent choices, to limit knowledge, to prescribe ideas, to vilify outsiders, and so on down the long, embarrassing list of grotesque, small-minded right-wing solutions to the perceived and actual problems in our society--including an unironic call for the banning of a history text that argues against the banning of history texts. Including also a comfort with corporate-sponsored, media-propagated, vicious and escalating vilification of anyone who interferes with the process of banning a history text that argues (very persuasively, in this case) that the primary mode of power and control in the US has been corporate-sponsored, media-propagated, vicious and escalating vilification of anyone who opposes vilification by corporations and the media as a political tool.
I'll vote with you every time to dismiss a high school teacher who intentionally limits the scope of study in a class in order to privilege a liberal political perspective...if you will vote with me every time to dismiss a high school teacher who intentionally limits the scope of study in a class in order to privilege a conservative political perspective. I will eat my shoe live on the internet if you can demonstrate that such fair play would not dismiss 10 conservative teachers for every liberal teacher.
Got my shoe ready. Waiting.
Ice9
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't think Obama had a problem with ripping America prior to be elected president.
I think it's true he sees us as just another country with a flag.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReally, David? How would liberals act any differently if they did *not* despise the US and believe that our country is a source of ill?
Please tell, what DO said liberals believe? Do they believe in a God-blessed, strong, fiscally sound America populated by free men and women of exceptional will and virtue?
One thinks not.
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