Posted by
Andrews on Monday, August 11, 2008 10:50:40 AM
I have just noticed a shocking comment from Obama's German speech:
The walls between the countries with the most and those with the
least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and
immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These are now
the walls that we must tear down.
Now, that sounds like harmless rhetoric, but it actually flies in the face of the Democratic position of the last eight years.
How so?
Recall when we invaded Iraq, the argument the Democrats (and the isolationists on the right) made against "nation building" was that the Iraqis simply "weren't ready" for Democracy. Now, if it is the official Democrat position that there are some poor benighted people out there who just don't deserve any better than a brutal dictator, how are we going to tear down these walls Obama sees?
Of course, Obama's own behavior goes against his rhetoric as well. Nor do I mean only the militant racist pastor he claims to have failed to notice over 20 years. Even now he is still emphasizing differences instead of minimizing them, promising refunds to "working families", trying to draw lines between the "poor" who "need the money" and "the rich" who don't. Obama is still engaging in standard Democrat class envy while claiming to tear down walls.
So, the party which thinks there are some poor ignorant people over on other continents who just "aren't ready for Democracy" and the candidate who plays the class envy card every chance he gets, who creates scapegoats in "big oil" and "speculators", they are going to somehow tear down walls and bring us together?
I just don't see it.
POSTSCRIPT
The quote above came to my attention thanks to
Tom Tancredo's article on Townhall today. However, the problems he finds with the comment are quite different than the problems I see. Not that I disagree with his analysis, I simply find it much more interesting that the Democrats are being so hypocritical in their rhetoric.
POSTSCRIPT II
Actually, it is funny. The Democrats tend to sneer at non-European foreigners as ignorant and unable to govern themselves, eyt see themselves as caring internationalists. Of course, there is no contradiction, they tend to look down on everyone. Foreigners just a little more than the "masses" at home. They think in every case, the poor benighted masses should simply be managed by those who know better. So when they say the Iraqis "aren't ready for Democracy" they don't mean we shouldn't interfere, just that we should put them under the care of some benevolent, omnipotent state.
Of course, in the case of Iraq, they don't say as much, as opposing intervention is a tactical choice. While they would seem to support intervention, having done so in Bosnia, Kossovo, and Haiti, and endorsing it in Darfur and sometimes Tibet, they choose to argue for leaving Iraq in bondage as it helps in their struggle against the hated Bush administration.
The funniest argument has to be that Bush is engaged in "empire building" and spreading our troops all over the world, when those arguments much better describe Clinton's adventurism than Bush's rather precisely targeted actions against countries supporting those threatening our nation.
UPDATE
When replying to a comment, I was struck by one more hypocritical element. When eh speaks of religions and people coming together, Obama is effectively describing the assimilation-driven culture of this country that predominated until recently. By asking that everyone join in the common culture, it helped to break down barriers and make all equal. Nor did it destroy cultures, as simple things such as pizza parlors, Irish pubs and Chinese take out attest. American culture may not have adopted every practice and it may have simplified many cultures, but it did adopt what appealed form other cultures.
Rather than this unifying, even-handed approach, the Democrats support "multiculturalism" and the attendant victim culture and grievance mongering, which serves to make permanent old divisions as well as create new ones. Rather than breaking down walls, it is the policy of the Democrats to enshrine separations in the name of "diversity".
Which makes Obama's speech even more absurd.