The System Works

Americans don’t feel uneasy about the Obama administration’s response to the Christmas Day attack because they believe their leader failed to stop terrorism. They are uneasy because he seemed to respond with more urgency to his sons friend in a surfing accident than a bomb on a plane. Napolitano renames terrorism “man-caused disasters.” and Obama proclaims the use of “war on terror” is over. So how serious can normal Americans really take this White House?

The Left isn’t really interested in having our intelligence services keeping America safe. They are more interested in having America’s intelligence services spend their time and money on Warmer Fantasies. That’s right. According to the New York Times on Jan. 5, just a few days after Obama excoriated the CIA publicly, “The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change.”

That’s the Obama White House for you. Green on the outside, red on the inside.

I was watching a state run media morning program, and they had a woman talking about the changes in the coming year. One of the things she said was “we finally have an intellectual in the White House”. I want to talk a minute about what that means. An intellectual is not necessarily someone who is smarter, or more informed. An intellectual is someone who makes their living off of generating ideas. This small segment of society is, in turn, aided by the internet age of journalism which disseminates those ideas.

A doctor who talks about revolutionizing the way people use doctors and get health care, or pay for health insurance, is an intellectual. This is far from saying he is a good doctor. You don’t perform heart surgeries and save dozens or hundreds of lives in your career and become someone whose opinion many people know and admire. You get popularity and acclaim by being an intellectual and giving your opinion. This is very important to understand. Because most of us are not intellectuals, no matter our education. We are people who go through our daily lives just living and doing what we love and do best.

So the state run media is right. We do have an “intellectual” in the White House for the first time. And he’s someone who is going to keep throwing “new ideas” at problems until he finds something that sticks. No matter how bad it turns out in the long run. If there is any lesson in the history of ideas, it is that good intentions tell you nothing about the actual consequences.

Intellectuals who generate ideas do not have to pay the consequences. What Karl Marx called “the blaze of ideas” has set whole nations on fire and consumed whole generations. Scarcely a mass-murdering dictator of the 20th century was without his supporters, admirers or apologists among the leading intellectuals. There isn’t a professor in your local university sociology department who didn’t wear a Mao t-shirt as a leftist protester.

That is why when the Left gets the idea to bring terrorists and war criminals into federal court and wrap them in our constitutional rights, they embrace them so fiercely. One, they are embracing a “new” idea. And two, they are embracing this idea of the “rule of law”. But all they are actually doing is dismissing the rule of law of war which has been in existence as long or longer than any rule of law they understand.

That is part of their goal. America dealing with its attackers forcefully and equally ferociously might just make America a winner, and the Left can’t take that.

Jarring were Obama’s references to the terrorist as a “suspect” who “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device.” You can hear the echo of FDR: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor.”

Some of the most distinguished intellectuals in the Western world in the 1930s gave ringing praise to the Soviet Union, while millions of people there were literally starved to death and vast numbers of others were being shipped off to slave labor camps.  Many of those same distinguished intellectuals of the 1930s were urging their own countries to disarm while Hitler was rapidly arming Germany for wars of conquest.

Do you think that Obama’s program of International Apologist has made us more popular abroad? As emerging global powers and developing nations, Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey often behave as if they have more interests in common with China today than with the United States.  Where among the world’s democracies has Obama Diplomacy made any improvement? Sure, among some of the third world totalitarian regimes. A South American dictator thought he was pretty cool for awhile, but even that has faded.

Don’t you think America’s enemies know our “intellectuals” predeliction for weakness, appeasement, and self-loathing?

One third of all terror attacks since 9-11 have occurred in 2009.

Sure they do. And more attacks will follow.

The system works.