The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Very Late Hat Tip to, Yes, Obama

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The Spectacle Blog

Very Late Hat Tip to, Yes, Obama

By Quin Hillyer on 12.15.09 @ 11:03PM

I have been so busy that I am very late to this topic, and it is so late tonight when I write this that I have no time for in-depth analysis. I also add a HUGE caveat that I am NOT becoming another David Brooks, eager to find reasons to fawn over Barack Obama while still claiming to be a conservative. Day after day after day I write editorials for the Washington Times and columns and blog entries here and at the Wash Times taking Obama to task on a multitude of fronts. I do not agree with him, do not trust him, do not admire him, do not like him.

BUT, basic fairness requires that when a public figure does something right, it should be acknowledged especially by his harshest critics. Only one other time since he became president have I complimented Obama; I think it was for a morally serious and well targeted speech he gave on the Holocaust. But... and here I finally get to the point ... just a little while ago I FINALLY got a chance to read Obama's Nobel Prize Lecture... and I thought it was mostly well aimed, mostly eloquent, mostly constructive. He made a solid moral case for the use of force, and he made a solid case for universal principles that included not just fuzzy-headed "sustainability" nonsense but also freedom and other Western values. He even praised Ronald Reagan by name -- leaving out a large part of the Reagan story, but still graciously and generously praising him -- for working for peace and achieving it, with appropriate acknowledgement of Reagan's too-little appreciated inspiration of and support for "dissidents" worldwide.

So, while there were a number of things about the speech that grated on my conservative ears, a host of things I could nit-pick, I agree with some other conservative columnists that the bulk of this speech was an admirable representation of American thought and values. Yes, his actions in office have not seemed to match large parts of the speech that were the very parts I liked best. But, as Reagan understood, some world stages are so big that well-chosen words on those stages are effective actions in and of themselves. So, while I will probably never get around to a more thorough public analysis of Obama's Nobel address, I do say here, for the record, that it merits a bit of a "Bravo" from Americans of all reasonable political persuasions, including from conservatives.

View all comments (16) | Leave a comment

Dan Phillips| 12.16.09 @ 12:08AM

"Conservative" interventionists are right to see much in Obama's speech that they agree with. Obama is a liberal internationalist interventionist. Neo"con" are also a type of internationalist interventionists. They differ primarily in rhetoric and style. The true opposition to interventionist internationalism of either the liberal or neo"con" variety, and the truly conservative position, is America First non-interventionism. Thoughtful conservatives like the author of this post understand this although he is deluded beyond belief to think what he supports is any kind of conservatism. But at least he has a step up on most of the mindless chest-thumpers who post here who don't realize that Obama is a 90% friend when it comes to interventionist foreign policy.

S.L. Toddard| 12.16.09 @ 7:26AM

Hear, hear! As I said before, historically it was the Left - Progressives and Liberals - who pushed the US into foreign wars with ideological purposes, i.e. "making the world safe for Democracy", and the anti-statist right who opposed these state-expanding crusades. It was a more consistent world then - the Left supported the expansion of government power and the Right opposed it, period. When the Left wanted to expand government control of the economy, the Right opposed it. When the Left wanted to expand government power over society, the Right opposed it. When the Left wanted to expand government power over the states, the Right opposed it. And when the Left wanted to expand U.S. government power over far-away peoples and nations, the Right opposed it. The Left historically thought of government as a positive, transformational force, whereas the Right considered it a necessary evil, inefficient, prone to abuse of power and not to be trusted. When most of the Right abandoned that principle, America ceased having a major party to fight the expansion of government power, and both sides bought fully into the notion that government is a benevolent force that should be trusted and aggrandized at every turn.

Wars fought for abstract, "universal" principles have historically been the province of "the left" - social justice liberals, "progressives", neoconservatives, socialists - those who are ideologically driven to perpetually increase and centralize wealth and power away from the people and into the hands of the federal government to achieve their ideological ends, at the cost of the rule of law, American honor, our traditional way of life and our republican system of government.

Dan Phillips| 12.16.09 @ 12:09AM

Forgot to add read this:

http://conservativetimes.org/?p=4059

John R. Guardiano| 12.16.09 @ 12:55AM

Quin,
Read the speech again. What was right about the speech was platitudinous, elementary and obvious -- though shrouded in cerebral and high-minded rhetoric to fool gullible pundits!

What was bad about the speech were its substantive policy implications, which, among other things include: the assertion that the United States cannot employ military force unilaterally in Afghanistan and elsewhere; and that we must find "alternatives to violence" (a leftist chimera that).

I expound more upon the speech's faults in this brief article:
http://www.frumforum.com/the-obama-doctrine

Then, too, there is Obama's utter failure to credit the greatest peacemakers of our time: the men and women of the armed forces of the United States. This should bother you and other conservative columnists; but for reasons that baffle and bother me, snubbing the troops doesn't even register mention or concern.

Again, I expound upon this point in this essay:

http://www.frumforum.com/obama-snubs-the-troops

V/R
John Guardiano

S.L. Toddard| 12.16.09 @ 7:28AM

I have a question (and I asked this in another thread but it's just as appropriate here if not more so).

Consider the following tendencies:

*endless quasi-religious worship of the state's military power

*endless demands that more and more wealth (and therefore power) be confiscated from American workers and redistributed to the state's military machine

*blind and passionate advocacy for any and every costly, state-expanding, state-empowering scheme the egghead bureaucrats in Washington cook up - as long as it involves using the state's military machine

* Abiding faith and devotion to the idea that (whenever the government exercises or proposes to exercise its truly awesome and terrible military might) government is noble and beneficent, that it is efficient, that it is peopled with wise men, and that it should be further empowered with confiscated tax money so it can be used as an engine to effect social change all over the world -

Is it possible for one to argue that the tendencies enumerated above are not those of a statist?

We have 3,000 miles of open border with Mexico, across which any terrorist can easily stroll. Keep *that* in mind when Big Government tells you our soldiers need to be on the other side of the globe to "protect us from terrorism". It is not a serious position - to claim the danger we face from terrorism is so profound that we must wage perpetual war, but it is so insignificant that we can leave open a 3,000 mile door to any jihadist who wishes to attack us.

Dan Phillips| 12.16.09 @ 8:44AM

Toddard, for the real true-believing neo"cons" it has never really been about preventing this or that act of terrorism. That is why they can look cavalierly at a wide open border while fretting and wringing their hands about far off countries. It is about "creative destruction" and "perpetual revolution" in order to make the globe safe for their imagined world-wide liberal democratic Utopia. Fighting terrorism is and always has been just a pretense. The true neocon ideologues wouldn't know real conservatism if it slapped them in the face.

Dan Phillips| 12.16.09 @ 8:29AM

So Mr. Guardiano, what part of the speech was elementary and obvious? The "moral case for the use of force" to advance "universal principles," "freedom," and "values" instead of only when absolutely necessary in accordance with Christian Just War doctrine? There is in fact a name for that belief, but it is not conservatism. It's Jacobinism. Next thing you know we will have deluded "conservatives" fist pumping as they shout "viva la revolucion."

Quin| 12.16.09 @ 10:37AM

John,
I too was concerned as I was reading the speech that he didn't seem to be crediting our military. But then he said this: "The world must remember that it was not simply international institutions -- not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made [QUIN'S EDITORIALIZING: THAT LAST CLAUSE WAS GRATUITOUS AND OBNOXIOUS], the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans."
Without that passage, the speech would have been, at best, a wash. As it was, I found the speech pretty decent. I don't believe he meant it all, but just saying some of the things he said, on that big stage, was enough to infuriate the European left and educate whomever out there has a mind open enough to listen to the truth that the U.S. is a moral actor on the world's stage.
All that said, now I'll go back to blasting Obama for just about everything else he does....

Dan Phillips| 12.16.09 @ 1:24PM

We most certainly have underwritten global security for the last six decades, but that doesn't make us noble, it makes us a bunch of saps subsidizing freeloaders. Where exactly in the Constitution does it give us the responsibility or authority to underwrite global security? The Founders at the Constitutional Convention debated whether or not to even have a standing army. What exactly do you think you are trying to conserve because it certainly ain’t the Old Republic?

1-bean@sbcglobal.net| 12.16.09 @ 6:30AM

Quin,
Thank you.
I did not watch his speech...I just knew his lips would be moving again.

(ie: lying, for those with the cognitive memory span of a gnat).
You know, I'm guessing Joe Stalin had some good days too; when he didn't murder people...until the next day.
Again, I must ask you to evaluate the essay on American Thinker yesterday.."The Red Avenger" or some such.
No sir. I simply cannot find a way to cut the man any slack while he is President. If he were another private citizen...I could pity him, and perhaps even cheer for him when he occasionally rises above his desire to overthrow our constitution and sovereignty.
As he is President, I can't find any way to absolve him from what I consider treason.

The Fort Hood Massacre, and his response, is a case in point. The shooter may have very well had a sad childhood...yada yada yada...but he shot and killed a bunch of his unarmed comrades.

Mr. Obama obviously had a sad childhood, but he has been hellbent on overthrowing this country's very foundation from the moment he was foresworn in.
I can only admit his teleprompter had a good day.

Kitty| 12.16.09 @ 6:40AM

I might echo your congrats if I thought he actually meant what he said.
...

Kitty| 12.16.09 @ 6:41AM

Maybe you should be complimenting TOTUS, instead.
...

martin j smith| 12.16.09 @ 7:59AM

I think that it is not necessary to be reasonable with Obama and the Democrats. But it is necessary to be reasonable with the public for political as well as ones own ideals. So one can cherry pick that part of the Oslo speach that one can support. Yet, in the case of Obama ( and frankly politics in general ) talk is cheap. When and if the US gets hit in a significant way by terrorists or their allies ( which I hope does not happen but one cannot be an ostrich ) then the true OBama will be on the line. What he does will be the true test--not a speech. Besides, Obama has gone back on his word so many times that I cannot support the notion of praising anything he says until he actually carries out the promises he has stated that deserve praise. So for me its "one hand calpping".

TennesseeVolunteer| 12.16.09 @ 8:12AM

The only way to judge a man who has proved that he will use words to get his way is to 'judge him by his actions'.
When his actions match up to his words, I'll give him the credit he deserves.
Quin, I understand that you pundits have to point out that his words now may be different but I think it is way too early to give him any credit for them. In my mind, he used that opportunity to say some things that will go well with middle America in order to get his polls up for health care and cap and trade. Again, I'll wait on his actions but I think he has earned your skepticism, not praise.

Oldefarte| 12.16.09 @ 11:31AM

I most RESPECTFULLY disagree, since Obama [pre 11/4/08] falsely protrayed himself as a nice-guy, borderline moderate, minority Democrat and look at who/what he now is. WORDS mean NOTHING, as his ability to lie, BS,etc the American public SHOULD NOW BE obvious. Deal with FACTS, not WORDS!!!!