Changing the World

In many of his recent speeches, Barack Obama has infused his soaring rhetoric with the phrase “we will change the world.” This phrase troubles me for two reasons.

First, the hubris of such a statement is mind-boggling. Does Obama really think that he has some as yet undiscovered formula that will pacify cultures that are antithetical to our own, precipitate peace where violence now exists, cause militias and tribes that exist to murder one another to lay down their arms, modify the behavior of corrupt dictators, make modern nations act more on moral conviction than geopolitical interests? Does he honestly believe that he and his advisors can somehow cajole very bad people to do very good things? Do the millions of Obamacans believe this? I think they do.

But the “we will change the world” trope is troubling for another reason. It is, as are most things stated by Barack Obama, ambiguous. Exactly what does he mean? He has stated that he intends to conduct high level talks with our sworn enemies (e.g., Mahmoud Amadinejad, you know, the same guy who suggests that death to America and the destruction of Israel would be good things) and has already initiated talks with terrorist groups. Obama’s foreign policy advisor, Robert Malley, a vociferous critic of Israel, was holding secret talks with Hamas – that’s the same corrupt, violent, terrorist Hamas that regularly murders innocents among their own people and gleefully murders Israeli civilians as a matter of course. The Obama campaign fired Malley (after he was caught), but one has to wonder what was discussed. Is this how Obama intends to “change the world?”

Within the context of “change,” this inexperienced left-wing, first-term senator suggests that any opponent who notes the external threats we face is engaging in “the politics of fear.”

In his best selling novel, The Good Guy, Dean Koontz comments on the “politics of fear" ( oft-used by Obama, this wording is an old Marxist phrase used by the far-Left during the Cold War):”

Contemporary Americans were so prosperous, so happily distracted by the richness of vivid entertainments, they were reluctant to acknowledge that anything existed with fangs and fierce appetites. If now and then they recognized a wolf, they threw a bone to it and convinced themselves if was a dog.

Is that how Obama intends to “change the world?” Throw bones to wolves? I suspect he will, and the result will not be good.

Obama makes much of his multi-cultural upbringing, suggesting that he is better equipped to address the world as a consequence of it. But does the “change” he suggests value all cultures equally or even worse, does he value Western culture as less equal, hegemonic, and therefore worthy of revision? I wonder. Is Obama a moral relativist? Who knows. The MSM, protecting their chosen one, refuses to probe, and Obama, takes full advantage of their journalistic dereliction of duty.

Richard Fernandez (“Wretchard”) of the Belmont Club is one of the blogosphere’s most intelligent voices. In a recent comment he writes:

All cultures are not equal. So when you get lucky and find your present culture works it is worth protecting. And to the extent that weapons preserve a society which values life weapons save lives. It is this culture which is our most priceless legacy. And it is this legacy which is precisely denigrated by mindless relativism.

So when one hears the chant, "all we are saying is give peace a chance", the unasked question is 'are we giving peace a chance by placing the most violent cultures on the planet on a pedestal'? And the scary thing is that no one has given the matter a thought. They'll just go on chanting.

Hamlet understood that it is the human heart which measures the world. Unless we value the fire within, then even the heavens "fretted with golden fire" will cast no light upon a dark world.

But Obama claims he will lead us out the dark by somehow changing the world to fit his image of it. Since we have no idea what that image is, the journey forward is rife with peril.