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07/25/2008 Entry:
Frightened Obamaphobes
By this time everybody knows that Barack Obama delivered an outstanding speech in Germany. It was greeted by a raving audience of over 200,000 people streching for a mile. Obviously he was a hit. Republicans are so scared of the affect of this grand reception on the American public, they are denigrating everything about the speech.
They say that he is arrogant, he should have stayed home, though he was a hit in Germany he will not be in the U.S., his speech is empty rhetoric.... Here I want to point out 2 Republican criticisms that demonstrate the philosophical difference between Republicans and Democrats.
The first is by James Poulos:
In addition to [citizen of the world] being meaningless — the world is not a polity, so citizenship in it is impossible — this is exactly the sort of redundantly empty rhetoric that does nothing to energize his base, nothing to allay the concerns of Middle America about his meta-attitude, and supplies the frantic and the furious on the right with a fresh tranch of attacks. Why did he do it? Bad advice? His own advice? Why couldn’t he just say “a big fan of the world,” or “a product of the world,” something that at least had the merit of being accurate? Anyone?
The words that I, as a Democrat, love, "citizen of the world," Republicans hate. Poulos thinks this phrase is meaningless. There is no way to get all the world working in unison for a common good. Even in the U.S. Most Republicans do not think there is such a thing as the common good even with relation to the U.S. itself. Democrats believe in the common good and work to achieve it. Obama in all his speeches talks of the common good. In his Germany speech he extended the idea to the whole world.
The other criticism is by Victor Davis Hanson:
Unlike Obama, I would not speak to anyone as “a fellow citizen of the world,” but only as an ordinary American who wishes to do his best for the world, but with a much-appreciated American identity, and rather less with a commonality indistinguishable from those poor souls trapped in the Sudan, North Korea, Cuba, or Iran. Take away all particular national identity and we are empty shells mouthing mere platitudes, who believe in little and commit to even less. In this regard, postmodern, post-national Europe is not quite the ideal, but a warning of how good intentions can run amuck. Ask the dead of Srebrenica, or the ostracized Danish cartoonists, or the archbishop of Canterbury with his supposed concern for transcendent universal human rights.
Never mind the world at large. Take care of the U.S. In a different context Republicans call this patriotism. Democrats don't see how wanting to help poor nations means we have less patriotism than Republicans.
We must realize, as Obama said in his speech, that there are world problems that affect us all and they can't be solved if we don't work together. Think of the problem of global warming. Making our own country as clean as a whistle will not solve the problem. We must get all nations to work together.
Maybe this is one reason that some Republicans deny that there is such a thing as global warming. They know that fixing it requires more than relying on market forces. We must cooperate with all nations if we are to make the world safe for civilization.
Obamaphobes are scared of Obama because he makes the case for the common good so eloquently. This is the reason I and other Democrats (and independents and even some Republicans) love him.
Comment here.
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