by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Our Philosopher Organizer<\/strong><\/p>\n The most successful practitioner of community organizing looks around for what he thinks is a problem, chastises both sides and allots absolutely equal blame, gives exalted moral lectures about compromise and understanding, and then waltzes away well paid, praised for his moderation, but having accomplished nothing.<\/p>\n So I wasn\u2019t too surprised to learn that President Obama decided to tackle European-American relations \u2014 something that has a pedigree going back to our Revolution, and has been analyzed by the likes of Tocqueville and Henry James to contemporary essayists such as Bruce Bawer, Joseph Joffe, Robert Kagan, and Bruce Thornton. But then who needs to read them, when you have the power of \u2018hope and change\u2019?<\/p>\n Had Mr. Obama done his homework, he would have learned that our transatlantic \u201cdifferences\u201d transcend communication problems, and, yes, even Barack Obama\u2019s charisma.<\/p>\n An Old Sore<\/strong><\/p>\n Europe \u2014 given its Western heritage, its own intellectual roots (reflected in the French Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the canonization of 1848, Marx\u2019s natural landscape, postcolonial guilt, the lingering shame of appeasement and collaboration, postmodern anti-Western philosophy), the legacy of the bloody twentieth century, the conditions of the Cold War, and the American defensive shield \u2014 has devolved into a largely secular, if not atheistic society.<\/p>\n That it is now shrinking, facing endemic childlessness, can neither assimilate nor deport Islamic immigrants, becoming increasingly protectionist, and is unarmed and pacifist is all logical rather than aberrant. How we still maintain such friendly relations with our now distant European cousins, given our (prior) capitalism, Christianity, fertility, assimilation practices, classlessness, enormous military power, and international profile is the real mystery. One thing that Europe most definitely does not want is for President Obama to turn the United States into a socialist, protectionist, disarmed, pacifist \u2014 Europe II \u2014 a clone of itself that won\u2019t protect it, provide an open market for its goods,\u00a0 or stimulate the world economy.<\/p>\n Sorta Capitalist<\/strong><\/p>\n While capitalism survives there, it does so by the more successful buying insider influence, relying on hereditary wealth and inherited privilege, avoiding as many laws as possible, and praising publicly socialism as you privately get around it in the real world \u2014 sorta like the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>lauding Obama\u2019s bailout of GM while it threatens to shut down the Boston Globe unless the print unions shave off millions in wage concessions, or the city officials of Detroit serially alleging racism while they loot what little is left of the city solely for friends and family.<\/p>\n To visit Italy or Greece is to be impressed by the sheer human ingenuity of small entrepreneurs who deal mostly in cash, avoid taxes, arrange barter, skirt regulations (half their restaurants would be shut down for safety violations in the states), hire either family or workers off the books without proper papers, and generally try to have some sort of government job that requires no work but income in down times.<\/p>\n Again, despite our common culture and long shared history, there is bound to be differences. President Obama should read about poor General Pershing\u2019s frustrations with Foch and Petain, the hatred between Wilson and Clemenceau, the tension between de Gaulle and Roosevelt\/Truman, Reagan\u2019s efforts to base Pershing missiles to counter Russian tactical nukes, and Bill Clinton\u2019s five-year long frustrations in dealing with Germans, Italians, Greeks, and the Dutch over Milosevic.<\/p>\n Sit Down and Listen!<\/strong><\/p>\n No matter. Obama walks in. He sees a \u201cnew\u201d problem (read Bush\u2019s). And as if he\u2019s trying to resolve a renter group\u2019s anger over bad conditions in a city-owned apartment building, he immediately decides his \u201ccool\u201d can relieve the \u201ctension\u201d. So Europe gets 50% of the blame, America 50% \u2014 but, wait, in reality more since an American while abroad \u201ccourageously\u201d blames first his fellow Americans on the charge of being \u201carrogant\u201d cowards. Then, presto, problem addressed and solved, Obama goes into campaign mode to wow the crowds with his untraditional heritage.<\/p>\n If you dare suggest that when he serially announces \u201cI\u2019m more interested in looking forward than backward\u201d it simply means he has just trashed his predecessor; if you let out a peep that the Euros are smiling over no more combat troops sent to Afghanistan; that the Russians are delighted that they got everything they dreamed of; that Sarkozy is preening about his transnational financial czar; that Merkel wasn\u2019t joking when she boasted that she won\u2019t stimulate a penny; that the 50\/50 \u201cspeech\u201d to the Euros was more like the spring 2008 Rev. Wright effort (Wright had reasons to be racist himself given people like Obama\u2019s racist grandmother, but failed to see we\u2019ve gotten better), then you are \u201cpartisan\u201d, \u201cangry,\u201d \u201cneed to get over it,\u201d and more or less acting like the petulant Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi did the last few years.<\/p>\n Heard it Already?<\/strong><\/p>\n And please, no more of those desperate gratuitous cries in the wilderness, \u201cNO! We are not arrogant!\u201d followed by frantic, Hannity-like recitation that we defeated German militarism, Hitler\u2019s Nazism, Italian fascism, Japanese imperialism, Soviet totalitarianism, rebuilt Europe, sent massive aid to the Middle East, allowed gargantuan trade deficits to stimulate the world export economy, offered the most liberal immigration policies in the world (cf. Obama\u2019s auntie), allow billions in remittances to be sent freely abroad, removed Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam, helped \u00a0Muslims in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan, and on and on.<\/p>\n Brave New World<\/strong><\/p>\n None of that. Instead, listen up and learn \u2014 and feel better that your community-organizing President has just organized the world along the transnational principles that we alone will fight the Taliban, go into massive debt to \u2019stimulate\u2019 exportation into the U.S. market, follow the U.N. lead on problems from Iran to North Korea, apologize for the Neanderthal \u2018war on terror\u2019, push the \u201creset\u201d button on our past terrible policies, borrow and spend well over a half-trillion for \u2018cap and trade\u2019 to combat \u2018global climate change\u2019 \u2014 and are to be loved as never before.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Our Philosopher Organizer The most successful practitioner of community organizing looks around for what he thinks is a problem, chastises both sides and allots absolutely equal blame, gives exalted moral lectures about compromise and understanding, and then waltzes away well paid, praised for his moderation, but having accomplished nothing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[722],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-JV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":694,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-potemkin-president-disintegrates\/","url_meta":{"origin":2847,"position":0},"title":"The Potemkin President Disintegrates","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. 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