Charles Moore in the Telegraph:
…This sense of a people defeating appalling obstacles, through their own efforts and the hand of providence, is as old as Moses. As Conan Doyle implies, it is central to the story of the English-speaking peoples. Even today, it is what makes America new in each generation. Barack Obama does not believe in it he does not even like it. Mitt Romney does.
What the media see as a “gaffe” is often, in reality, a challenge to the dominant orthodoxy. In the late Seventies, Margaret Thatcher made the gaffe of questioning the motives of the Soviet Union when everyone else was mad about détente. She made the gaffe of questioning incomes policies when most people said they were the only way of stopping inflation. After a while, she piled up enough gaffes to make sure that she won the general election of 1979. In the United States in 1980, Ronald Reagan made those sorts of gaffes, too.
Then, as now, our entire economic system was in question. It was so serious that it put the West’s global predominance in question as well. The prize went to the candidate who raised the questions, and tried boldly to answer them, not to the one who tried to suppress them. I hope the same proves true in the United States next week.
This is an excellent article that also succinctly describes what is wrong with Obama and the post-modern Western gentry class.
There has to be a way Romney could “close the sale” with a variant of this:
Martin Luther King famously had a dream about the time when his own children would be judged not “by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character”. In the case of President Obama, this time has come.
It’s absolutely spot-on and directly addresses the white guilt of, I’d argue, quite a few Obama supporters who are having second (and third, and fourth, etc.) thoughts.
“The prize went to the candidate who raised the questions, and tried boldly to answer them, not to the one who tried to suppress them.”
The word “suppress” jumps out to me this morning. It could be the “official word” of this administration.
Suppress freedom of expression, suppress reality, suppress open government, suppress the will of congress (ie. the American people), suppress freedom of health care (or not), suppress government in the sunshine of truth, …. the list goes on, I’m sure.
My favorite article about Obama from a non-American is from Canada. It is a comparison of Obama and Gorbachev. It’s too long to post but here is a link. It disappeared from the newspaper site where I found it but I saved it. I will post only a small portion. It is very wise, especially as it was written in 2009.
Nor are the two men, themselves, remotely comparable in their backgrounds, or political outlook. Gorbachev, for instance, had come up from tractor driver, not through elite schools including Harvard Law; he lacked the narcissism that constantly seeks self-reflection through microphones and cameras, or the sense that everything is about him.
On the other hand, some interesting comparisons could be made between the thuggish party machine of Chicago, which raised Obama as its golden boy; and the thuggish party machine of Moscow, which presented Gorbachev as it’s most attractive face.
Both men have been praised for their wonderful temperaments, and their ability to remain unperturbed by approaching catastrophe. But again, the substance is different, for Gorbachev’s temperament was that of a survivor of many previous catastrophes.
Yet they do have one major thing in common, and that is the belief that, regardless of what the ruler does, the polity he rules must necessarily continue. This is perhaps the most essential, if seldom acknowledged, insight of the post-modern “liberal” mind: that if you take the pillars away, the roof will continue to hover in the air.
A bit more.
There is a corollary of this largely unspoken assumption: that no matter what you do to one part of a machine, the rest of the machine will continue to function normally.
The comments on the Moore piece about Romney as lightweight, etc. are the kind of thinking that makes me doubt Intrade. I hope I’m not grabbing at straws.
Ginny
If Romney does win this, it would prove, without any doubt, that our British friends are not nearly as politically in tune with America as they fancy themselves. Conversely, many Americans I have found are not that in tune with our European brethren. The difference is that Americans tend to be at peace with and acknowledge this fact. Frankly, this European descendant in Southern California is far more intrigued about Latin America than Europe. To me, Britain, like most of Europe = the past.
As for why we are not as in tune I don’t for certain know. I suspect it may have to do with their lack of a single document constitution as we have here. If one has never had that, then how could one fully understand the Tea Party movement in the first place? Saying nothing of one potentially agreeing with the Tea Party movement.
I just finished reading “The Right Nation” by British writers Mickelthwait & Woolridge. It’s not a bad book. And they certainly got their facts straight. However, after reading it I did not feel particularly fulfilled nor enriched. The reason is obvious. Although they can look up it’s voting habits, they still don’t understand the ethos of right of center America. By way of comparison, I can read Frederick Douglass & Sojourner Truth til the cows come home. But this white boy may still not fully grasp the impact and destruction of slavery and the ethos that it developed.
Last night in West Chester Ohio, an estimated 30,000 ventured out in chilly damp temperature to see Mitt Romney as if he were a rock star. Considering who Romney’s opponent is, a European isn’t supposed to understand what’s happening.
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