Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Is Obama a Soft Liberal? or is he Ronald Reagan on the Left?



Unlike many on the Left I like to read Right Wing Blogposts- just so I can get mad at them. Michelle Malkin is one of my favorites because she is so ridiculous. She is a Philippine-American, whose parents are immigrants. Yet she had argued that the interning of Japanese Americans was justified during World War 2 and she has also argued for deportations of millions of illegals. I am just glad Michelle's parents got in before their daughter discovered native ism .

Right Wing pundits almost always avail themselves of all liberal society she went to Oberlin College- and married outside her Religion but her Right wing bonafides are perfect.. She makes money feeding the Right Wing hate machine and making those less 'educated' than her feel better about their odd ideas.

The latest diatribe from Ms. Malkin is posted above. She asserts that Barack Obama is some sort of Lefty Social Worker and that he believes that if we just talk to Osama Bin Laden or if the 'terrorists' can just come to America all would be well. She asserts that Obama is a Kumbaya singing dope who is wandering down the garden path and will be taken advantage of by the big bad terrorists.

The truth is that the dope is Mr Toughness in the White House who has kept us 'safe' for the past 7 years.

  • The worst Terror attacks occurred when Mr Toughness- George W Bush was President. These terror attacks continued in Spain and Bali all under the watchful eye of W. No Democrat or Leftist allowed these attacks to happen W did. If George Bush and Condoleeza Rice had just taken the Intelligence seriouslyit might not have happened.
  • When the attacks occurred the entire world was on our side. We had a moment when we could have rolled back the appeal of Militant Islamic Fundamentalism. But our government under Mr Toughness chose instead of trying to gather the nations together to oppose the real threat of Islamic Terrorism chose instead to Invade Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a bad man, but he was no worse than Robert Mugabe or Sudan's president Umar Hassan Ahmad al-BASHIR but we did not invade those nations. We chose to invade an Arab country, occupy that country, and then proceeded to run the most bumbling occupation of that country. This caused our reputation in the world to drop to new lows and to give Islamic Terrorists their best recruiting tool.
  • Along with the above failures, George W Bush continued to support his oil friends and oil magnates around the world. W did not prepare us for terrorist attacks by removing their funding source, which is predominantly Western capital buying oil. That money is used to finance terrorism. He in fact continued to support regimes that support terrorism like Saudi Arabia and that use our money to finance their groups. W's level of incompetence led us to the mess we are in now.
  • Finally, most in the Republicans power structure are not concerned with American interests. They are concerned with the interests of multi-national corporations. Tom Friedman in his book The World is Flat talks about the two classes of people one of those being the globalized class and the other those left behind. The Right in the USA is the Trojan horse for the globalized class. They use 'moral' issues and patriotism to create a great diversion for the middle class in America- so while we are worrying about the Flag or Gay Marriage- they are taking care of their friends and continuing to destroy American freedoms and American jobs. This great game of evasion and delusion is central to their project.

Barack Obama scares the Right in so many ways. Barack Obama is the Left's version of Ronald Reagan. Before 1980 no one would have ever thought that we would "de regulate" our economy it was too radical. We have now reaped what was sewn then with the Airline industry for example. Before 1980 Religion was a private matter in the USA and no one would have believed that one's 'relationship' with Jesus would be a campaign issue. The agenda of the Right was made palatable by Ronald Reagan.

The Right knows that Barack Obama can do this for Progressive Issues. A person with Obama's skills just might win the war of ideas with militant Islam and change the global debate. A person with Obama's skills just might convince Americans that we can solve social problems together as a people and deliver health care security to everyone thus taking away a major issue from the Right? A person like Obama just might be able to assert that we have more in common than we have that separates us and that the old wedge issues don't work anymore?

So it is not about Kumbaya-it is about Ronald Reagan and the fact that the Democrats in 2008 have found their Reagan the realignment has begun.

1 comment:

Larry Sawyer said...

Ray,

Thanks for bringing Malkin's post to our attention. I've written a response to it at my blog.

http://larrysawyer.blogspot.com/

Larry