The New Clarion

Robert Tracinski sees a theme in Obama’s reaction to events in Iran and Honduras: anti-Americanism.

From the views he learned at his mother’s knee, to those he imbibed at Reverend Wright’s church, to those he heard from his friend and political mentor Billy Ayers, Obama has spent his whole life steeped in the slander that America’s assertion of its interests in the world has created an evil empire that must be dismantled. And now that he is in office, he is setting about to dismantle it.

I’ve been worried that Obama will be another Jimmy Carter—but he is worse. He is the first actively anti-American president in our nation’s history.

An anti-American as Commander-in-Chief; it’s a breathtaking paradox worthy of Victor Hugo’s fiction. The man tasked with protecting America’s interests believes that doing so is wrong.

Obama is a consistent, dedicated altruist. This morality dictates that America, the strongest nation, must sacrifice to the rest of the world. If America acts in its national self-interest, then it is immoral.

The President’s anti-Americanism explains his every foreign policy decision, from waiting a week to respond to Russia’s invasion of Georgia to bowing low before Saudi Arabia’s king. It is shocking because we’re used to pragmatist compromising, with tough talk about the national self-interest undermined by the appeasement of the day. Obama makes only as much pretense of strength as he needs to keep Americans distracted while he pursues national self-immolation before the world.

Obama will be traveling to Russia on Monday, a country that is increasingly aggressive. I don’t see any good coming from this (except matter for some blog posts). Who knows what Obama will give away as he seeks to atone for what he sees as America’s sins abroad?

I fear that tyrannies everywhere are thinking something like, “The time is now to make our move. Never again will we have so weak an American president. Let’s see what we can get away with.”