Michael Barone: History is calling. Will Obama answer?
[Michael Barone, The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His columns appear Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.]
Anniversaries are opportunities to reflect on the past, and on what it might mean for the future. Monday saw the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, even if Barack Obama could not find time to travel once again to Berlin to attend the commemoration there. And Wednesday is the 91st anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I...
... The fall of communism should have produced increasing confidence in Western values of democracy, liberty, tolerance, and market capitalism, and to some degree it has. When the rulers of China defended their communist dictatorship in 1989, they were already unleashing the capitalism that has produced huge economic growth. In the 20 years since 1989, a higher proportion of the world's population than at any other time in history have climbed out of poverty -- in China, in India, in Latin America, in the former Soviet bloc, even in Africa.
Our current economic distress like the depression of the 1930s has been hailed by some as definitive proof that market capitalism has failed. But that is not the conclusion of most leaders and most voters around the world. Rather, elections here last week and in Europe earlier this year revealed a recoil against job-killing, big government policies, even if the House defied public opinion by passing late Saturday a government-run health care bill.
1989 removed the threat of totalitarian communism, but other threats remain, as we learned on Sept. 11, 2001. Islamist terrorists despise our tolerance and freedom and work to inflict as much damage as they can on Western society.
But Obama and his administration, eager to placate our enemies and ever ready to disrespect our friends, tend to downplay this threat. The president has been mulling his course on Afghanistan and declaring his slavish respect for the mullah regime in Iran.
In response to Maj. Nidal Hassan's alleged mass murders at Fort Hood, Obama and top officials -- Gen. George Casey and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano -- seem less worried about whether military and civilian officials ignored clear signs that this man was an Islamist terrorist and more worried about whether ordinary Americans might indiscriminately stage mass attacks on Muslims...
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Anniversaries are opportunities to reflect on the past, and on what it might mean for the future. Monday saw the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, even if Barack Obama could not find time to travel once again to Berlin to attend the commemoration there. And Wednesday is the 91st anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I...
... The fall of communism should have produced increasing confidence in Western values of democracy, liberty, tolerance, and market capitalism, and to some degree it has. When the rulers of China defended their communist dictatorship in 1989, they were already unleashing the capitalism that has produced huge economic growth. In the 20 years since 1989, a higher proportion of the world's population than at any other time in history have climbed out of poverty -- in China, in India, in Latin America, in the former Soviet bloc, even in Africa.
Our current economic distress like the depression of the 1930s has been hailed by some as definitive proof that market capitalism has failed. But that is not the conclusion of most leaders and most voters around the world. Rather, elections here last week and in Europe earlier this year revealed a recoil against job-killing, big government policies, even if the House defied public opinion by passing late Saturday a government-run health care bill.
1989 removed the threat of totalitarian communism, but other threats remain, as we learned on Sept. 11, 2001. Islamist terrorists despise our tolerance and freedom and work to inflict as much damage as they can on Western society.
But Obama and his administration, eager to placate our enemies and ever ready to disrespect our friends, tend to downplay this threat. The president has been mulling his course on Afghanistan and declaring his slavish respect for the mullah regime in Iran.
In response to Maj. Nidal Hassan's alleged mass murders at Fort Hood, Obama and top officials -- Gen. George Casey and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano -- seem less worried about whether military and civilian officials ignored clear signs that this man was an Islamist terrorist and more worried about whether ordinary Americans might indiscriminately stage mass attacks on Muslims...