The Would Be Visionary Who Isn't...
by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny
Mark Steyn is a breath of fresh air on occasion. His article following is certainly one of those times.
As he nails it again...
Via: Memeorandum
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny
The Question Is... To Where? |
Mark Steyn is a breath of fresh air on occasion. His article following is certainly one of those times.
NATIONAL REVIEW - One of the reasons why Barack Obama is regarded as the greatest orator of our age is that he’s always banging on about some other age yet to come — e.g., the Future! A future of whose contours he is remarkably certain and boundlessly confident: The future will belong to nations that invest in education because the children are our future, but the future will not belong to nations that do not invest in green-energy projects because solar-powered prompters are our future, and most of all the future will belong to people who look back at the Obama era and marvel that there was a courageous far-sighted man willing to take on the tough task of slowing the rise of the oceans because the future will belong to people on viable land masses. This futuristic shtick is a cheap’n’cheesy rhetorical device (I speak as the author of a book called “After America,” whose title is less futuristic than you might think) but it seems to play well with the impressionable Obammysoxers of the press corps.
And so it was with President Obama’s usual visionary, inspiring, historic, etc., address to the U.N. General Assembly the other day: “The future must not belong to those who bully women,” he told the world, in a reference either to Egyptian clitoridectomists or the Republican party, according to taste. “The future must not belong to those who target Coptic Christians,” he added. You mean those Muslim guys? Whoa, don’t jump to conclusions. “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam,” he declared, introducing to U.S. jurisprudence the novel concept of being able to slander a bloke who’s been dead for getting on a millennium and a half now. If I understand correctly the cumulative vision of the speech, the future will belong to gay feminist ecumenical Muslims. You can take that to the bank. But make no mistake, as he would say, and in fact did: “We face a choice between the promise of the future or the prisons of the past, and we cannot afford to get it wrong.” Because if we do, we could spend our future living in the prisons of the past, which we forgot to demolish in the present for breach of wheelchair-accessibility codes.
And the crowd went wild! Well, okay, they didn’t. They’re transnational bureaucrats on expense accounts, so they clapped politely, and then nipped out for a bathroom break before the president of Serbia. But, if I’d been one of the globetrotting bigwigs fortunate enough to get an invite — the prime minister of Azerbaijan, say, or the deputy tourism minister of Equatorial Guinea — I would have responded: Well, maybe the future will belong to those who empower women and don’t diss Mohammed. But maybe it’ll belong to albino midgets who wear pink thongs. Who knows? Que sera sera, whatever will be will be, the future’s not ours to see. But one thing we can say for certain is that the future will not belong to broke losers... {Read More}
As he nails it again...
Via: Memeorandum
Mark Steyn is a brilliant man and he really knows how to say it!
ReplyDeleteI stumbled on this site through a Google wormhole (is there a rational right wing blog) and I'm disappointed enough to know I'm not coming back after reading this post because this certainly is rational. It's less-offensive-right-wing but right wing nevertheless and therefore not rational. Life isn't liberal or conservative, it's contextual liberal and contextual conservative. Acting as if there is only one context is simplistic and boring.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you pretend that Obama inspiring others through rhetorical tools including envisioning and aspiring to be part of a different future to somehow be unworthy of respect? What would you have him do, convey the direness of modern times ala Jimmy Carter? I make an assumption but I'm guessing Ronald Reagan's Morning in America was all good. Though I could I won't belabor my assumption any further. I predict it would fall on closed partisan ears anyway.
" It's less-offensive-right-wing but right wing nevertheless and therefore not rational."
ReplyDeleteRight-wing tends to be much more rational than left-wing, since it is based on realities, and learns more from the worst mistakes in history (those involving trusting the rulers too much.... something the Left has a major problem with).
But your cursory reading of this blog was sloppy and hasty: the host is not a right-winger.
"Why do you pretend that Obama inspiring others through rhetorical tools including envisioning and aspiring to be part of a different future to somehow be unworthy of respect?"
Because fooling people with a silver tongue might earn you points among snake-oil salesmen, Amway distributors, and used car dealers, but that does not excuse the fact that it is bad behavior.
"I predict it would fall on closed partisan ears anyway."
Your ears would be the first to hear it, and you made clear they are very closed and partisan anyway.
Farewell from this blog, and good luck finding a blog more to your liking. That is, an irrational, left-wing blog that puts forth false disproven bad ideas. You will find plenty of those.