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In the Jerusalem Post, Daniel Gordis has a stellar article on what lies behind the Ground Zero mosque controversy.
…For Israelis do have something to teach Americans… It goes something like this: It’s fine to say that “America is not at war with Islam,” to point out that most Muslims are not terrorists and that many American Muslims are moderates. That’s true, as far as it goes.
But it only goes so far. Because America is at war and its enemies are Muslims. Politically correct hairsplitting runs the risk of Americans blinding themselves to that simple but critical fact. It makes no difference what percentage of the world’s Muslims wants to destroy America. There are enough of them that US air travel is now abominably unpleasant and, more importantly, enough of them that more strikes on America appear inevitable. …
…When my parents were teenagers, they watched as evil took hold of Europe. But then they saw America turn itself into an unprecedented, enormous military machine. For America’s leaders understood that if the Nazis won, the world as we knew it would be over…
But when my children were teenagers, a different evil took root across their eastern horizon. This time, though, the world has feigned impotence. Iran is at the nuclear threshold. Iraq was at best a “non-failure.” The battle against the Taliban and al-Qaida may take years, or decades, and may require many lives sacrificed if we are to win. But America has grown war-weary. Obama is already planning to bring the troops home; the word “terrorist” is increasingly off-limits in the US because it is considered “politically loaded.”…
…Its tendency to gentility is part of what has made America great. But an unwillingness to call an “enemy” an enemy could lead to America’s demise. For Islam’s radical leaders tell us clearly what they seek: a world united under Islam, with America’s sacred freedoms eradicated as a new “morality” replaces them. What is much less clear is whether Americans are willing to fight – to die and to kill – to protect those freedoms. …
In Der Spiegel, Thomas Straubhaar writes about traditional American values, and whether we will return to the principles that made America great.
…A firm belief in the individual’s ability, ideas, courage, will and a reliance on one’s own resources brought the US to the top. The American dream promised everyone the chance of upward mobility — literally from rags to riches, from minimum wage to millionaire. The individual’s pursuit of happiness was seen as the crucial foundation for the well-being of society, rather than the benevolent state which cares for its subjects — and certainly not the welfare state, which provides a social safety net for its citizens. …
…Both the behavior of the American government and the Federal Reserve makes one thing clear: They do not see the solution to the US’s economic woes in a return to traditional American virtues. Obama is not calling for the unleashing of market forces, as Ronald Reagan once did during an equally critical period in the early 1980s. On the contrary: Obama, driven by his own convictions and advised by economists who believe in government intervention, has taken a path that leads far away from those things that catapulted America to the top of the world in the past century.
The Obama administration’s current policies rely on more government rather than personal responsibility and self-determination. They are administering to the patient more, not less, of exactly those things that led to the crisis. …
…This raises a crucial question: Is the US economy perhaps suffering less from an economic downturn and more from a serious structural problem? It seems plausible that the American economy has lost its belief in American principles. People no longer have confidence in the self-healing forces of the private sector, and the reliance on self-help and self-regulation to solve problems no longer exists.
…The settlers of the New World rejected everything, which included throwing out anything with a semblance of state authority. They fled Europe to find freedom. The sole shared goal of the settlers was to obtain individual freedom and live independently, which included the freedom to say what they wanted, believe what they wanted and write what they wanted. The state was seen as a way to facilitate this goal. The state should not interfere in people’s lives, aside from securing freedom, peace and security. Economic prosperity was seen as the responsibility of the individual. …
Charles Krauthammer thinks the president needs to focus on the war effort as well as his domestic initiatives.
…Yet the observation is obvious: It is surely harder to prevail in a war that hinges on the allegiance of the locals when they hear the U.S. president talk of beginning a withdrawal that will ultimately leave them to the mercies of the Taliban.
How did Obama come to this decision? “Our Afghan policy was focused as much as anything on domestic politics,” an Obama adviser told the New York Times’ Peter Baker. “He would not risk losing the moderate to centrist Democrats in the middle of health insurance reform and he viewed that legislation as the make-or-break legislation for his administration.”
If this is true, then Obama’s military leadership can only be called scandalous. During the past week, 22 Americans were killed over a four-day period in Afghanistan. This is not a place about which decisions should be made in order to placate members of Congress, pass health care and thereby maintain a president’s political standing. This is a place about which a president should make decisions to best succeed in the military mission he himself has set out. …
In Forbes, John Tamny sets forth an excellent explanation of the additional costs taxpayers are forced to incur when federal workers receive higher salaries.
…If it’s true that government workers are more educated and in possession of greater skills, then it’s also true that a still-difficult economic situation has been made more difficult by virtue of some of our best and brightest offering their skills to the inefficient government sector over the private economy. Their gain is the recessed economy’s loss.
It should also be remembered the perverse incentives that exist among federal workers. Not able to advance based on profits, and doing more with less, workers in the government succeed the more the bureaucracy they work for grows, the more lawsuits they win against private actors, the more regulations they impose, and the more fines/fees they lift from the increasingly empty hands of the average American taxpayer.
Not only are we fleeced to cover the rising pay and gold-plated benefits of federal workers, we’re essentially paying them to make our lives more difficult. The more they’re able to do so, the more they advance. …
Michael Graham, in the Boston Herald, gives us a glimpse of how government is taking care of itself during the economic turmoil.
Hey President Obama, I found your “recovery!” It was hidden among the theater seats and swimming pools at Newton North High.
…Struggling taxpayers looking for prosperity just have to drive through Newton and check out the new 400,000 square-foot high school with its two theaters, two gymnasiums, its fully-functional television studio and an SOA or “simulated outdoor area.” Happy days are obviously here again when students are provided Kindle book readers and teachers use “interactive white boards” in wireless-tech classrooms. …
…Who cares if it cost more than $100,000 per pupil? We’re with the government and we’re livin’ large!
…And that’s the key. When you’re looking for recovery in an Obama economy, all the good news is in the government sector. In fact, if you just work near the government, Obamanomics is for you.
…The fact is, there is a recovery under way and no, we taxpaying private-sector workers were not left out. We get to pay for it.
Noel Sheppard points out Chris Matthews’ frustration with the teleprompted president, in Newsbusters.
…Near the end of a “Hardball” segment about the President’s prime time address to the nation Tuesday, the host said, “If he doesn’t get rid of that damn teleprompter…He’s just reading words now.”
Matthews continued, “It’s separating him from us.”
And continued, “You go to a meeting with him I’m told, businessmen are invited to meet him at the White House, he hauls out the damn teleprompter, and he reads it to them.”
“The teleprompter is a problem for this guy. I think it’s his menace”…