The World Doesn’t Do Anything
July 25th, 2008 at 01:40pm Mark Noonan
Because abstractions are incapable of acting. People act, as Victor Davis Hanson notes regarding Senator Obama’s latest MSM leg-tingler:
With all due respect, I also don’t believe the world did anything to save Berlin, just as it did nothing to save the Rwandans or the Iraqis under Saddam — or will do anything for those of Darfur; it was only the U.S. Air Force that risked war to feed the helpless of Berlin as it saved the Muslims of the Balkans. And I don’t think we have much to do in America with creating a world in which “famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.” Bad, often evil, autocratic governments abroad cause hunger, often despite rich natural landscapes; and nature, in tragic fashion, not “the carbon we send into atmosphere,” causes “terrible storms,” just as it has and will for millennia.
Perhaps conflict-resolution theory posits there are no villains, only misunderstandings; but I think military history suggests that culpability exists — and is not merely hopelessly relative or just in the eye of the beholder. So despite Obama’s soaring moral rhetoric, I am troubled by his historical revisionism that, “The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love.”
I would beg to differ again, and suggest instead that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (as it had, in fact, wiped out millions of its own people) and much beyond as well — and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no danger to the world from American nuclear weapons “destroying all we have built” — while the inverse would not have been true, had nuclear and totalitarian communism prevailed. We sleep too lightly tonight not because democratic Israel has obtained nuclear weapons, but because a frightening Iran just might.
The world will not come together. It won’t solve our problems. We, people, have to actually get out there and do things…if what is meant by “the world” is a UN resolution condemning the crime of Darfur, then that is worse than doing nothing…what is needed is for those oh, so liberal people out there to find someone like Kitchener and send a punitive expedition to the Sudan to force the Sudanese government to stop being a bunch of inhuman savages. You want to “free Tibet”? Then gather yourself money and arms and infiltrate Tibet and start to set up revolutionary cells to expell the Chinese invaders. You want to help the poor? Then you can at least donate some money to Missionaries of the Poor…if you’re waiting for “the world” to do it, you’ll be waiting a long time. Its up to you, ya see?
The high flown rhetoric of Obama hides nothing - and not in the sense that Obama’s got nothing to hide; he’s hiding the fact that there’s nothing there. Under a President Obama we’ll have many, many meetings in many, many ritzy areas of the world and we’ll hear from many, many people telling us of the plight of this or that people or thing…and money will be appropriated and Nobel Prizes awarded…and nothing will have been done, because people didn’t actually go and do something about the problem. We had during the 8 years of Clinton lots of talk of doing things and not much action - and the worst offenders are those very same European elites who hail Obama as the man to lead the world…it was the Europeans, after all, who sat on their hands and talked about doing something in Yugoslavia as the horrors of World War Two were repeated, nightly, on their television sets.
What we want in a President is a man who will do something - McCain is that man. He won’t wait for the UN to have a conference, but will dive right in looking for a practical solution that actual people can carry out in a short amount of time. All through Obama’s thought runs the idea that we’ll do things, one day, after we’ve talked about them, for a while…all of McCain’s thought is centered on what we can do, right now, to make things better for people. Think about it for a moment - who has done more for others: the Marine in Anbar or the head of the UN High Commission on Human Rights? The one does, the other talks. Talk is, as they say, cheap.
And so, my friends, is Obama - just a man who moralises on the cheap and never puts himself out to actually do something. Afraid of his own shadow, Obama hides behind a mountain of words which sound sweet in the ears of those who want others to do the heavy lifting…but which disgust anyone who has ever done anything.
UPDATE: Gerard Baker has a hilarious send up of the Obama phenonema. A sample:
And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.
The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.
When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”
Read the whole thing.
Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Democrats, Republicans, United Nations
18 Comments
1. Carl Gordon | July 25th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Deleted - obscenity.
2. Billywhiteshoes | July 25th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Do you always take the low road Mark?
Straight from the RNC, to your keyboard, to us.
You (the RNC) wanted to push the BO hasn’t been to Iraq meme and it backfired badly.
Real bad. You know it.
I think what you’re also witnessing is the world reacting to the end of Bush. I would bet a hundred dollars that if McBush went to Europe right now, that he could not pull that many people to hear him.
Why? He offers nothing but the same.
Your little diatribe above is beneath America. Beneath civility. A petty thread for petty people.
Grow up Noonan. Start acting like a man.
You could have spared us the wordy flotsam and just went…
Wwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
3. Bruce Adams | July 25th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Deleted - off topic.
4. Magnum Serpentine | July 25th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Er I may be blind, but what is the point of this article?
A vote for McSame is a vote for a third term for george.
5. Macker | July 25th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
And a vote for Obama is a vote for a second term of Dhimmi Carter.
6. hermie | July 25th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
He wants to be a leader of the US, but says that he’ll go along with whatever ‘the world’ wants.
If Reagan had done that, the SS-20s would still be stationed in East Germany and the Berlin Wall would still be standing.
7. Pain | July 25th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
“Talk is, as they say, cheap.”–Mark Noonan.
Curiously the American President is referred to as the “Leader of the Free World.” So this “Free World” then can do nothing to solve problems either only America can as in the case of the Berlin Airlift or Iraq in 2003 when it suits their interests but not in the case of Darfur of Rwanda when it does not.
We think the “World” can do much to solve many problems but there is a sect of Americans that do not wish to be a part of the world. Composed mostly of resource hegemonic neoconservatives and those that would seek to make secular America into a Theocracy these people you included Mr. Noonan have no real plan save for making the world a place where you know your rules apply to everyone. Well that is one thing the “world” will not stand for in your lifetime or in a thousand human lifetimes. What you believe now has a greater chance of being forgotten to history in 10 000 Terran years than that it will still exist because of Reason and the fact that there are people who have a smidgeon of Faith in their fellow man. We do not intend to anger or to amuse; We do not care of the petty and juvenile insult that may be cast because this is a serious matter that must be addressed as such.
What must be said, Mr. Noonan, is that people with retrograde ideas like you who live in a modern age are the World’s problem. You have the right to live as you wish dodging the shadows of mystery and superstition in any manner that you see fit. You are even endowed with the right to broadcast that belief as an offering to any eyes that see and any ears that hear what you feel is true.
What you do not have the right to do is to demand that everyone adhere to what you believe; this is a certain path to folly because what you hold to your heart as a true path to solving the problems that trouble the Soul you follow because it is the easiest path for your flesh, your pride and your ego.
Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!
8. Blackandwhite | July 25th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
McCain is that man. He won’t wait for the UN to have a conference, but will dive right in… July 25th, 2008 at 01:40pm Mark Noonan
Bring em on! If this is what you hope for than you are in fact dreaming of a Bush third term. Noonan, Neocon cowboy diplomacy is dead.
9. Mark Noonan | July 25th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Pain,
The energy you expend hating me can be much better used, ya know?
10. Mark Noonan | July 25th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Blackandwhite,
Mere repetition of talking points doesn’t help anyone, not even your candidate. Have you anything to say on the subject at hand?
11. Tractatus | July 25th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Er I may be blind, but what is the point of this article?
That wingnuts hate Obama, perhaps to the point of having some sort of Derangement Syndrome.
12. T-Man | July 25th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
An empty barrel is the loudest barrel.
13. neil | July 25th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
what has obama done significantly? has he championed any legislation that matters to the U.S.? Its real easy to say anything but to do something besides talk. Oh he can talk and probably like slick willie. but you know that with embassies being blown up and all bin laden evil deeds just what did clinton ever do really? we need someone that has some kind of a track record to measure them up. I may not agree with all McCain has done but he sure as heck will not just talk with the enemy and try to talk them into playing nice. Sure you try to talk first but at some point you better be ready to push the button even when other people or polls show its not the right thing to do.
14. Pain | July 25th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
9. Mark Noonan | July 25th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
We do not hate you Noonan. Quite on the contrary, We love you and this is why We, Ourselves, make every effort and expend the energy in hope that you will one day come to Reason.
15. Kahn | July 25th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Well, I certainly remember all those people from NOW parachuting into Sudan to stop female genital mutilation and rape.
16. phnx | July 26th, 2008 at 9:32 am
what has obama done significantly?
Well for one, he sponsored the Global Poverty act:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=56405
This proposal will cost the US taxpayer 0.7% of the GDP per year, a staggering $845 Billion dollars.
But if that is not enough to bankrupt the country, on July 2 in Colorado, Obama proposed a national civilian security force, (a euphamism for national police force) “as large and as well financed as the US military”!!! That means approximatley 500,000 men and women, and a budget of $439 billion per year!!!
Maybe he’ll call it the Gestapo.
Appartently Obama, the consitutional scholar, was sleeping when they covered the 10th Ammendment. If he had been paying attention, he’d know that his plan conflicts with that pesky old document called the Constitution.
17. Kahn | July 26th, 2008 at 11:10 am
phnx, but he proposed his fascism so eloquently. No wonder the Germans love him.
18. JPL | July 26th, 2008 at 11:40 am
“What must be said, Mr. Noonan, is that people with retrograde ideas like you who live in a modern age are the World’s problem.”
Yeah, Mark, why can’t you be a deep and original thinker, like Pain, who challenges us all to “Imagine there’s no heaven,” man! Profound!