Casually heard today even from moderate pundits and observers are things that were unspeakable just a few months ago; things like Obama wants Ebola to spread in order to punish America, Obama is intentionally throwing the fight against ISIS, some say because of his pro-Arab and pro-Muslim sympathies. and others for his anti-American attitudes, at least as regards our history and heritage, which we both agree we do not share. He hasn’t an ounce of African-American blood in him, indeed, never knew any part of the African-American experience, not coming to the continental United States until he was 18 or so, having spent the earlier part of his life in Indonesia, learning to be a good little Muslim, and in an elite private school in Hawaii, learning to be a Sidney (remember Tom Sawyer’s spoiled fancy-pants cousin?)
Obama knows nothing about being American. Worse, he knows nothing about love, except that special kind that is directed at oneself.
God so loved…
Growing up in America, even the kid who rarely went to church knew the Bible verse that began, “For God so loved the world, that He gave….” John 3:16.
It probably never dawned even on most Christians that the concept expressed there, “God loved” had never been spoken until that time and place in the 1st Century, but it was a completely new concept. No Greek or Roman would have ever slandered their gods on Olympus as having loved them,. or worse, loving the rest of the world, including their enemies. Inconceivable. They worshipped their gods, feared their gods, but never loved them, and certainly didn’t expect them to love them back. Even the Muslims, who did not appear until five centuries after Christ, while modeling their new religion on the Old Testament religion of Jehovah, today still have little concept of loving Allah, or of him loving them back. This is why they believe they have the authority to drive men to God in chains, or with a scimitar hovering over their necks…because that’s how they believe He expects them to be delivered.
The Greeks actually had a word for this kind of love, and they called it “agape” although I doubt they ever considered it in any practical way. It meant a “love of mankind”, as apposed to a love of friends, family, self, chocolate, cats, or a good roll in the backseat of dad’s old Buick. The Romans also had a word for agape love, which later, in the Latin Church, was translated to mean “charity”, one of the Seven cardinal virtues of Christendom. (Just don’t confuse this sort of spiritual charity for your fellow man who is poor, sick, broken, destitute, with the alms paid out like a tithe, sometimes obligatory, and which almost always end up being a responsibility of the government to collect, cutting the love and empathy part out altogether.)
Now, no slander ever accused the immigrants who got off the boat in America to subscribe to this notion of empathy and love despite mostly coming from other Christian countries. Remember, “to be American” is generally considered to be a three-generation proposition. But it was already woven into the fabric of the generations who had come before them, and has always been a part of the American profile.
To feel empathy for your fellow man, wherever situated, is a major part of that hateful doctrine of American exceptionalism, so, no, Norwegians, Spaniards, Brazilians and Congolese cannot think of themselves as exceptional in this same way Americans can, as Obama has often stated This is why half a million white farms boys died to free black men, and have yet to get a word of thanks for it from the people they freed. Nor the French from two wars, nor the Koreans and Vietnamese or Iraqis. (I’m not sure about the Grenadans.) It’s just what Americans do anyway. And when we can’t save enslaved people, we send CARE packages, or hold prayer vigils, and, until recently, held our politicians’ feet to the fire about keeping the flames of freedom stoked, so the light could be seen beyond the clouds. Reagan couldn’t save Czechoslovakia, but he could Grenada, and he took his shot. I don’t recall a single press report of that short fight that spoke of it in glowing terms, even though that tiny island was rescued from a brutal dictator and communist Cuban military occupation. But I do recall the reception US troops got from a thankful people, with welcoming greetings not seen by the wire services since Americans liberated Italy in 1944.
Barack Obama knows none of these things, and feels none of these things. It’s not just that he wasn’t raised to feel them. Muslims are not taught the “god so loved” part in their religion. And atheists are even more harsh about that sort of empathetic love. Like the self-adoring Greeks, he really doesn’t believe in that sort of thing. as John Wayne (or Jethro Gibbs0) would have said, “It’s a sign of weakness” to show you love your fellow man.
But politically, they have to try and fake it. Only their string is running out. Although Americans do seem to be losing their empathy for others, thanks to the me-me-me aspects of public education (and let the state take care of the charity), it is cargo we have not yet jettisoned overboard. American squirm to know that thousands of people of a village named Kobani along the Turkish border, and the brave Kurds who are defending them, will for sure die if ISIS should finally take the town. And Americans also know America can do something about it. Now.
And Americans know that it is Barack Obama who won’t allow it…not because he is incompetent, or even a socialist, but because deep in his heart, he just does not care about those people, or mass death of any kind, so long as he can stand in front of the mirror and wash his hands of it. “Not my fault.” No matter how much Josh Ernest proclaims, in his best Stalinspeak, that these deaths will be mere statistics, and not the tragedy we all feel, for Obama’s strategy is unfolding according to plan, we all know better. If these people are allowed die in this way then a large chunk of America’s soul will die with it.
With these thoughts in mind, now consider how we are supposed to treat pronouncements coming out of Washington about Ebola.
The ball is rolling, Barack.
