The Measure of a Religion

I heard the other day on Laura Ingram’s show (a mediocre show, I admit)
that some Hindus are upset over the recent movie “The Love Guru” (a less
than mediocre movie, I hear) and its casual treatment of Gurus, who are a
religiously and historically important kind of people to Hindus, evidently.
I gather they’re about like a Priest, Imam, Monk or Elder in other
religions.

Hindus are the third largest religion in the United States, making up around
2% of our population. What struck me as fascinating was how small their
outcry was over a movie making a joke out of their respected Priest-like
figures. In fact, it impressed me. The measure of a religion’s general
“character” can sometimes be judged by how it responds to being made fun of
or trivialized.

So I got to thinking: what would happen if the movie was named “The Love
Imam”, and the movie made a mockery of Islamic Imams? No such movie would be
made, of course, and we all know the two reasons why: political correctness
and survival. Muslims may only make up less than 1% of our population, less
than Christians, Jews, Hindus, atheists, and Buddhists, yet we would see
every Muslim and their grandma on TV if such a movie was made, lambasting
the horrible “Islamophobia” and whining about nobody respecting them.

Furthermore, enormous protests from London to Islamabad would be organized,
with large numbers of Muslims calling for the heads of everyone who made or
took part in the movie, as well as apologies from anyone who saw it (they
would likely get off with calls for mere beatings). Western commentators
would shake their heads, mutter something quietly about Muslims needing to
relax, then talk about how insensitive the movie was and how their anger is
generally justified.

I suppose you can expect reaction to be a little more limited when the
reactionaries’ lives are threatened on a daily basis. It’s an effective
strategy for Muslims to silence those in disagreement.

It’s also one that shows the character of many of their faith’s adherents,
and perhaps the character of the faith itself, the only major faith in the
world that has habitually acted this way from the time of its conception to
today.

Seasoned Values vs. Seasonal Values

Last November, Barack Obama’s campaign explicitly told the Chicago Tribune
that he believes that the recently struck down (I can’t take more delight in
those three words) D.C. gun ban was constitutional. Just a few weeks ago, he
was busy lauding the Court’s decision and saying he agreed with it, and that
Americans have an individual Constitutional right to own guns.

Just a year ago, Barack Obama was amongst the Democrats promising to shoot
down the FISA “eavesdropping” bill, going so far as saying he would aid in
the filibustering of it. Recently, he voted for the exact bill in the
Senate.

In 2007, Barack Obama said he doesn’t wear the flag pin on his suit because
it’s a substitute for “true patriotism” and therefore he rejected it. Today,
you’ll see him wearing it everywhere he goes.

All politicians move to the center from primary to general elections.
McCain’s doing it, too. But McCain has blatantly changed only a single
opinion from primary to general: drilling offshore for oil (this was done in
the face of a $2.00 rise in the price of gasoline, it is worthy to note).

Why do these things matter? Because Obama is willing to do whatever it takes
to win. He’s doing it because, as I’ve said before, he’s a Crusader. He is
utterly convinced that this nation needs him. He’s so convinced that no
notions of personal honor, honesty or dignity will get in his way. The end
will justify the means.

Contrast this to McCain, who has repeatedly quoted and paraphrased Henry
Clay’s famous statement throughout both primary and general cycles: “I’d
rather be right than president.” Obama, it is becoming increasingly clear to
me, would rather be president than right. McCain wants to win, but there are
prices too dear for him to pay, values too dear to cast out. He has many of
these values, the most prominent of which is the success of the United
States in Iraq.

Obama, almost certainly, has at least some values too dear to sacrifice as
well. But where is his line? We don’t know. We’ve seen McCain’s values and
his lines, even if you don’t like them, but Obama’s remain shifting and
foggy.

This is a case of seasoned values, values honed and shaped by a lifetime of
diverse experiences and an understanding of what America is, and seasonal
values, which allow all the twisting, turning, and flipping and flopping as
is necessary. Barack Obama does have a single seasoned value, I believe,
after reading an excellent account by Byron York for the National Review
regarding Obama’s inner-city experiences as a community organizer in
Chicago. That single seasoned value is that he can save people, save all
people, from their problems, if only given enough power.

I’m young, and I’ve not seen a lot of the world. And yet if there’s one
thing I really believe I’ve learned in my short life, it is that people are
almost never saved by other people. They are saved by themselves and God.
You can help, you can aid them, but in the end, it’s their decision.

If Barack Obama wins the presidency, he will leave the White House in 2016 a
disappointed and depressed man, because he will realize just how
fundamentally powerless he is to save the poor he saw in Chicago. And if he
does possess true moral fiber, he will regret the seasonal values he showed
for 10 years to try to help.

Obama will find that the end does not justify the means because the means of
his choosing are incapable of producing the ends of his desire.

As Turkey Goes…

It is largely agreed that five of the most colorful, interesting histories
of any nation to study are China, Britain, Italy, Greece, and India (I can
already hear the French bemoaning at being left off of my list). Other,
younger nations such as Russia, the United States and Japan have interesting
histories that are widely studied as well (and as Americans, we would do
well to know our own history best).

A country that hardly gets the attention that its extremely fascinating
history deserves, however, is Turkey. This nation of 80,000,000, perched
against the Black Sea in the north and the Mediterranean in the south, on
the northern edge of the Middle East, has been the crossroads of Europe and
the Middle East, and therefore, Europe and the Far East, for over a thousand
years. Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, is the third largest in Europe (it
is on Europe’s southeast edge), and has had as much of a historical role as
any city but Rome or Jerusalem on human history. It was first founded by the
Greeks and called Byzantium, but later came to be known as Constantinople.
Throughout the Middle Ages, it was called *Vasileuousa Polis*, Greek for
“the Queen of Cities”. It has been the capital of the Roman, then East
Roman, then Byzantine Empires, and it is where the head of the Eastern
Orthodox Church resides.

Turkey’s history reaches back even further: the Persians crossed the Turkish
straits to invade Greece in the ancient times, and were famously repelled
after the Battle of Thermopylae. The ensuing Greek “counterattack”, led by
Alexander the Great, crossed Turkey first as he stormed east. Turkey was one
of the key provinces of the Greek Empire (it was then called Anatolia), and
later the Roman one as well.

To Christians, as well, Turkey holds deep history and roots: the Apostle
Paul’s original evangelizing occurred mostly in what is now Turkey, and the
city of Antioch still exists in southern Turkey. The Nicaean Council in
northwest Turkey established the power of church Elders to set
Christendom-wide doctrine, resulting one of the cornerstones of the Roman
Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches being laid. It was from Nicomedia,
Turkey, that Augustus Galerius issued the first edict of toleration in 311
A.D., that is, that Christians living in the East Roman Empire were to be
welcomed as citizens and equals, and that their religion might be practiced
freely. And it was from the throne in Constantinople, Turkey, that
Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, enforced the
doctrine effectively.

These, however, were events that happened mostly outside the control of the
people who came to be the largest ethnicity of Turkey: Turks (what a shock).
The Turks came out of central Asia in the later Dark Ages and settled in
Anatolia, mixing with the native populations and Greek/Arab conquerors (this
has led, as you may notice when seeing them, to a more European look amongst
Turks than most Middle Easterners). They adopted Islam, for the most part,
and took the responsibility of fighting the Byzantines from the Arab
Muslims, who were more than happy to hand the responsibility over.

Turkey, furthermore, was home to the great battles of Manzikert, the Second
Siege of Constantinople, and countless other wars fought by the Muslims to
advance their religion and defeat the Christian Byzantine Empire. They
eventually did this, with the sack of Constantinople in 1453, and though
their advance into the Balkans was blunted and destroyed by combined
European forces. To this day, the line between “Christendom” and the Islamic
world lies on the Turkish border.

The Turks developed a great empire, called the Ottoman Empire, that ruled
much of the Islamic world for centuries until its fall after World War 1.
Since the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the 1920’s, Turkey has found
itself moving quickly towards the ancient European roots and away from its
more Islamic “recent” influence. Ataturk created a semi-democratic nation,
whose military leaders hold great power, and a rigidly secular public
education system that has, to this day, held no room for the anti-semitism,
anti-Christian, anti-anyone-who-is-not-you values that one finds in most
countries in the Muslim world.

Which brings me to my point: Turkey is a hinge upon which the Islamic world
just may turn. Turkey seeks better relations with the West (notably being a
staunch ally of the U.S. during the Cold War, and welcoming American nuclear
missile stations in its territory), as it has since the Ottoman Empire fell.
In fact, due to its small sliver of land on the continent, and ownership of
Constantinople (now known as Istanbul), Turkey seeks membership in the
European Union, and is already a member of NATO.

Turkey is not a model of democracy. Neither is it a model of tolerance,
either religious, moral or political. And yet, Turkey is the closest thing
there is in the Islamic world to such a model, in all ways. It takes Islamic
radicalism seriously, and its leaders work to make it a more tolerant, free
society, as they have for years. Working sometimes with, sometimes through,
and sometimes despite a large Muslim majority, Turkey strives to join the
West and to fly away from the turbulence of the Middle East.

If the West is to win the clash of civilizations against the Islamic world,
Turkey is the best place to start. If we can’t do it there, we can’t do it
anywhere.

Just a Man

Obama’s deity is something that fascinates we conservatives, in case the
incessant articles, coverage and rippings of the senator by conservative
commentators and magazines haven’t clued you in. It is a fascinating event,
for so many millions to place their faith in one, that has happened
regularly but rarely throughout history. Many men have become effectively
gods, in the eyes of their followers. Some were great warriors, like Genghis
Khan or Julius Caesar. Some were brilliant thinkers, like Karl Marx
(brilliant doesn’t mean correct) or Aristotle. Some were religious or
altruistic figures, such as Gandhi or Mohammed. (For the record, all of
these men were more charismatic, wise and genius than Barack Obama could
ever hope to be, I do not mean to put him in the same league as them, he is
a son of lesser sires.)

It is man’s nature, as a tribal/pack creature, to gather around strong
leaders. We see raw versions of it amongst children, when there is a chain
established and power levels are formed. It is the child who is largest, or
is the best speaker, or most imposing, or best looking, or is the best at
something else. This mystique that creates alpha males amongst packs is
called charisma.

As one grows older, one sees less and less outright charisma hold sway over
groups of individuals. As structured environments, such as those in the
workplace, replace the natural strength of charisma, its influence fades. As
societal structures become more complex with age, the less charisma is
acquainted with power. Intelligence and wisdom take the place of willpower.


The ultimate system of complexity, then, is the American political system.
Millions of laws, regulations, individuals, contradicting willpowers, and
groups restrain charisma more than any other system or place in the world.
Do not make the mistake of believing that this system happened
unintentionally: when nothing is done, chaos and charisma prevail. Order
like there is in the American political system is only the product of
hundreds of years of determined individuals fighting to restrain power, and
to refine the system.

It began with our Founding Fathers, who saw the political systems of Europe,
which allocated power based largely on charisma and personal will as well as
hereditary factors. These men decided that, while the restrictions upon the
common man’s individual, personal actions were asinine, there must be
maximum control over government officials. They created a brilliant
entanglement of webs to create a gridlock that would, in theory, place
charisma and power-lust under the firm boot of ordered democracy run by well
informed individuals. This was exemplified when George Washington refused to
become king of the United States, instead allowing the people to decide a
leader who did not have absolute power in any sense of the term.

Why did the founders do it? Because they were realists. They were men of the
Enlightenment: they believed that when man thought most, when man set
boundaries, when man was rational, when man was individual, when man’s life
was in his hands and not those of a king, and when government was small, man
was at his apex. When man bowed at the feet of another man as his savior (I
find it necessary to emphasize “another man” to put it as opposed to Christ,
who was anything but “another man”), when man’s judgment gave way to
fainting at rallies and making propaganda posters for a man whom he did not
know, he was at his worst.

When man thought for himself, he was at his highest. When man let another
man think for him, he was at his lowest.

What is so deeply fascinating about Obama, then, is that he is a man whose
personality cult, whose raw charisma, whose well-intentioned and
subtly-concealed lust for power, is coming close to catapulting him into the
White House. Obama, like Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, George
Washington, and John Kennedy before him, is a man who is intelligent but not
brilliant, wise but not all-knowing, yet holds a charisma that just may put
him in the place where it matters least.

What exactly is this charisma of Obama’s? Charisma is difficult to define,
and there are many, many forms of it. Most charismatic individuals have at
least some military experience, but Obama’s the kind of guy you picture
squealing and dropping a gun (this, indeed, is a characteristic of many on
the left as well as many women, explaining his popularity amongst both in
part). Most charismatic individuals that don’t have military experience can
give a speech that is truly brilliant, laid out in a logical and truthful
manner. Though Obama gives a nice speech, he rarely says anything that could
remotely be called brilliant or revolutionary. In fact, many of his favorite
slogans were hijacked from the leaders of the past 30 years: Jimmy Carter,
Ronald Reagan, both Bush’s, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, etc.

What Obama has, however, is what I have stated is so attractive about him
before: faith. He is the man that rushes to the aid of the girl whose
boyfriend dumped her, effectively. He overwhelms her not with logic or a
truthful but fresh perspective, but with the unendingly positive rhetoric
and almost cute (that’s the last time I’ll use that word outside of
quotation marks on my blog, I assure you) confidence. His appearance of
naivety is what makes him so loved by his fans: he really, honestly believes
in *them*, in all of *us*. And if he does, maybe *we* can, too!

This idea quickly falls apart, or at least tumbles into circular reasoning
and self-fulfilling prophecies, upon a closer look at how his policies match
up with his words. But liberals take no such closer look (do they ever?),
and many casual moderates who like him don’t, either.

Indeed, good leaders inspire confidence, and charismatic men have worked
well in the White House. But Teddy Roosevelt, George Washington, and Andrew
Jackson did not overwhelm Americans with nonsensical phrases like “We’re the
ones we’ve been waiting for” and “take a chance on your dreams [and vote for
me]”. They brought logic, truth, honor, strength, and courage to their
office, not pop-psychology. They did not bash America’s past and present
while extolling their sole ability to save it. They were true leaders, and
as such, worked through all the webs of charismatic-restrictions with
intelligence and wisdom as well. They were charismatic men, and sometimes
they did overstep their bounds, but their ability to work within the web, so
to speak, was key to their success at implementing their agendas.

Think about it: does Barack Obama bring the experience and strength of those
aforementioned White House charismatics along with his ability to woo a
crowd?

I’m happy to say that he doesn’t. And if Obama wins this year, Republicans
had better choose a good nominee in 2012, because we’re going to have a
very, very good chance to take the White House back from the shell of a man
who is on track to take it this November.

The Imprint of an Image

Something Bernie Goldberg said last night on The O’Reilly Factor really
stuck with me. He said that Obama’s recent trip to Iraq, Europe and
Afghanistan really had little substantive value, but that the images of him
speaking to masses of Europeans in Germany, shaking hands with General
Petraeus, and sitting side by side with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki were the
entire point of the trip.

And that got me thinking: Goldberg is really correct. Do you remember what
George W. Bush said on that aircraft carrier after the first stage of the
Iraq war was over? Neither do I. We just remember him flying in and landing,
and the “Mission Accomplished” banner. It was the images that stuck in our
minds, not text or even sound.

Take a more recent appearance by Obama: the one he did with his family on
the Hollywood Access show (I’m still wondering why a guy who probably has
only set foot in Hollywood once or twice in his life got onto the show).
Most people remember how “cute” they looked. I remembered a little better
how Michelle Obama’s brow seemed permanently furrowed, Barack refused to
look at the camera or his wife and instead stared at the ground or his kids,
and his daughters seemed a little too delighted to talk about their family’s
problems (symptoms a person from a broken family like myself perhaps
understands better than most). But most folks would prefer to think
positively, and just remember how nice a family they looked.

Yet content and analysis isn’t what these things are for. This is about an
image, and the imprint that, with just a bit of positive commentary (it’s my
opinion the initial few words spoken about an image from the TV personality,
their content and tone can greatly impact the reception of an image), can
plant a lasting idea into a person’s mind, both consciously and
subconsciously. In fact, Barack Obama takes advantage of mass media, like
most 20th and late 19th century leaders have, to create a personality cult.


There is no real shame in Obama’s actions and brilliant manipulations of a
shallow culture, there is only shame in the shallow culture itself, too
stupid or ignorant to keep itself from being swept into something as serious
as a voting booth by a soundbyte, video clip or picture. Casual voters like
this are not a majority in the United States, but it is my belief that they
are the largest plurality of the three voting types: casual, semi-casual,
and serious. And, too often, they are the oft-vaunted swing-voters that each
candidate must gun for in every election. This gives them power more than
even their numbers might suggest, thereby empowering the casual,
first-glance culture that has been churning along (and arguably growing) for
some time.

Such a culture is bad enough when it encourages girls to dress immodestly,
but it is truly, deeply damaging when the imprint of an image is introduced
to and ingrained in politics.

What is He Talking about?

“I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best
traditions.” – Barack Obama

I’ll go ahead and get this out of the way: Barack Obama is arrogant,
pompous, self-obsessed, overconfident, huge-headed, moronic, self-righteous,
etc.

But these sorts of quotes from the esteemed Senator have become regular
enough, and my commentary as well as other’s commentaries on aforementioned
quotations have become common enough, that I don’t need to talk any more
about these quotes’ self-righteous, arrogant, gloating tone.

No, I intend to instead talk about just what he said.

What are America’s best traditions? Apple pie and baseball for starters.
Then there’s representative democracy, opportunity to succeed, a strong
sense of patriotism, and individualism that is not exclusive to being a good
neighbor or friend.

In every one of those great traditions, I can find you a much better example
than Barack Obama. In fact, he outright disavows the tradition of American
individualism, talking spitefully of the “John Wayne myth” (the very phrase
“yes we can” is a collectivist take-off on the more common and more
individualistic “yes I can”). He furthermore effectively denies whilst
vocally espousing the truth of opportunity. He attended a church that railed
against the idea that blacks can rise out of the ghetto, and instead
preached that the system was irrevocably stacked against them. A kid from a
middle class home became president (it is important to note that Obama has
yet to become president, yet he seems to think that he is)? That’s hardly
impressive: Abe Lincoln came from a log cabin in Kentucky, Bill Clinton from
a broken home in a tiny, dirt-poor town in Arkansas, and Andrew Jackson came
to the White House from being a wild orphan brawling, drinking and dueling
impetuously.

Obama’s rise is noteworthy, if only as testament to the fact that biracial
heritage, a baritone voice, the politics of Vladimir Lenin preached with a
sugar coating and a lot of other patented nonsense can carry you quite far
in the realms of soundbyte politics and buzzed college kids. The other men I
mentioned made due, for the most part, from much harder circumstances with
many less benefits. That Obama would think to put himself into league with
these men in rising from nothing is unthinkable.

But I digress. Obama’s only achievement is to be half-black “by incident of
birth” (Alexander Hamilton). If his point were that he is the fulfillment of
the Civil Rights movement, then I would cut him much more slack, for he is
one fulfillment of that movement. His point, however, was clearly not that
at all. Look at it again: he states that he is a symbol of America “returning” to its best traditions. There has never been another president with a drop
of African blood, so how would electing a half-black be “returning” to our
best traditions? He’s obviously not getting at that.

The next great tradition, patriotism and belief in our country, may not be
something Obama lacks. Yet that is irrelevant. If you’re looking for a
return to patriotism and love for our country, you’re not going to be voting
for Obama when he is running against John McCain, arguably among the most
exemplary figures of American patriotism ever. I’m not one to rank
patriotism, but Obama ought to have the decency and humility to not even
place himself onto the field with a man like McCain, much less claim that he
is a symbol of patriotism, implying that McCain is not as good of one.
Therefore, I doubt, too, that he is talking about patriotism.

So if he’s not getting at patriotism, he’s not getting at rising from
nothing to become president, and he’s not thinking of individualism, what *
is* he thinking?

I hate to disappoint, but I truly can’t say that I know what he’s talking
about. There *is* no American tradition that Obama is truly exemplary of,
and all he is a man whose rise is the product of those people and factors
around him. No, not the aforementioned buzzed college kids at rallies: the
media elites who leapt onto the bandwagon, and the culture of shallow image
that exists to drive otherwise sane, thinking people into idiotic drones
swayed by a picture, a catch phrase or a roaring crowd. This does not show
that those who support Obama are some sort of superior individuals or beings
(as is often implied amongst leftists), only that many are gullible
conformists, starved for what seems to be an original (regardless of his
originality’s quality) candidate in a Washington filled with the same old
white men in black suits with red ties. Essentially, they’d rather read *The
Audacity of Hope* than* Clash of Civilizations*, they would rather hear
“yes, we can!” than “law of diminishing marginal utility”.

It is no great American tradition that Senator Obama is a symbol of. He is
little more than a representative of a contemporary fad.

A Word for the Truth

I read an excellent article in one of the latest Weekly Standard issues
recently, a fine piece by Andrew Ferguson regarding the truths of politics
that we cannot speak. He cited Phil Gramm’s statements to the effect of
“we’re not in a recession, get over it,” as one of the truths we couldn’t
speak. Gramm was right, of course, that there is no recession: a recession
is defined as two consecutive fiscal quarters of economic retraction, and
we’ve yet to have even one fiscal quarter of economic retraction. Gramm had
to step down as one of McCain’s economic advisors, and McCain had to
distance himself from the comments, adding some nonsensical populist
rhetoric regarding the pain of a Michigan steelworker (those stories are all
starting to run together for me, and are especially annoying, seeing as they
are marketed every bit as much, if not more, to air-headed soccer moms who
like the idea of caring more than the steelworker himself). Ferguson further cited retired General Wesley Clark’s comments that “being shot down in a fighter plane is not a qualification to be president” as another truth one could not speak. Clark was, again, wholly correct: to be
shot down in a fighter plane is not at all a qualification to be president,
though one could make the case that it is a plus. Clark and Obama both had
to repudiate the comments, too scared to come anywhere within the ballpark
of being accused of “questioning patriotism”.

The worst case Ferguson engaged was that of Geraldine Ferraro, who said,
whilst working for Clinton back in the primaries, that Obama would not have
reached his current position were it not for his African blood. Oh, the
horror!

Bob Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, echoed this
sentiment by saying something that absolutely no person in the country with
more than a quarter brain can deny: were Barack Obama a white senator from
Illinois with 4 years in the Senate under his belt, he could not enter the
presidential race, give a fancy speech or two and hold 85-90% of the black
vote against the Clintons. It was not Bill Clinton’s racial comments (which
I will come to in a minute) that caused blacks to make this alignment: in
South Carolina, the first primary state with a significant black population,
blacks went for Obama at the same rate they did for the rest of the primary:
9/10. (Now, were Obama not such an impressive candidate, that number
might’ve been 7/10, or 8/10.) Ferraro’s comments were undoubtedly true, on
the whole: Barack Obama would not have won the primaries were it not for the
black vote, an enormous section of the Democratic party, and we all know the
main reason he got the black vote.

This leads me to Bill Clinton’s sly comments about Jesse Jackson winning
South Carolina back in 92. These were the height of a politically incorrect
truth, which is exactly why they were lambasted so (Ferguson’s column
refused to even touch Clinton’s comments, because he, of course, is an
established writer for a prominent magazine; as a blogger sitting in my
bedroom, I don’t have that problem).

Blacks tend to vote for Obama… why? It’s the elephant in the living room.
Blacks, more often than not, voted in the primaries based on color. Clinton
was right in the rough truth that he was hinting at: Jackson won South
Carolina largely because he was black, Obama blew Clinton out largely
because he was half-black. These were not the only reasons, but they were
huge ones. There is no getting around it, no explaining it away. It is the
truth. It is a truth that ordinary Americans, black, white, Latino and
Asian, everywhere know and speak of across the dinner table, at the bar, or
in the car.

But it is a truth that no politician, no strategist, no reporter, no pundit and no candidate can ever  speak.