PrintOctober 28, 2010
President Obama and Our 'Core American Values'
Based on the sheer volume of usage, President Obama's teleprompter must love the phrase "our American values." The phrase comes in a close third after "Let me be clear" and "I will call you out on that." Since he uses the phrase so often, we should try to understand what he is saying.
During the 2008 presidential race, the Obama campaign issued a weekly "American Values Report," which featured "Meet Barack" and "Meet Michelle" editions. Mr. Obama's use of the "our values" rhetoric first got my attention when, at a press conference in Turkey in April of 2009, Mr. Obama assured President Gul that the United States was Islam-friendly. Though the U.S. has "a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation; we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values," explained Obama.
Since Obama is not referring to our Judeo-Christian ideals and values, what on earth is he talking about? The untethered progressive values of hope, change, tolerance, peace, unity, etc. come to mind. Presumably, the "ideals" and "values" of the left somehow have the power to bind together a country of citizens.
According to Obama, those same "American values" also demand Miranda rights for jihad terrorists captured in foreign countries. Civilian court indictments and constitutional trial rights in federal court in the United States for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, et al. naturally are in accordance with our values.
Our ideals and values also render the enhanced interrogation techniques of the Bush administration "torture." Regardless of potential life-saving information possessed by a captured terrorist, our American values allow for only constitutional protections and police-citizen-type questioning.
Mr. Obama recently reminded us that our American values must allow for the building of a mosque and Islamic center a stone's throw from the former Twin Towers. Obama also invoked our American values to denounce the planned burning of the Quran by an American citizen protesting the proposed 9/11 mosque. Obama decreed that such an expression of protest would be "contrary" to our "American values." No free speech tolerated there.
A pattern is beginning to emerge. Our American values happen to coincide with the ideological worldview of President Obama. When Obama touts "our American values," odds are that he is advancing their very opposites. When our American values call for self-preservation, Obama calls for terrorists' rights. When our American values call for traditional morality, Obama appoints someone like Kevin Jennings as "safe school czar" for children. When our American values call for border enforcement, Obama sees millions of potential Democrat voters. And so on. The ironies of the Obama administration are like a series of never-ending waves crashing upon us.
Most recently, in an effort to get out the Hispanic vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterms, Obama was interviewed by Eddie Sotelo for Univision. The president stated,
[T]he problem that we have is, is that until I can get some cooperation from the other side, then people who are anti-immigration reform can continue to block it. And that's why this election coming up is so important because we essentially have to say that those who are politicizing the issue, who are supportive of the Arizona law, who talk only about border security but aren't willing to talk about the other aspects of this, who don't support the Dream Act, who are out there engaging in rhetoric that is divisive and damaging that -- those aren't the kinds of folks who represent our core American values.
Mr. Obama is saying that he represents our American values, and as such, he is able to catalog those who do not.
Those who support the securing of our borders prior to passing another one of Obama's "reform" projects -- in this case, legal protection for those having entered our country illegally -- do not represent our "core American values." When Obama throws the word "core" into the phrase, you know he's deep in anti-American water.
Those shockingly judgmental words above came from the same interview in which the representative of our core American values also said this:
And if Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, we're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us, if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it's gonna be harder and that's why I think it's so important that people focus on voting on November 2.
First, Obama labels those who support border enforcement and oppose his amnesty scheme "divisive and damaging." Next, Obama decides to embody his language by calling his critics his "enemies" (in this case, 64% of the country). The fact that President Obama made such an utterance for the public is jaw-dropping. That's the sort of remark one would expect to have been heard off-mic and leaked to the press. However, since Obama defines our American values, those who oppose him are considered enemies to American ideals and values.
It appears that Chicago brass knuckles politics now represents our core American values. Obama is the same guy who warned about bringing "a gun" to the political fight, having his boot on the neck of a certain enemy, and engaging in "hand-to-hand combat" if the Republicans win a majority in Congress. And most eerily of all, during his own campaign, Obama spoke of needing a civilian national security force that's just as powerful and well-funded as the U.S. military.
So our core American values require us to support whatever "reform" Obama is pushing. Mr. Obama's use of any necessary means (including bullying, dividing via race and class warfare, intimidating, etc.) to achieve his "reforms" also represents our new American values. And of course, whatever Obama is pushing is necessarily one and the same with our core American values. It's all sort of circular.
The sad reality is that a man was somehow elected who is effectively a foreigner to our real American values. Our quintessential American value, liberty, means being free from central control. Of course, that's the very antithesis to the ideology of the man occupying the White House.
