In Today's World Who Is The Forgotten Man?

Towards the end of: "The Forgotten Man," the authoress, Amity Shlaes writes about the selection of Wilkie to run against Roosevelt. It came at the time Liberals were disheartened by Stalin's pact with Hitler.

Shlaes writes, "When Russia and Germany signed a non-aggression pact it sent liberals into despair." Roger Baldwin, founder of The ACLU, wrote:" I think it was the biggest shock of my life. I never was shaken up by anything as I was by that pact - by the fact that these two powers had got toegther at the expense of the democracies." Previously in the later 1920's Emma Goldman understood when she wrote: "Liberty Under The Soviets." She responded to Baldwin as follows:"I frankly admit that people as naive as you are hopeles. They see the world and the struggle through romatic rosy eyes as the young innocent girl sees the first man she loves."

Wendell Wilkie was nominated by the Republicans to run against Roosevelt who was seeking a 3rd term run. In one of his speeches, asking the public to think about what it meant to be an American Liberal, Wilkie said: "American Liberalism does not consist merely in reforming things. It consists also in making things. The ability to grow, the ability to make things... Redistribution was a loser's game...I am a liberal because I believe that in our industiral age there is no limit to the productive capacity of any man...Growth not government action, would lift the United States out of its troubles...I say that we must substitute for the philosophy of distributed scarcity the philosophy of unlimited productivity. I stand for the restoration of full production and re-employment by private enterprise of America."

What I find revealing is that here we are once again. Obama's vision of America is not mine. His background is not that of mine. His belief in Capitalism's limitations is different than mine. His belief in government and its ability to solve is not one I share. This is why I have such strong disagreement with him and it began after a Liberal friend asked me to read his book which I read and found filled with a lot of words and dreaminess.

As I followed Obama's campaign against another 'loser' of his own party he was masterful in his campaign strategy which continually kept Hillary off guard. Hillary helped her own high negatives grow with her on again off again shrill performance and poor Ole Bill became Obama's Limbaugh. Meanwhile the press and media folk had found a new darling - a man of color they could turn into their messiah. A Black American who was educated, a family man with two charming girls and an educated wife to boot. Hell, except for his color Obama could pass as white and that eased our desire to assuage our guilt for past sins.

The Republicans decided to go with a male equivalent of Hillary except for his exceptinal military record of true heroism. McCain ran an equally bizarre campaign but it really did not matter because Jesus could not have won on the Republican ticket for three reasons:

America hated GW and that was that.

Republicans had proven to be political prostitutes incapable of governing.

Religion has become a negative because anyone professing faith is classified a zealot, a bigot and a right wing born-aginner.

Well here we are approaching 100 days and we have a government that is immersed in running eveything it touches and funds. We have a president who seemingly believes he can smooth talk tyrants out of their missiles and nuclear toys and like, Roosevelt, believes the wealthy got that way through nefarious means and therefore, their's must be re-distributed - 'distributed scarcity.'

Because Obama and his Party control the mechanisms of government and have the power to restrain debate and Constitutional Checks and Balances he can and is taking us on a ride that will prove more thrilling, scarier, death defying than anything Cedar Fair amusement parks have to offer.

Everything Obama has received is because of or through 'affirmative' government - his education, his pay as a community organizer, his political position and his presidency. It is little wonder he believes government is the solution. He never held a job in the commercial world, he never produced any type of goods, he never involved himself in Capitalism, he never did anything of an executive nature. He lived in a world inhavited by those he sees Capitalism passed by - the world of victimhood! Yet, he made millions selling books he wrote and leveraged that into The White House because he ran during a time of American despair.

Now he controls America's reins but seems unable to do so without finding someone to blame for the rough road he inherited and travels. This is why I refer to him as the populst pinata president - GW, Limbaugh, Wall Street, greedy and incompetent executives, now his own country - the very nation he presides over as president is guilty.

His popularity remains high, as did Roosevelt's, but not so his policies. Like magnets they will not remain forever separated. One eventually will pull the other. The disconnect can remain. Yet, there remain those who cannot figure him out. (See 1 and 1a below.)

Meanwhile, were I able to discuss "The Forgotten Man" with its author, Amity Shalaes, I would aske her in today's world and poliical setting is it about the citizen or the victim.

On another note, should all Merchant Marine Ships be re-named SS Gulliver's? We are talking about acts of piracy that are disrupting and burdening world trade. Can trading nations permit a hundred Somali Liliputian thugs to disrupt open sea passage and if so what is next?

Also, since we are on small numbers who cause world grief suppose 300
million Jews surrounded 6 million Muslims, do you think the Muslims would
be imperiled?

Dick


1) We still can't read Obama
By Rex Murphy

Shakespeare excels in quotability. He encapsulates marvellously. So much of what he wrote has the ring of wisdom, the neat finish of a proverb. Though I have not made the attempt, I believe it is very possible to do a sketch of almost any leader or politician simply by carving out the right "quotations" from Shakespeare.

Barack Obama is easy. He is (think cable shows, editorialists, lowly commentators) "the observed of all observers." Further, he is "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," though Michelle (she of the buff biceps) might pose as competition. And what better prose cameo do we have for him as he strides into his first term than "the expectancy and rose of the fair state."

Yet, even with Shakespeare at our beck, I wonder if we can find the phrase or formula that pierces the surface of Mr. Obama to the essence of the man. It's easy to find a tagline for the Obama phenomenon, a caption for one or other moment in his procession through the world's media. But when we watch or listen to Mr. Obama, do we catch the accents of the real man? Has there been some moment illuminated by a flash of genuine revelation, marked by a man speaking from the deepest part of himself? The inauguration? On Jay Leno? In Europe this week?

He speaks on so many things and - when prepared - is apt to speak very elegantly, sometimes movingly about each of them. But where is the vibration of the core conviction? What are the challenges or ideas stamped with the "fierce urgency" of his instinctive passion or commitment?



With George Bush, this was not a question. After the attack on the towers, Mr. Bush had one idea: keep his country and its citizens safe from another attack. Instinctive patriotism was his uncluttered core.

Mr. Obama is far more problematic - and not because Mr. Bush was the one-dimensional simpleton/puppet that malice and caricature have portrayed him, and Mr. Obama the New Age charismatic, MTV renaissance man his idolizers like to believe he is. With Mr. Obama, the difficulty is that every performance seems like every other one. He may be talking about bailing out the auto companies, extending a welcoming word to the Muslim world or arguing for a new American health-care regime. His emotional register on all these topics is the same.

His set speeches have a peculiar detached quality about them, a touch of the professional actor's proud ability to find all the right tones and gestures regardless of the quality or content of a given script. They don't so much convince as impress. They beguile rather than reveal. They are dazzlingly - it's almost a paradox - competent.

Of the many speeches Mr. Obama has made, which one has said to you this is him? This is the irreducible, essential Barack Obama - this is why he's in politics. You will find it a frustrating challenge: His statements blur into one another, no one speech distinguished by the authentic charge of words spoken from the deepest part of himself.

There was one moment when the voice of the man overwhelmed the performance of the orator. It came after the first flare-up of the noxious pastor Jeremiah Wright when Mr. Obama, with real pathos, said during his speech on race that he could no more disown Mr. Wright (for all his flaws) than he could disown his own grandmother. Now that had real charge.

He was saying that certain relationships have such depth for him that not even a political crisis could force him to abrogate them. There we had a measurement, a take on the character of this amazing communicator. (Yes, he later did "disown" Mr. Wright, but Mr. Wright had viciously upped the ante by then. I am not accusing Mr. Obama of hypocrisy here.)

But I have not heard that tone since, the core note of the authentic Barack Obama. What are the most important issues for Mr. Obama? What are the cornerstone beliefs of this new President? What does he have "within which passes show"? He glides from one part of his mammoth agenda to the other, smooth, cool and charming all the way. But his effortless equanimity poses the question: If it were another agenda, a contrary agenda even, would he glide equally smooth, cool and charming over it? I don't think we know. He doesn't offer any real affective clues.

What summons the central energies of this new President? What ideas prevail in his view of himself and the world? It's an interesting question to be asking in the middle of a devastating financial collapse and with some of the world's great rogue states pressing for nuclear capacity. After all the speeches he has given, as campaigner and as President, we still do not have a grounded reading of the man in the most powerful office on an anxious planet.

1a) Is Barack tough enough to lead the world? Early signs are mixed
By Micahel Goodwin

Blame Joe Biden. His warning last fall that "it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama" with "an international crisis" has spawned a cottage industry of premature declarations.

Calls of "this is it" have greeted every development in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran. Lately it's been the Somali pirates' turn to be labeled the test.

By the veep's standards, each incident qualified as the Big One. Except, of course, none was. Each faded and was replaced by a fresh crisis that, briefly, laid claim to fulfilling Biden's prophecy.

The problem is that Biden had it wrong. There isn't going to be just one international test of Obama's mettle. There will be a string of them until friend and foe alike gauge where Obama is willing to draw a line and defend it.

Some crises will be the inevitable clash of interests, but most will be a deliberate decision to probe the uncertainty about Obama's ultimate objectives and stomach for risk. It's an uncertainty Obama has helped to foster.

With his first turn on the global stage, our new President's priority was to prove he meant it when he said the days of George Bush's so-called cowboy diplomacy were over. From playing the peacemaker on symbolic issues to keeping mum when he didn't get his way, Obama demonstrated an overwhelming preference for coordinated actions with other nations and groups like the International Monetary Fund, NATO and the United Nations.

There is an undeniable appeal to burden sharing with broad coalitions, yet one early result of Obama's Kumbaya approach remains the nagging question about his bottom line. Will he act in what he believes is America's interest, even if no one follows? Or will he subject every action in every crisis to the litmus test of whether there is a consensus?

To put it bluntly, after he gives a speech urging global unity and getting a "nyet" from Russia, what? When China, hardly a liberator of oppressed peoples, including its own, coddles crazy dictators, will America fall silent, too?

I'm not sure Obama himself knows what he will do. His non-answer to the question of whether he believes in American Exceptionalism reveals an unformed mind on the fundamental issue.

Meanwhile, his actions have cut both ways. On Afghanistan, he ordered 21,000 more troops before he asked NATO members to do more.

It is a surge reminiscent of the one he opposed in Iraq and, in justifying it, he invoked language that recalled Bush, saying, "the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks," were still plotting to "kill as many of our people as they possibly can."

But because our putative partners agreed only to 5,000 more forces, most of which will not engage in combat, the war is becoming ever more an American operation. Of the 90,000 troops set to be in Afghanistan this summer, 60,000 will be ours.

On the other hand, Obama's mushy response to the North Korean missile launch suggests he is prepared to give others a veto on the issue. Despite warning that "violations must be punished," he kicked the can to the UN Security Council which, predictably, couldn't muster a condemnation, let alone anything else; since then, Obama has said little.

The problem of what to do about Iran appears headed for the same international dead end.

The irony is that these tests will pit Obama against the same forces and countries that forced Bush to choose between action or stalemate. It's lost in the myths of the anti-Bush narrative now, but it is a fact that he tried the UN and NATO route, starting with Afghanistan and Iraq and including Iran and North Korea.

Thanks to Bush, we know that unilateral action is not always a virtue. Let's hope Obama doesn't prove that waiting for permission produces even greater tragedy.




2) No Pain No Gain:Taking the fight to the pirates.
By Seth Cropsey



Barack Obama's good luck holds steady. When, for the first time in more than two centuries, pirates seized an American-flagged ship on April 8th, the 20-man American crew recaptured their ship hours later a few hundred miles east of the Somali coast. Although the captain remained a hostage, the recapture of the Maersk Alabama, a 17,000 ton container ship with a cargo of humanitarian assistance destined for Kenya, diminished potential public interest to a single individual, just as Iran's jailing of a single American journalist in late January relieved the new administration of having to address a crisis magnified by a large number of hostages. In the short term, the narrowing of these incidents to a couple of American citizens buys the Obama administration time as they search for solutions. The larger picture is more ominous.

The principles that are being tested in Iran and off the coast of Somalia hold no matter how many Americans are wrongfully detained by hostile governments or international outlaws: the United States is obliged to protect its innocent citizens. Failing to do so effectively invites more and bigger trouble. A similar principle applies to Chinese naval vessels' harassing of the unarmed U.S. Naval Survey ship, Impeccable, in international waters off Hainan island early in March. The Obama administration made diplomatic remonstrances and sent a destroyer to the area. This is not likely to have impressed China's leaders. The result is that there will be more such incidents--and not only in international waters near China--that test American resolve.

The hijacking of the Alabama offers President Obama an exceptional opportunity to act resolutely, justly, and effectively in reducing the likelihood of more attacks against American--and other--ships off the increasingly dangerous coast of east Africa, near one of the world's most important oceanic choke points: the Strait of Bab al Mandeb where the Red Sea empties into the Gulf of Aden. Some 20,000 vessels, most of them on their way to or from the Suez Canal or the Straits of Hormuz, pass through the gulf each year.

The ocean area that has become the pirates' hunting ground is immense, between one and 2.5 million square miles. In land terms, this ranges between roughly twice the size of India, and--at the lower end--an area about that of Argentina. NATO patrols the region with five ships besides three frigates from the European Union. The U.S. Navy maintains a presence of between five and 10 vessels. Notwithstanding, Lt. Nathan Christensen, the spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, noted that "we can't be everywhere at once," a remark that, while not aimed at the Pentagon's coming budget battle, is particularly appropriate given the slow, unabated shrinkage of the U.S. combat fleet. Lt. Christensen pointed out that the U.S. naval combatant nearest the Alabama when it was commandeered about 280 miles southeast of the Somalia pirate center, Eyl, was approximately 330 miles away at the time of the attack.

The U.S. and its allies are not the only contributors to the western Indian Ocean anti-piracy mission. China, India, Japan, and Russia as well as other nations have sent naval vessels to help secure the area.

Diplomatic efforts have paralleled naval ones. The United Nations Security Council in December 2008 unanimously passed Resolution 1851 whose title page "authorizes states to use land-based operations in Somalia." Subsequent language muddies this apparently tough grant of international authority requiring such government authority as exists in the minimally functional Somali state to notify the U.N. in advance of actual military operations. But since the resolution neither addresses nor prohibits less red-tape-bound military means, these remain possible. The same Security Council resolution directly supports international naval action to discourage piracy off the Somali coast.

Still, Secretary of State Clinton seems uncomfortable. She told a news conference on 9 April that "the administration is seeking a 21st century response" to piracy.

What could this mean? The basic requirements that senior Obama administration officials, including the president, have set as a standard for conducting foreign policy are all in place. The participation of many different navies off the Somali coast is diverse and multi-lateral. The U.N. has authorized the use of force against the pirates. Solid reason exists for taking full advantage of the careful work that preceded these measures: an attempt was made in international waters to steal American property, and an assault was made on an American crew. The American captain remains a hostage of the pirates.

Certainly, negotiations should continue for the captain's release and return. But, what then? Does a "21st century" response mean that with the crew and ship safely returned, the case is dismissed and we go about our business? This will guarantee more attacks on U.S.-flagged ships and American merchant marine sailors.

It will add to the appearance that the new administration's idea of a "21st century" response is one in which there are no consequences for those who violate international laws and customs in crossing the United States.

There are plenty of other reasonable alternatives that would send a clear message. If the pirates who seized the Alabama can be apprehended and transferred to a U.S. Navy ship, Title 18 of the U.S. Code allows them to be brought to the U.S. and, if found guilty, imprisoned for life. A more convincing approach would be to use the same unmanned aerial vehicles that have been operational since U.S. involvement in Bosnia to target pirates in the centers where they are known to congregate on land. Special operations missions could accomplish similar objectives, albeit with less plausible deniability.

Punishing the guilty would do justice, increase respect for the Obama administration while conforming to its standard of soliciting international approval, and decrease the likelihood of repeated attacks against Americans abroad. It might also provide the same benefit for mariners aboard ships carrying the flags of other states who go about their business peacefully in the region. This is more likely to increase respect for the administration abroad than ignoring direct challenges to the U.S. and packaging such sideways glances as policy that befits the 21st century.

Least likely to produce positive tangible result are approaches that bypass the administration's own foreign policy standard of multilateralism and UN sanction in pursuit of the additional and dubious requirement that wrongdoers escape serious consequences for their action.

The destroyer that was sent to the aid of Alabama is the U.S.S. Bainbridge. The ship was named for Captain William Bainbridge who served several tours in the American naval expeditions that eventually used force successfully to end the Barbary pirates' threat to American merchant shipping in the Mediterranean during the first two decades of the 1800s. Sometimes the 19th century, including the statesmanship of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, is the most appropriate model for U.S. policy.

Seth Cropsey is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and served as a naval officer and as deputy undersecretary of the Navy in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.





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