In this past weekend's headlines, I read: "Obama to meet with Myanmar rulers." This is reminiscent of other headlines of the same ilk like: "Obama bows to Saudi king" or "Obama is nonplussed by Chavez' tirade and gift of anti-US book" or "Obama offers hand of friendship to Iranian Mullahs." Of course, Obama's obsequious courtship of certain world leaders does not extend to everyone. Past headlines also include: "Obama to snub Israeli Prime Minister" and "Obama removes bust of Winston Churchill from Oval Office" and "Obama snatches missile defense shield from Poland and the Czech Republic."

There seems to be a pattern here. If a country has long-standing, friendly relations with the USA, if its people share common values with the American people—like love of liberty, commitment to a society governed according to the rule of law, freedom of religion, free market capitalism—then it can expect the back of the hand from our enlightened President. Conversely, if a country is committed to repression of its citizens, a government-controlled economy, world-wide revolution and above all, enmity toward the United States, then its leaders can expect warmth and love from our post-American President. It wouldn't surprise me if Obama extended an invitation to the White House to Hezbollah's Nasrallah or Hamas' Mashaal.

After a recent posting here, a regular reader sent me a message saying: "As usual, Ron, I like very much what you wrote; but in the end, what is the point? You are just preaching to the choir!" By this, she meant that, as far as she could see, the readership of my blog—and other outlets of a similar bent—consisted of people who were already convinced of the merits of the arguments advanced by me and other conservative writers. Therefore, she wondered, what were we accomplishing beyond the reinforcement of each others already well-established beliefs? She has a point. But I also believe she misses some points. My goal here is to address her concern.

I will first lay out four objectives that I pursue in publishing a conservative point of view in the blogosphere. Then I will step back and briefly describe the current perilous state of our country, which is in part a consequence of the political drubbing that conservatives have suffered recently, occasioned by their failure to practice what they preach. This will lead to a fifth—and most crucial—reason for why it is important that conservative authors continue to fill the "pages" of the conservative blogoshphere with their ideas.

1. Development and Reinforcement. The most basic objective, and the one I stand "accused of" by my reader, is the development and reinforcement of my own ideas on political conservatism. A measure of the worth of one's beliefs is how well they stand up to one's own scrutiny as well as the scrutiny of one's sympathetic listeners. More than three decades ago, my formerly liberal ideas failed that test when several traumatic events (chief among them the forced busing of my child) caused me to closely reexamine my political axioms. It is important that those who are motivated to put their political ideas "out there" should regularly subject those ideas to the tests of self-examination and public scrutiny. In any event, the positive feedback I receive from readers is very reassuring.

2. Refinement. This is close to, but not exactly the same as the first objective. I seek not only to reinforce my and my "co-believers" ideas, but also to refine and improve them. In this regard, the reactions I hear from both sympathetic and non-sympathetic readers are highly useful. We are often seduced by the harmony of our own music, but there is always room for improvement. Putting one's ideas into the trough of public opinion is a good means to elicit both the friendly and unfriendly criticism that can lead to a sharpening of one's arguments.

3. Influencing the opposition. I am always a little surprised to learn that my blog does receive some limited attention from liberal readers. In particular, I have many friends and relatives who fall in the enemy camp, and yet some of them read my posts carefully. Occasionally, I get correspondence from such a reader acknowledging a point I made and admitting the legitimacy of my view. A small but gratifying victory. No liberal would be exposed to conservative ideas if the blogosphere did not exist. Other conservative media outlets, some of which have substantial liberal following, play a similarly salutary role.

4. Winning the culture war. In several earlier postings (see, e.g., http://thewritestuff.blogtownhall.com/2009/04/10/different_visions.thtml or http://thewritestuff.blogtownhall.com/2009/05/17/what_culture_is_it_that_the_politics_have_caught_up_with.thtml), I outlined a long-term strategy for recapturing the conservative spirit that once animated the majority of the American populace. Put simply, it was to reverse engineer the mechanism, dreamt up by socialist thinkers a century ago—which was to completely capture the culture of the nation, knowing that the politics would follow. That is precisely what has happened. In those articles I laid out some ideas for reversing the process. The conservative blogoshpere plays a fundamental role in motivating the foot soldiers of the counterrevolutionary struggle.

The Left has been advancing on many fronts in our country for more than a hundred years. They have captured the media, the educational establishment, most foundations, the legal profession and more. Their progress has been steady, highlighted by periods of huge leaps to port (under Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and perhaps now Obama). The only successful counterattacks in the 20^th century came under Coolidge and Reagan. And while Reagan had some success, his good work has largely been undone by the Bushes and other fake conservative Republicans who aped and appeased the liberals over the last twenty years—which has resulted in the unmitigated disaster that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid regime represents.

It is easy for a conservative to survey the scene and be dejected. The behemoth that the Federal Government has become constrains our individual freedoms on a daily basis—and the Obama team is working feverishly to turn the screws tighter. The respect for Western Civilization and our Constitutional, republican system among the people is at an all-time low—and declining. Our economy is crippled by massive debt, a crumbling dollar and runaway entitlements; the latter summons the image of a train speeding on a one-way track toward a brick wall—and Obama is stepping on the accelerator. Who or what shall rescue us? Oh despair…which leads me to my last and most important reason why I, why all conservatives need to keep putting the truth before the American people.

5. Faith. The creation of the American experiment in self-government more than two centuries ago was an act of faith. Our founders had faith, not only in Divine Providence, but also in the good sense of the American people, whom they believed manifested a unique zeal for the ideals of individual liberty, limited government and moral propriety. They understood that the struggle to maintain those ideals in the future would be difficult—that it would require the continued benevolent hand of Providence and the good judgment of the people. Without these, the Republic would succumb to one of the tyrannies at either end of the political spectrum—the concentrated power of a despotic individual or group, or the mobocracy inherent in an unchecked "democracy" devoted to mindless egalitarianism. Today the Republic is in danger, thanks to a bizarre combination of both extremes—albeit much more of the latter than the former.

The fifth objective of the conservative blogosphere is to express its continued faith that the two sets of hands into which our founders entrusted the American experiment are still reliable. Conservatives still believe, as Reagan said, that "God had a divine purpose in placing this land between the two great oceans to be found by those who had a special love of freedom and courage," which expresses our faith in both founding pillars. If we lose that faith, then there truly is no hope.

In a previous blog posting (http://thewritestuff.blogtownhall.com/2009/08/05/on_the_existential_threat_to_israel.thtml), I discussed a host of existential threats to the State of Israel as described in several pieces of recent literature. I argued that the threats could be subsumed under the rubric of "three mega-trends that encompass them, and which pose a mortal danger to more than just tiny, beleaguered Israel. Those trends are:

Recently I posted a piece in this blog entitled, "On the Existential Threat to Israel." In it, I discussed the manifold, deadly threats confronting the Jewish State and how many of them eventually, and perhaps imminently, could prove lethal. I also located the threats in the context of three portentous developments in the world:

1. A worldwide resurgence of Islam, much of it in a radical and deadly mode;
2. A worldwide resurgence of virulent Anti-Semitism, much of it cloaked as anti-Zionism, but in reality nothing more than old-fashioned Jew hatred;
3. The steep decline within Western Civilization of self-esteem.

Finally, I pointed out how each of these developments also posed a mortal danger to the nations of the West (specifically in Europe and North America). It was easy to justify the latter claim for numbers 1 and 3; the justification for number 2 was somewhat subtle and restricted to Europe.

In this article I will look more closely at these "existential threats" as they apply to the United States. While alarmingly present in Europe, number 2 above is, thankfully, not really pertinent in the US — but its place in the list is taken ably by another malignant threat to our nation, our gargantuan federal government. Thus, with some revision to the first and third to make them more applicable to the US as opposed to the entire West, the threat list now reads:

1. The rise of Islamist fundamentalism, or Islamism or Islamo-fascism as some prefer to call it — is it as much of a threat to the US as it obviously is to Europe?
2. An increasingly powerful, coercive, unresponsive, irresponsible and repressive federal government.
3. The sharp decline among the American public of faith in American exceptionalism, esteem for the historic culture of America and Western Civilization, respect for and adherence to the Constitution, and public displays of virtue as this would have been understood by the Founding Fathers.

Now the majority of the threats to Israel's existence are physical — should they be fulfilled, it would likely result in the actual destruction of the State: the slaughter or expulsion of its people, the annihilation of its cities and towns, the total loss of sovereignty — that is, the physical extinction of the State in any corporal sense. (It makes my blood curl just to write that sentence.)

The threat to the US is more political, cultural and economic than it is physical. Even though one could imagine an attack or attacks on US soil by Islamists with WMD, it is not possible to foresee the Iranian Revolutionary Guard occupying the US, declaring an Islamist totalitarian state, and killing or forcibly converting those Americans who resist. Rather, the envisioned consequence, especially of the latter two threats to the US, should either reach a cataclysmic stage, is that our beloved republic would cease to exist in any sense in which our Founders understood it. Our people, our towns, our industry, our farms, our infrastructure, even our armed forces might remain intact. But: liberty would no longer be our most sacred value; our freedoms would vanish; our Constitutional rights would be replaced by the "bounty" we receive from the State; a phony tolerance for all cultures would supersede our Judeo-Christian heritage; our morals would be defined by the government and its lackey media, not by religious principles; our economy would be directed by the government and entrepreneurs would not exist; our standard of living would sink precipitously; our military would atrophy and we would cease to be a great power; and the concept of American exceptionalism would be relegated to the dustbin of history as we take our place as just another cowardly, Euro-socialist, crippled nation watching as the might of China, India, Islam or whomever grows and supplants us as the most powerful force on Earth. America has been a beacon of freedom and a force for good in the world for nearly a quarter millennium. Will that be true of our successor if we fall?

How real are these threats and, if they are, what can we do to forestall them? They are very real. First, the end of the Cold War has seen the emergence of a virulent, fanatical and apocalyptic brand of Islam. It has always been there, just in decline and/or slumbering for the last few hundred years. But now "Islamic Civilization" is displaying some traits that seem to be disappearing in the West — namely, self-confidence, religious fervor, ample foot soldiers willing to die for the cause and a bold vision of the future. The ascendant forces in the Islamic world would seem intent on restoring the caliphate and extending Muslim hegemony over vast stretches of the planet, commensurate with their reach a millennium or more ago. They see Europe, and increasingly the United States, as soft, retreating, lacking faith and morale, and ripe for the plucking. It would be the height of folly for the US to ignore the goals of the Islamists, and thus fall prey to the malevolent harm they intend to inflict (and to some extent have already inflicted) on our society.

With the prior assessment of the first threat, I suspect a significant portion, perhaps a majority, of my fellow citizens might agree. But I doubt any such agreement is forthcoming on the second threat.

The ranks of conservative, republican (small 'r') patriots have been thinning rapidly since Ronald Reagan passed from the scene. I venture that no more than 20-25% of the US citizenry is aware of the century-long degradation of our Constitutional republic that has occurred. From Teddy Roosevelt, through Wilson, then FDR, Johnson, Carter and now Obama we have seen a near constant retreat from the original liberty-focused, market-oriented, limited form of republican government that our Founders established, and a concurrent march toward the egalitarian, government-controlled, Constitution-ignoring, business-bashing, soft tyranny that our system has become. If Obama wins on either cap and trade or nationalized health insurance, we might pass the point of no return and the Republic will be lost forever.

Am I overstating the danger posed by our overgrown government? Recently, a financial adviser speaking to me about the economy and the stock market, acknowledged the grave dangers that Obama's and the radical leftists in Congress' programs portend for the economy. But then he asserted that historically, the market has factored in the constraints caused by the introduction of the income tax, Social Security, Medicare, Sarbanes-Oxley and myriad other government laws and regulations that have hampered American business; and then continued its inexorable, if uneven, march forward. Well then, he continued, the market will just factor in Obama's monstrosities as well and continue as in the past. I would sum up that stance in the words: we've been alright in the past despite stupid and self-destructive moves, so we shall be alright in the future, despite stupid and self-destructive moves. I'm not so sure! As Thomas Sowell has said, there is a tipping point and I fear we are getting mighty close to it.

Yet, I doubt there is widespread agreement with my fear of an existential danger posed by the federal government. Some folks believe, like my colleague, that we'll withstand the government's latest assaults and continue our march forward. I suspect an even greater proportion of the populace doesn't acknowledge the threat at all. They cherish all the "security" and goodies that big government provides for them and ignore the wisdom of Reagan, who said that "Government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us."

Finally, the third threat — loss of self esteem — poses, in my mind, the gravest threat of the three. History reveals that great civilizations more often die by suicide than by conquest. The nations of Western Europe, having lost their faith in the cultural, political and economic principles that sustained them for centuries, are playing the death scene right now. The US is manifesting the same symptoms, albeit at an earlier stage. And yet again, I think there is even less support for my belief in this threat than there is for the previous, I sense that the vast majority of my fellow citizens do not recognize that the egalitarian, anti-religious, anti-patriotic, anti-free market, anti-family, big government, unconstitutional and basically anti-American program that is being thrust on them — and to which they appear increasingly receptive — is a recipe for the death of the United States as a free republic. People say reflexively that America is still the greatest country in the world. But because of the brainwashing to which they have been subjected for many decades at the hands of the media, government schools, the higher education establishment and all the other liberal-dominated, opinion-forming organs of American society, those naively optimistic folks have little understanding of how much the US has changed in the last century and where it is headed sans a conservative course correction.

So what is to be done? As I outlined in a previous article, "Different Visions," while there is definitely a political and economic component to the struggle, the effort to recapture the nation and preserve the structure bequeathed to us by the Founders must be primarily cultural. Repeating part of the argument there, "We need to have conservative philosophers and cultural icons that state the case for and epitomize the worth of traditional Western culture. More mundanely, we need to nurture conservative film makers, fund conservative law schools, build conservative foundations (like Heritage, but more of them), defend and expand talk radio, establish conservative newspapers (like the Washington Times, but more of them), concoct an organization to counter the NEA in the minds of the country's teachers, abandon the mainline churches and support religious institutions that champion traditional values, etc. It might take a hundred years to achieve success; after all it took the Left a century to reach the dominance it currently enjoys. If we don't do this, then the America that we have loved and which has proven to be such a boon to the peoples of the world will surely – perhaps slowly, but maybe not so slowly – wither into one more Euro-socialist State. Then the light from mankind's last best hope will have gone out."

To summarize, I believe the US will cope with the first threat. We took care of the Nazis and the Communists; we'll defeat the Islamists as well — provided we don't succumb to one of the latter two threats first. As for the second threat, I don't believe we can meet it without successfully overcoming the third. If we continue to lose self-esteem, that is lose faith in our heritage, pride in our achievements, trust in free markets and respect for the system established by the Founders, then surely the government will continue to grow into a republic-destroying monster that will make our current soft tyranny seem tame in relation to the much harder tyranny we shall experience.

On the other hand, if there is a resurgence of patriotic spirit, cultural pride, renewed faith in American exceptionalism and respect for our historic, republican, Constitutional heritage, then the people will be ready to tame the government beast. America has faced grave crises previously: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Depression, Fascism, and Communism. In every instance, we managed to prevail. But with diminishing self-esteem prevalent, it is easy to be pessimistic about our prevailing again. And yet we have ammunition in this battle that Europe lacks — such as, God-fearing people, a formidable military, guns in the closet, talk radio and of course our Constitution. What we lack is another Reagan, or — recognizing that the battle is cultural more than political — a Martin Luther King who will inspire the people to reconnect with their liberty, rediscover their heritage and overcome the forces of tyranny that are dragging us down.

I recently read two compelling pieces of work describing what their authors characterize as existential threats to the State of Israel. The first was an article in the May 2009 issue of Commentary magazine by Michael Oren entitled "Seven Existential Threats." The second was the book by Aaron Klein published this year with the shocking title The Late Great State of Israel. Michael Oren is a well-known historian who was recently appointed Israeli ambassador to the United States; Aaron Klein is an intrepid journalist who has broken many major stories on the Middle East in the last decade. Two serious men in a position to know. Thus when both, in dead earnest, lay out highly plausible, even probable, scenarios for the purposeful and imminent destruction of the 61-year-old Jewish State, it is impossible not to be startled.

In a previous posting on this blog (Different Visions, http://thewritestuff.blogtownhall.com/2009/04/10/different_visions.thtml, April 10, 2009), I have explained, as have many others, how a dispassionate evaluation of the performance of governments that operated according to liberal principles — whether of the extreme varieties like Communism, Nazism, Peronism or Italian fascism; or of the more moderate types practiced in the welfare states of Western Europe — must result in the conclusion that they were abject failures. Of course, by liberal I mean in the modern sense, not classic liberalism as it was understood in the eighteenth century. To wit, and in brief: a collectivist philosophy that emphasizes the central government as the controlling force in society; an elevation of equity, fairness and security above liberty, freedom and private property as fundamental goals of the populace; government control, if not outright ownership, of the means of production; a multicultural, non-religious, "global family" cultural outlook that debases the value of Western Civilization, American history and free markets; and a "living Constitutional" system in which "change," "progress" and the pursuit of "social justice" count for far more than "tradition," "stability" and the "rule of law." (A more thorough explanation of the basic tenets of modern liberalism, as opposed to conservative principles, can be found in my book, Liberal Hearts and Conservative Brains, http://home.comcast.net/~ronlipsman/)

The human carnage, decline in prosperity, loss of freedom and dependent mentality that have resulted in nations in which liberalism has reigned unchecked are so pervasive and obvious that I wondered in the aforementioned article how liberals could "ignore these results and continue to have faith in their leftist ideas." I offered three possible explanations there. It is my purpose in this article to ascribe one (or more) of these rationales to the underlying motives of our dear President. To be more precise in that article, I said:

Either the liberal is blind to the damage; or he sees it but believes the principles have not been applied correctly and that America is a special case in which liberalism can co-exist with classic American ideals in order to improve our country; or he flagrantly does not care. In the first instance, much of the populace simply does not recognize or does not understand the wreckage of liberalism's failures. They are so brainwashed by the media, the schools, the librarians, the ad agencies, the lawyers, the foundations and all the other opinion molding organs of society that have been thoroughly captured by the Left, that they believe — among other fairy tales — that Roosevelt's New Deal pulled the US out of the Great Depression; that Great Society programs have produced a more just society — not one characterized by welfare dependency, out of wedlock births, rampant pornography, a permanent underclass and wanton crime; and that the Income Tax and the alphabet soup of federal regulatory agencies allow the Federal Government to assume its rightful place as the most important component of US society, providing vital support for education, energy, transportation, housing and virtually every other facet of American life.

In the second instance, we encounter the "well-intentioned liberal." The Democratic Party is well-stocked with them. They are confident that they can fine-tune and spruce up American society according to more humane egalitarian principles in order to smooth the rough edges caused by rugged individualism. They do not believe that the fundamental character of the American experiment in freedom will be altered by their policies, rather it will be perfected. We will acknowledge our past flaws like slavery, maltreatment of American Indians and suppression of women's rights, and by correcting them and other deficiencies in our society, we will create a more enlightened country that remains true to its fundamental creed as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

Finally, in the third case, doctrinaire liberals/socialists do not care about the carnage because they would have you believe that America is an unjust, unfair, bigoted and corrupt nation that must be completely remade. They do not see prosperity and success as the nation's primary goals; rather equality and fairness should reign supreme. Liberty and freedom are not nearly as important as social justice, multiculturalism and environmental justice — whatever that is. In which of these three categories Obama fits is a topic for a future article.

Well, here is that article.

Now of course I do not know Barack Obama personally and so any motives I ascribe to him will represent conclusions based on my observations of his public persona. But the President of the United States is the most closely scrutinized person in the world. Over the course of his campaign for the Presidency and especially in his actions during the first half year of that Presidency, there is more than ample evidence to formulate what I see as highly probable motivations.

So let us start with the first rationale. This would explain Obama's extreme left-wing policies as follows. Namely, he believes in his heart that he is doing what is best for America, that his actions and their consequences are fully consistent with American history and Constitutional Law and that they will result in a better country economically, socially and especially morally. I have no doubt that many of his followers, thoroughly brainwashed by the media, the educational establishment and the other opinion molding organs of American society that are firmly in the grip of the Left, fit this description perfectly. They are not cognizant or will not accept that socialism/fascism/liberalism or whatever you want to call Obama's political orientation has been a colossal failure wherever it has been tried. They do not know or will not recognize that: cap and trade will impoverish the United States, nationalized health insurance will result in the rationing of health care, coddling of the mullahs will endanger our security, pumping up the money supply and out of control government spending will result in stagflation, and increasing taxes on the "wealthy" will hurt the middle class. Their disbelief or ignorance is breathtaking because these consequences are exactly what has happened when loony liberalism has prevailed — see, e.g., England, prior to the arrival of Margaret Thatcher on the scene.

But I seriously doubt that Obama is that ignorant. Yes, he is brainwashed — after all, his political associations in his young adult life were almost exclusively with those on the hard Left. His entire worldview, from law school student to Community-Organizer-in-Chief, has been fashioned out of the clay molded by extreme left sculptors of American society — Alinsky, Wright, Ayers and the like. Moreover, the disdain that is evident in his manner when he pays lip service to conservative alternatives to his beliefs suggests that he gives absolutely no credence to the possibility that his collectivist views are misguided and potentially lethal to the country. If this is not brainwashed, it is certainly closed-minded.

But my liberal friends keep assuring me that he is a very smart man. I choose to believe them. It is impossible, if he is so smart, that he does not know exactly what he is doing and what the consequences will be. So I am ruling out ignorance. That leaves only naivete or malevolence. If it is the former, then, in spite of its track record, he believes that liberalism is still the best course for America. Yes, it has failed in other venues, but only because it wasn't conceptualized well or its implementation was flawed. He doesn't accept that Nazism or Communism is in any way related to liberalism. And he doesn't see Western Europe as a failure. Yes, their economic growth and productivity doesn't match ours, but they have fairer, more equitable societies. Besides, with our Yankee ingenuity and initiative, we'll do it better than they have. And yes, their militaries are weaker than ours, but if we play our cards carefully in foreign policy, we won't need such a strong military. Okay, the country will be overall a little poorer, but only because there won't be so many billionaires. On the other hand, our wealth will be more evenly distributed, resulting in a more just society. Yes, we ignore or circumvent the original meaning of the Constitution on occasion; but Obama would have only been 3/5 of a person under its aegis — thus it is a flawed document. Besides, it is not a biblical tract that demands absolute obedience. It's only meant as a guide. And I believe, says Mr. Obama, that the path I am taking America down is not inconsistent with that Guide Book.

To me this is naivete par excellence. It is a design for the future based on a faulty reading of the past. Is it a faithful representation of Obama's core philosophy? Maybe! What about the third possibility?

In fact it is painful to write the following words. To entertain the thought that the freely elected President of the United States is not a patriot, that he despises what our country has stood for and seeks a radical recasting of the fundamental character of the nation, to think thus is to contemplate the possibility that the last election was a suicidal act by the people of the United States. And yet it is possible, many would say plausible, and a not insignificant number would claim that it is self-evident.

The evidence is strong. He promised and he is delivering, together with the left-wing radicals he has appointed, an ultra-liberal government. Of course in this he is greatly aided by the mob of Leftists who now control the Congress. But it is his advocacy of: cap and trade; nationalized, uniform, mandatory and government controlled health insurance; higher taxes (on everyone, not just the "rich"); card check; nationalization of critical segments of private industry; massive government spending and debt; a multilateral and WEAK foreign policy that coddles our adversaries and pressures only Israel; evisceration of the armed forces, curtailment of missile defense and abolition of don't-ask-don't tell; a marginal place for religion in American life (which church has he joined? Oh, Rev. Wright is not preaching in DC); federal command of public (and private) education; a weakening of the public's right to bear arms, and on and on . . .. It is his advocacy of all of this (and more) that is the embodiment of an extreme left-wing program that will radically alter the fundamental and historic nature of American society. Moreover, he never speaks of liberty and freedom, or the rights of Americans to their businesses or property. He goes abroad and paints a wretched portrait of an America that has betrayed the ideals of the American Revolution. (Actually I think he has our revolution and that of the French confused.) He seems oblivious to America's lead role in the fight to eliminate Nazism, Communism and even colonialism from the world. Perhaps these are not worthy accomplishments in his eyes.

So is he a naive waif seeking to rescue an imperfect America in whose fundamental principles he believes, or is he a malevolent soul intent on remaking a corrupt, bigoted and violent America that he reviles? I wish I knew! But it has to be one of these two. Although, perhaps it does not matter. What difference does it make if he is purposefully leading us to hell or if he is accidentally diverting us there? We shall be lost either way.

Obama certainly seems to admire the welfare states of Western Europe and seeks to have the US emulate them. He would appear to be blissfully unaware of the political and social cancers that afflict those societies. Cancers that are largely self-inflicted. For not unlike in the Soviet Union as it decayed into non-existence, the leaders and people of Europe have lost faith in their own guiding principles and legends. How else to explain a continent in which:

• you cannot speak of Christ, Christianity or Christmas on the soil that used to be known as Christendom;
• the people that produced the art, science and literature of the Renaissance now produce . . . little, because no one is working very hard;
• the countries that invented and perfected the idea of the nation-state are falling all over themselves to surrender their sovereignty to a supra-national European Union;
• some of the strongest armies in world history were created, yet today has virtually no military capability;
• the defeat of an invading Islamic army was repeated several times, but today lies prostrate before a horde of invading Muslim civilians that are subverting the culture from within;
• few are getting married, fewer are having babies, and the resulting, quickly aging population is oblivious to the mortal dangers these pose.

My final thought: are we there yet? Does Obama's election signal the end of the great American experiment in individual liberty, limited government and unbounded opportunity? Will he lead us down the path that Europe has already trod? Americans still describe themselves overwhelmingly as more conservative than liberal. How can that be squared with their political choices in 2008? Are so many of us so thoroughly brainwashed that we don't realize that we are not really conservative? Or were we just so disappointed in Bush and the fake conservative Republicans that we decided to give the real liberals a chance? Will we regret it as we did with Jimmy Carter and come to our senses? I DON'T KNOW. The stakes are very high. Obama's liberalism, whatever its true nature, is a lethal dart aimed at the heart of America. Will we duck or will we not even notice that it has struck its mark?

Since I unburdened myself of my sentiments on Obama and the Presidency a month prior to his inauguration, I thought it appropriate to do likewise a month following the inauguration. The original article may be found at

http://thewritestuff.blogtownhall.com/default.aspx

(Scroll down if you are reading this on my blog.)

Now what can be said two months later?

First of all, it is almost impossible not to like President Obama. He is charming, poised, intelligent, extremely well-spoken, has a fabulous smile and a photogenic family, and just oozes self confidence. I believe that, despite what some wrote during the campaign, he does love America and wants what he believes would be best for all its citizens. Next, as I wrote in my previous article, his election is a great step forward for our country—shining proof that we have laid to rest the terrible legacy of slavery that has haunted us for hundreds of years. He has handled his leading role in that transformation with grace and aplomb, and America owes him a great debt for the skill with which he has managed this accomplishment. Third, he has seemingly recognized that some of the partisan rhetoric that he spewed during the campaign was exactly that, and he has attempted to position himself more centrally in the actual governance of the country. I speak of the few Republicans in his cabinet, his backtracking on several of the unwise promises he made in the campaign—such as precipitously withdrawing from Iraq or immediately imposing punitive taxes on the citizenry—and finally his invitation of a few conservative pundits and journalists to dinner. Last, one has to feel for the man who, as he enters the White House, has been dealt one of the cruelest hands any incoming President has ever encountered. That unfortunate fate does not appear to have shaken his confidence, his enthusiasm or his conviction.

All that being said, I still maintain that his administration will be a calamitous occurrence for the United States of America.  I say that because when you strip away the charming veneer, bypass the racial issue, and ignore the feints to the Right, Barack Obama continues to epitomize the liberal mindset that has taken control of at least half the population of America and exerts almost total sway over certain key segments of our society and which, if it continues to cement its dominance over American culture and politics—as Obama's election certainly suggests it shall—will lead our country to the kind of ruin that is pervasive today in Western Europe. Indeed, I think the signs are already there that the "moderate" or "centrist" image that he has attempted to cultivate since the election is a sham. Deep in his heart he is a card carrying Leftist who not only believes deeply in the secularist state religion that is modern liberalism, but actually has scarcely any meaningful knowledge of the fundamental tenets of conservative thought or opinion that animates unregenerate right wingers like myself. I believe that either consciously, or perhaps even subconsciously—for that is the mode wherein the vast majority of Leftists formulate their opinions of conservative thought—he has been imbued with the conviction that conservative principles are fundamentally, irrevocably and demonstrably false and dangerous. No intelligent person should subscribe to such an outmoded way of thinking, which bears little in the way of examination. People like Teddy Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton just "know" that conservatives are on the wrong side of history. To them, conservatives are at best a bunch of misguided obstructionists who are holding back our country from the nirvana it shall surely become if only true liberal policies are enacted; and at worst a traitorous cabal of reactionaries, no better than monarchists, who want to keep us anchored in an unfair, decrepit and discredited culture, politics and economic system.

What are the early signs of Obama’s doctrinaire liberalism? Well first and foremost is his ironclad belief that the pork-laden, ill-conceived stimulus bill is indispensable to reversing the current economic downturn, and that anyone who opposes it is essentially unpatriotic. He has drunk from the Kool-Aid. He believes as gospel that similar measures employed by Roosevelt 75 years ago cured the Great Depression whereas it is totally evident in hindsight—and was equally evident then if only people would have looked with objective eyes—that all of Roosevelt’s wild spending and government intervention did nothing but prolong the Depression. Obama’s pseudo nationalization of the US economy will have the exact same deleterious effect, but he finds that thought abhorrent.

Next, while it is true that he has chosen some relative moderates for his administration, they are outnumbered by hard core liberals and radicals like Eric Holder, Elena Kagan, Hilda Solis and of course Hillary herself. The situation is akin to the Clinton administration where moderates like Rubin and Perry were substantially outnumbered by Janet Reno, Warren Christopher, Ron Brown and the like.

Continuing, while Obama’s first month in office has been absorbed with the economic crisis, he and his henchmen have made perfectly clear that pet projects of the Left will arrive on the nation’s docket rather soon: ‘card check,’ i.e., the abolition of free elections in the unionization process; universal amnesty for illegal aliens; ratification of Kyoto, cap and trade, and the pursuit of an energy policy and global climate change agenda that will cripple the economy—all in the misbegotten belief that mankind is destroying the Earth’s environment; socialized medicine; the resurrection of the “fairness doctrine” and the attendant destruction of talk radio; curtailment, if not outright abandonment, of any attempt at a missile defense capability; a kindler, gentler foreign policy to endear us to our enemies around the world that will only invite their contempt and abuse; unilateral defense and intelligence disarmament; elevation of “international law” above our own constitutional law; the abrogation of welfare reform (already achieved in the stimulus bill); and the raising of taxes, not only on the rich, by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire.

In his speech to Congress this week, Obama stressed the three main themes of his agenda: health care, education and energy. In each, his vision is that of a centrally directed, government-controlled effort that replaces individual will and free market inputs by the government as the driving force. Our health system will be universal, single-payer, accountable to government bureaucrats and health czars; our education will be financed by government and have its agenda set by the government; and our energy will be “green and clean.” The result will be that our health care will sink to the abominable level it manifests in all countries that have deployed socialized medicine; our propaganda system—er, that is, our school system will program its students—as it already does to a large extent—in favor of Leftist culture and politics; and our energy will be enormously costly, inadequate, scarce and government-rationed. Thank you very much.

In these and other ways, the average American will be reduced to little more than a ward of the State. Indeed, it is well known that already the top 1% of income earners pay 40% of the total income tax take to the IRS, that the top 5% pay 60% and the top 50% pay 97%; whereas more than a third of income tax filers pay absolutely nothing. Obama’s punitive taxes on the rich will skew those percentages even further and it might well be that nearly 50% will pay nothing. Not a recipe for social success when half the population lives off the sweat of the rest.

The fate in store for us is laid out starkly in two recent books, The End of Prosperity by Laffer, Moore and Tanous and The Great Depression Ahead by Dent. As much of the world (think India, Ireland, former Soviet vassal states in Eastern Europe, some in “old” Western Europe and even China) adopts pro-growth, low tax, free trade, deregulatory policies, the exact policies that propelled the US to great wealth in the 1980s and 1990s, we revert to the failed policies of the 1930s and 1970s. I have wondered how the people of Venezuela could freely vote themselves a dictatorship. What stupidity! But we might be no smarter. We have freely and enthusiastically elected a government that will punish us with proven failed policies, and Obama and crew, during the campaign, made no secret about their intentions to do so. What we have sown so shall we reap.

Obama has been compared by various pundits (on both the Left and Right) to Carter, Clinton and Roosevelt. To my way of thinking, the first was totally incompetent, the second largely irrelevant and the latter one of the most consequential Presidents in US  history—although, at least domestically, I believe those consequences have been disastrous for America. Which of these three shall Obama ultimately resemble? Conservatives are desperately hoping the first and that like Carter, Obama will be succeeded by a Reaganesque hero who will rescue us. If it is Clinton, then we are in for two years of helter-skelter Leftist thrusts, followed by a checkmated President who will inadvertently pursue policies beneficial to the country. But alas, I predicted that Obama’s administration would be a calamity for the country because I fear he is liable to be another Roosevelt: immensely popular, shielded from criticism by an adoring and complicit media, uncaring about or oblivious to the harm he is causing and the instigator of programs that further tighten the grip that the Left has on the culture, politics and economic system of these United States. For, as I said in the first article, I subscribe to Thomas Sowell’s assertion—since endorsed by many conservative pundits—that Obama’s election will be a tipping point propelling America irreversibly past the point of no return down the path to socialism.

A final thought: The age of Obama represents not so much the political defeat of conservative Republicans by liberal Democrats as much as it solidifies the triumph of the multicultural, multi-lateral, strongly secular, pacifistic anti-Western civilization radicals over those who champion traditional American culture. In fact that cultural triumph actually happened some time ago. The main thing that Obama’s election signifies is that the nation’s politics have caught up with its culture.