Obama's Poor Sense Of History Causes Him To Be Passive

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

President Obama doesn't know much about history.

 

In his therapeutic 2009 Cairo speech, Obama outlined all sorts of Islamic intellectual and technological pedigrees, several of which were undeserved.

 

He exaggerated Muslim contributions to printing and medicine, for example, and was flat-out wrong about the catalysts for the European Renaissance and Enlightenment.

 

He also believes history follows some predetermined course, as if things always get better on their own. Obama often praises those he pronounces to be on the "right side of history." He also chastises others for being on the "wrong side of history" — as if evil is vanished and the good thrives on autopilot.

 

When in 2009 millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest the thuggish theocracy, they wanted immediate U.S. support. Instead, Obama belatedly offered them banalities, suggesting that in the end they would end up "on the right side of history."

 

Iranian reformers may indeed end up there, but it will not be because of some righteous inanimate force of history, or the prognostications of Barack Obama.

[SrWoodchuck]

Sweet @Geee!

 

Obama is Not Failing History. History has Failed Obama.

 

http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/

 

Bad news: Obama is failing History 101, and it looks like he won't even be able to pull an affirmative action mascot's D, let alone a gentleman's C.

Did he just not study? Or did he study the wrong historians? Or did he perhaps unconsciously assimilate the latter by virtue of having no contact with anyone else, and then having insufficient curiosity to find out what the revisionists are so busy revising? Or what these tenured apes unknow and why they are so dead set on unknowing it?

I have to be honest and think back, because I too once believed all that revisionist crap. Passionately. I was as passionate about it as I am about truth, because I thought it was true -- not only true, but suppressed and denied by the Powers that Be, so that made me doubly pissed! How dare they deny us the truth! So what if truth doesn't exist! That doesn't permit Big Whitey to patronize us with childish myths!

Not only is Obama failing history, but his fellow treedwellers in California are actually enacting a law to force children to learn about what an important historical figure Obama is! Well, that he is. Not because he is a half-white, but because he is a half-wit.

To put it another way, it will henceforth be against the law in California to tell the simple truth about Obama, or in other words, to desist from mindfucking the children. Children Will Learn, for example, that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize within moments of being elected because of "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Fastest president ever! No wonder he needs so much down time. Those extraordinary efforts in the first days of his presidency wore him out. He gave us peace. Now let's give him some.

Let's look at some of the ways Obama has failed history: "He exaggerated Muslim contributions to printing and medicine, for example, and was flat-out wrong about the catalysts for the European Renaissance and Enlightenment" (Hanson).

True, but in rebuttal, Obama might point out that VDH is naive about the real purpose of history, which is to boost the self-esteem of various abstract racial, religious, and pervertarian "classes" and groups -- in particular, the privileged historical losers -- and to denigrate the evil winners. And by "winners," we mean western civilization, i.e., Christendom, so it turns out that Obama is in fact rigorously intellectually consistent. Or a consistent anti-intellectual, rather.

Next, Obama "also believes history follows some predetermined course, as if things always get better on their own. Obama often praises those he pronounces to be on the 'right side of history.' He also chastises others for being on the 'wrong side of history' -- as if evil is vanished and the good thrives on autopilot" (VDH).

To which Obama would no doubt respond: a-DOY! As if Hegel and Marx were just some dead white European males! Modern leftist gnosticism is rooted in those two rascals, who wasted barrels of ink proving that history is indeed on dialectical autopilot, and that its outcome is foreordained.

Except when it's not, in which case you have to break a few skulls, or bribe a few senators, or use the IRS to harass the enemies of History. Don't worry, it's all good -- the end, that is. So long as we are serving it, the means scarcely matter.

Let's pause for an aphorism or three, since Dávila saw Obama coming in his vast world-historical rearview mirror: "Reason, Progress and Justice are the three theological virtues of the fool." Which is why the progressive is a priori a fool. All the fool has to do is get out of the way of history and don't do Stupid s^#@, because Progress.

 

Obama often repeats that crack about "the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice," seemingly oblivious to the fact that 1) it's just a poetic metaphor, not a literal truth, 2) it doesn't bend at all except insofar as bent human beings undertake the lifetime task of trying to unbend themselves, one assoul at a time, and 3) "justice" does not simply refer to "what progressives want."

Or in other words, justice is not to be confused with the arousal and appeasement of envy -- the latter being social justice, not Justice. Justice means giving a man his due, not stealing a man's goods to satisfy the envious mob.

Obama despises our kind of course, but he cares deeply about those Others, i.e., the envious mob. Why? Because "Compassion is the best excuse for envy" (Dávila). And "Envy differs from the other vices by the ease with which it disguises itself as virtue" (ibid.). So, get on the right side of history and pay up, sucka'!

"Another of Obama's historical refrains is his frequent sermon about behavior that doesn't belong in the 21st century" -- as if one can distinguish right from wrong by consulting the calendar. Well, if it doesn't belong in the 21st century, then how did it get here? Can't we just synchronize our calendars, and advance Islamist watches forward a dozen centuries or so?

What leftists fail to grasp is that their ideas and behavior not only do not belong in the 7th (or any other) century, but that the Islamist means to do something about it, i.e., kill you.

Besides, telling an Islamist he's living in the 7th century is the sincerest form of flattery. It's like telling a Marxist he's accurately parroting the party line, or correctly propagating the Truth of the Day.

 

One man's myth is another man's guiding star. I would sooner believe George Washington never told a lie than Obama ever uttered a truth.

 

posted by Gagdad Bob at 8/28/2014 09:25:00 AM