America's Retreat From Liberty

As I reflect upon this Independence Day, I find myself troubled by the realization that, while liberty was once this nation’s greatest export, today we fear even to advocate it, encourage it, or it extol its virtues. Over the last few years, liberating oppressed peoples has been disparaged as “imposing our values” on others. In just the last few months, our elites have re-defined patriotism as submission to higher taxes and opposition to the job killing cap and trade carbon tax bill has been denounced as treason. On CNN, host Rick Sanchez ridiculed a Republican congressman for saying that his party stood in defense of liberty.

I think back two decades when people trapped behind the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain were demanding their liberty after decades of tyranny. Back then we had a president who believed in this country’s founding principles. He called the United States the “Shining City on the Hill” that beckoned to all. He stood with those who stood up to their oppressors and the Soviet empire ultimately collapsed bringing liberty to peoples who had never known it.

Scarcely twenty years later, our current president could not bring himself to speak up on behalf of liberty-seeking Iranians who were risking and sometimes giving their lives by standing up to one of the world’s most barbarous and dangerous tyrannies. He feared that he would be perceived as interfering in Iran’s internal affairs. This is more than a bit ironic because shortly before the Iranian election, Obama was preemptively claiming credit for having influenced Iran’s presidential election through the speech he had delivered to the Muslim world one week earlier.

It took two weeks of ridicule and an angry speech on the senate floor by John McCain before Obama mustered the will to withdraw the invitation that he had extended to Iranian diplomats to attend July 4th barbecues. That’s what qualifies as getting tough these days.

Never mind that the overthrow of the Iranian regime would have solved a great many problems for the civilized world, not the least of which being that the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism is pursuing nuclear weapons. Never mind that Iranians yearn to breath free from despotism and still do admire the shining city on the hill even if many in this country don’t. Never mind that the mullahs are now tracking down and hanging the organizers of the protests. Obama fears that if he speaks out in support of Iranian liberty, then his goal of sweet-talking the mad mullahs into behaving as decent citizens will be undermined.

Obama adopted a much more interventionist approach to poor, freedom-loving Honduras. When the Honduran legislature and judiciary tossed out a rogue president who was attempting to install himself as president for life, Obama did not hesitate to interfere in Honduran affairs. When Honduras acted to preserve its young democracy from a power-mad president, Obama’s instinctive reaction was to join communists Hugo Chaves, Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega in condemning Honduras and demanding that Honduras reinstate the wannabe dictator.

The reason Obama gave was that he had to condemn Honduras lest he be suspected of engineering the “coup” in the first place.

Once again, Obama is more concerned about how he is perceived by the world’s worst despots than in the freedom of those who treasure liberty.

I suppose that we should not be so surprised that this president is so hesitant about promoting such values as liberty and democracy. Last month, in his speech to the Muslim world, Obama made a special point of lavishing praise (much of it historically inaccurate) upon the Islamic world. There is no record of Obama speaking of his own country in such glowing terms and I cannot imagine Obama doing so. So far, he has elected to apologize to the world for what he considers America’s excesses.

I’m sure he treasures the good opinion this has earned him from the world’s despots.

Europe is a free and democratic continent now thanks to the United States. One hundred years ago, Europe was governed primarily by monarchies. By 1940, most of Europe was under the boot of brutal dictatorships. Europe is now free because the United States liberated it. Thanks to the United States, almost the entire Western hemisphere is free and democratic. Iraq is now a free and democratic nation. This was not accomplished by presidents who feared being viewed as meddlers.

Obama Finally Gets Tough With The Mullahs

No hot dogs for you!

The Obama administration has rescinded an offer for Iranian envoys to attend U.S. embassy Fourth of July parties as the violent crackdown in Tehran continues.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday notified diplomats and other department employees overseas that her earlier invitations had been withdrawn.

The mullahs are quaking in their sandals.