"Step Off, Barack!"

September 21, 2009

Barack Obama has bowed down in obeisance to Saudi King Abdullah. He's delighted Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinehad by throwing our Eastern European allies under the bus when he caved in to Russia's demands that we scrap the long-range missile defense system. And his FCC "diversity" czar, Mark Lloyd, has all but awarded the medal of freedom to Hugo Chavez. Despite this, like George Costanza - who in one "Seinfeld" episode tried his damnedest to ingratiate himself with Elaine's adventurer boyfriend, Tony - all Obama has gotten in return for his spineless pandering is a resounding, "Step off!"

The lead of a recent New York Times article, a classic example of that paper's snarky leftism, puts it another way: "As much as they may prefer to deal with Mr. Obama instead of his predecessor, George W. Bush, foreign leaders have not gone out of their way to give him what he wants." What the article's author, Peter Baker, fails to mention as he tries to shore up his case that Obama is "restoring the country's international standing" is that the President wants nothing more than to be welcomed into the fold by the gang of anti-American tyrants that has its sights on bringing our country to its knees. Obama's need to be recognized as "one of the guys" by the group of thugs that includes the Iranian and Russian despots, along with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, has led him to make unprecedented concessions to our mortal enemies.

Iran's "step off" has included Ahmadinejad's latest holocaust-denying harangue and his country's refusal to allow the issue of nuclear weapons to be included in the agenda for the upcoming U.S.-Iran meeting. And despite diversity czar Mark Lloyd's plans to initiate a crackdown on American "right wing" broadcasting that would have a similar chilling effect on free speech to that of Venezuela's closing of all but one of the radio station thats have dared to challenge Chavez's leadership, Chavez appears reluctant to admit Obama into the International Order of Dictator-Wannabes. Even though Obama lieutenant Lloyd has gone so far as to praise Chavez's "democratic" revolution, the President himself is still getting no more than a dismissive "so what?" from his South American idol.

In his attempts to gain favor with the world's dictators, the President has come out against legitimate democratic institutions of all kinds, often going to extraordinary lengths to maintain untenable positions in support of tyranny. His administration's failure to acknowledge that former Honduran president Zelaya's taking office as that country's president was against Honduras's constitution put the U.S. in the unusual position of joining the international community in its condemnation of democracy. As Mary Anastasia notes in the Wall Street Journal (September 21, 2009), the Congressional Research Service has issued a report that says Honduras's "judicial and legislative branches applied constitutional and statutory law in the case against President Zelaya in a manner that was judged . . . to be in accordance with the Honduran legal system."

But perhaps the President's most egregious affront to liberty-loving people around the world occurred when Obama sat on the sidelines while Iranians uniting in dissent against a tyrannical government were imprisoned and murdered in the streets. It's certainly one of the most disturbing of many examples of the depths to which America's leadership of the free world has sunk in the name of our President's need to be one of the gang.

The antidote to the President's pushing America toward support of the world's dictators in the hope of proving he's worthy of sharing their company may be brewing all over the U.S. From tea parties protesting excessive spending to the outcry against ACORN to resistance to Obama's healthcare legislation, citizens are standing up to the President and demanding that he return America to its preeminent role as the leader of the free world. This fall's gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Maryland may provide an early indicator of just how disgusted Americans are with the President's positions. Victories by Republicans in those two states might be the first step in America's echoing the message the world's dictators are sending to the President: "Step off, Barack!"