Joseph Ashby, in the American Thinker, wrote that Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, is on this council. Emanuel’s credo concerning rationing to the elderly is: “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25 year olds receive priority over 65 year olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years.” Some comfort. Some logic. Some values.
It is thus preordained that ObamaCare will ultimately go into cost-cutting mode, saving money by curtailing treatment. As frighteningly long and complex as the ObamaCare legislation is, Ashby warns the regulations promulgated under it could be vastly worse and give regulators enormous power to interpret the law and regulations. This is certainly consistent with our experience in the entire field of administrative law.
Ashby says that if that happens, regulatory czar Cass Sunstein would doubtlessly play a major role in crafting and administering the regulations and thus in controlling medical care. And how does Sunstein view “end of life care?” It should be no surprise, given Obama’s chosen cast of macabre characters, that Sunstein once wrote a paper for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies in which he posited that human life varies in value, which is hardly a principle one would find in the Book of Genesis. It gets worse. Sunstein advocates the government employing “statistical methods that give preference to ‘quality-adjusted life years,’” as determined by the government. In Ashby’s words, “If the government decides the life is not worth living, it is the individual’s duty to die to free up welfare payments for the young and productive.”65
Contrary to Obama’s claims, America has the best healthcare system in the world, with far fewer chronically uninsured than he says. If Obama truly wanted to reform the system and bring down costs, he would initiate a series of market-based reforms, such as those offered by conservative Republicans, including expanding health savings accounts, reducing costly government mandates and regulations, permitting health insurance purchases across state lines, amending the tax code’s discriminatory treatment militating in favor of employer provided healthcare, tort reform, and portability solutions. As Dr. David Gratzer wrote in his book The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care, “Capitalism is not the cause of America’s health-care problem. It is the cure.”
But instead of market-based reforms, Obama has forced through a system that will not ameliorate, but exacerbate the problems of access to care, choice, and quality. Finally, ObamaCare comprised more unsustainable spending on top of all the crushing debt our president has already lassoed onto our children. Nevertheless, he is determined to create a new entitlement to vastly expand the dependency class on whom he and other Democrats increasingly rely for their votes, their careers, and their resulting political power. What this is ultimately about is expanding government control—it’s about crimes against our liberties.
Chapter Thirteen
THE ANTI-AMERICAN
CRIMES AGAINST THE NATION
At the April 2010 nuclear summit in Washington, D.C., Obama uttered a single sentence that encapsulated his approach to foreign policy: “Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them; and that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.” Outraged, Senator John McCain declared this statement was a “direct contradiction to everything America believes in.”1
Obama’s disdain for American exceptionalism and for America’s history—as viewed in his eyes—is palpable. He has made that clear with his manifold apologies on both U.S. and foreign soil. He believes America unfairly consumes a disproportionate share of the world’s resources; that we have projected our power imprudently, imperiously, unfairly, arrogantly, and dismissively; and that America has been too nationalistic and too resistant to what he believes are the inevitable forces of globalism.
He believes we must radically change course and share much more of our resources, especially with third world countries. In his view, America should reach out to other nations, adopt more of their enlightened and progressive values, and make amends for our past wrongs. He thinks our already deplorable international record was exacerbated by his predecessor’s “cowboy diplomacy.” This, coupled with Bush’s record in the war on terror—including his invasion of Iraq, his approval of enhanced interrogation techniques, and his enabling of Gitmo—resulted in the proliferation of terrorists. He is convinced that by drawing a line in the sand between the forces of good and evil and by refusing to engage terrorists and terrorist sponsoring states, we have lost ground in the war. His approach to foreign policy and national security can only be understood against this backdrop.
“A SPRAWLING, PROFANE BEAR OF A PREACHER”
How do we know Obama harbors the attitudes we’ve described? Well, he sat approvingly at the feet of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, for years. Wright’s incendiary sermons were legendary. ABC News, in its “review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of America based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.” How could anyone sit in Wright’s pews and be indifferent to his indictments of America, especially a man aspiring to be president of the United States?
Wright’s doctrine of choice, Black Liberation Theology, is arguably more Afrocentric and Marxist than Biblical in its orientation. While many have quoted Wright, a few of his statements bear repeating here, not for their inflammatory tone, but for the race-oriented grievance mentality against “White America” that they reveal. If Obama hadn’t adopted domestic and foreign policies consistent with this mindset (and with the principles and attitudes ingrained in him by his mother and his Communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, among others), there would be no point in quoting Wright. But he has.
Wright said in a 2003 sermon, “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God da** America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God da** America for treating our citizens as less than human. God da** America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.” On the Sunday following the 9/11 attacks, Wright implied America had invited the massacre. “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”2
Wright has referred to “the U.S. of KKK A”3 and has declared, “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run.... We [in the U.S.] believe in this white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.” He also wrote in a church-affiliated magazine, “In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.”4
Given to anti-Israel and anti-Semitic riffs, Wright referred to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, with whom Wright traveled to Libya to visit the country’s crackpot leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi, as “one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st centuries.” Beyond sympathizing with Palestinians, Wright also frequently condemned Israel directly, as when he said, “The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for almost 40 years now,” and denounced “the injustice and racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism.”5 He also once claimed in an interview that “them Jews” were keeping Obama from speaking to him.6
Wright had been unleashing these racist, anti-capitalist, anti-Semitic, and anti-American screeds for decades—an
d certainly as long as Obama had been affiliated with his church. In a much earlier sermon, Wright had claimed we live in “a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Portau-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere.... That’s the world! On which hope sits!” We learned of this sermon in Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father,7 written by a man who later claimed to be unaware of Wright’s invective.
Indeed, during his presidential campaign, Obama insisted he “personally” hadn’t heard “such incendiary language.” Wright, he said, “always preached the social gospel.” Had he heard these sermons he “would have quit.” Not only did these denials fail the laugh test, but we have independent proof that Obama knew. A New York Times story from March 2007 reported that the Obama campaign had rescinded its invitation to Wright to deliver a public invocation at the ceremony announcing Obama’s candidacy. Wright reported that Obama called him “fifteen minutes before Shabbos” and told him “one of his members had talked him into uninviting me.”
Obama, citing a Rolling Stone article about his ties to Wright, reportedly told Wright, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”8 The article, titled “The Radical Roots of Barack Obama,” described Wright as “a sprawling, profane bear of a preacher, a kind of black ministerial institution,” and cited Wright’s “10 essential facts about the United States,” which were caustic and unflattering, to say the least. As ABC News’ Jake Tapper later asked with extreme understatement, “This [Rolling Stone piece] was more than a year ago. So ... what did Obama know then and what did he just all of a sudden learn?”9
Based on Obama’s statements, policies, and performance in office, it is clear he shares Reverend Wright’s basic worldview, which is why Wright’s statements are still relevant today—they are directly impacting our nation. But Obama knew the public would be mortified if they were aware of his relationship with Wright, which is why he decided it would be “best” for Wright not to be “out there in public.”
If Obama hadn’t exhibited knee-jerk racism (as in the case of siding with Harvard professor Henry Gates against the Cambridge police before hearing both sides of the story, and as with his stunning protection of the New Black Panther Party); if he hadn’t exhibited such obvious hostility to our ally Israel; if he hadn’t been doing everything in his power to redistribute wealth among Americans in ways he believes are fair; if he hadn’t pushed through socialized medicine against the will of the people; if he weren’t trying to effect a redistribution of America’s resources to other nations to further settle what he perceives as our injustices toward the world; if he hadn’t appointed a slew of radicals as czars and advisers; and if he hadn’t apologized for and condemned America at almost every turn, we could dismiss his voluntary association with Reverend Wright. But based on what we know, we do so at our peril.
As noted, Obama’s worldview leads him to scorn American exceptionalism and American sovereignty in favor of a globalist approach. At a speech at West Point in May 2010, he pledged to shape a new “international order” as part of a national security strategy that emphasizes his faith in global institutions and international cooperation as the best vehicles for securing America’s interests.10 Obama’s words caused some to question how much U.S. sovereignty he was willing to cede in exchange for global “cooperation.” KT McFarland, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Ronald Reagan, worried Obama was rejecting American exceptionalism. “It’s a very international sense,” said McFarland, “that America is just one of many, that we are not going to be a superpower in leading the world and I think it’s a very dangerous mindset and trend.”11
Obama is suspicious of our traditional allies and sympathetic to our rivals and enemies. A simple, three-framed cartoon from the comic strip titled “Hope n’ Change,” by Stilton Jarlsberg, placed it in graphic perspective. All three frames depict a smiling Obama with these captions: 1) Obama: “Okay, I admit that I’ve backed down from Russia, Iran, and North Korea. But I got really tough with Israel.” 2) An un-pictured questioner: “Isn’t Israel our ally?” 3) Obama: “Define ‘our’”...
WE’RE SO SORRY
Once sworn in, Obama wasted little time in making amends for what he viewed as America’s many sins against the world. He couldn’t trot the globe fast enough to apologize on behalf of America. Having dealt almost exclusively in the world of words throughout his life, he thought his utterances alone could move diplomatic mountains. Whether delivered on American or foreign soil, his message was the same: America has been bad in the past, including the recent past. I had nothing to do with it, of course, but as its current leader I apologize. And I expect the slate to be wiped clean because I’m in charge now.
Thus, on April 2, 2009, at the G20 meeting in London, he declared, “I would like to think that with my election and the early decisions that we’ve made, that you’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world.” Similarly, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, based on Obama’s apologetic rhetoric, Obama had “changed the image of America around the world” and made the United States “safer and stronger.”
Patronizingly, Obama told the CIA it had made “mistakes” in its Bush-era counter-terrorism policies. He told the Arabic-language Al Arabiya TV network that America “dictates” without knowing “all the factors involved.” He told the G20 group America needs to account for “inadequacies” in its “regulatory system.” He accepted blame and “responsibility” on our behalf for the economic crisis having begun in the United States—“even if I wasn’t president at the time.” He told the French that America failed “to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world,” and that we’d shown “arrogance” and been “dismissive” and “derisive.”
And the apologies kept on coming. He apologized to Latin America for our failure to pursue “sustained engagement with our neighbors.” He repeated in Trinidad that we had been “disengaged” and “dictatorial.”12 Echoing Reverend Wright, he said in Prague America had “a moral responsibility to act” on arms control because we were the only nation that had ever “used a nuclear weapon.”13 Then in May 2010, the administration went so far as to apologize for Arizona’s immigration law to the Communist Chinese, whose civil rights violations are legendary. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reported that during a meeting with Chinese leaders, U.S. representatives, on their own initiative, repeatedly denounced the Arizona law as a “troubling trend in our society, and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination.”14
Likewise, Obama, in a Rose Garden press conference with Mexican president Felipe Calderón, declined to reply after Calderón blasted Arizona for its immigration law—a reticence widely interpreted as signaling agreement. If anything, Obama should have encouraged Calderón to reform the dismal conditions in Mexico that lead his people to storm our borders. Or perhaps Obama could have addressed Mexico’s brutal treatment of its own illegal aliens, who Amnesty International found are subject to “extortion, beatings, kidnap, rape and murder by officials or criminal gangs that often [operate] with the complicity of local authorities.”15
The Rose Garden event was remarkable, for as one writer noted, this might have been the first time “a foreign head of state who is promoting an ongoing, aggressive, illegal, and often violent invasion of America came to our country, met with our president, and, from the White House itself, received our president’s implicit but obvious public support for that invasion.”16
With such a warped view of America, Obama doesn’t seem familiar with America’s benevolent actions toward other nations, such as fighting the spread of Communism, liberating peoples—including many Muslims—from oppressive governments, helping to defeat the Imperial Japanese and the Nazis in World War II, or rebuilding vanquished nations through the Mars
hall Plan.
Through abject apologies, Obama aims to rectify the damage President Bush supposedly caused to our image. As he tilts at diplomatic windmills, he believes he is showing the world he is not the unsophisticated rube his predecessor was.
IRAN
The antiwar Left regularly mocked President Bush for viewing Iran as a nuclear threat. They smugly claimed vindication when the now-discredited National Intelligence Estimate reported in 2007, “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”17 Fast forward to 2009 and the Left’s hand-picked president, Barack Obama, was desperately searching for a way to end Iran’s supposedly non-existent nuclear program. He had unleashed his negotiators in Vienna to try to strike a deal with the Iranians that would delay the mullahs’ ability to build a nuclear weapon for about a year, “buying more time for President Obama to search for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear standoff.”
The proposed deal contemplated Iran sending three-quarters of its uranium fuel, which it claimed it needed for peaceful purposes, to Russia for further enrichment. Russia would return it to Iran in the form of metal fuel rods, which could only be used for nuclear reactors, not for weapons. This depletion of uranium would slow down any Iranian plans to produce a nuclear weapon. The New York Times reported that administration officials were cautiously optimistic they could reach a “broader diplomatic accord” with Iran.18
It didn’t take long for Iran to renege and for Obama’s enlightened method of engagement to prove a failure. And as this charade unfolded, Iran bought more time to advance its nuclear program and earned U.S. diplomatic engagement—all for violating UN Security Council declarations and giving nothing in return. Investors Business Daily’s editors asked, “How can a theocratic government with a stone-age worldview take the most sophisticated, modern, industrialized nation in the world for a ride, as if we just fell of the turnip truck?” Answer: “Because those who run Iran realize they are engaged in a global war. Those who now run American foreign policy, on the other hand, think ‘war on terror’ is passé.” Obama’s approach sounds nice, “but it is the naïveté of Neville Chamberlain and the piece of paper he waved bearing Hitler’s autograph.”19
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