Obama

It is nice when events reaffirm your core beliefs. Obama-mania is such an event. The comparisons of Obama to JFK were inevitable. Young, good-looking, beautiful wife, fine orator...Democrat. All of this is serving to reaffirm one of my principle beliefs about the way most conservatives and liberals think. Not what they think - how they think.

Liberalism subsists on imagery.

JFK is an icon to Liberals much the same way that Reagan is an icon to Conservatives. Reagan served two full terms as president, revitalized the conservative movement, won two presidential elections in landslides and had a whole host of accomplishments. Kennedy won a single contested election and served only 3 years. Kennedy's accomplishments in those three years included cutting taxes, invading Cuba and escalating our involvement in Vietnam exponentially. Not exactly a legacy Liberals have embraced since.

It is not Kennedy's record that makes Liberals swoon. It is his image - Camelot.

Compare Kennedy's inaugural address to Obama's speeches today.

"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country".

Does this sound like Obama? That is the polar opposite of the message from Obama and Democrats (perfectly illustrated in Hillary Clinton's Christmas ad showing Hillary wrapping the "gifts" of universal health care, universal pre-kindergarten and alternative energy that she was going to give Americans. Gifts you pay for!) . The message from Obama and the Democrats today is "we will have the government give you more gifts than the Republicans".

"...we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty".

Forget about supporting any friend, opposing any foe and the survival and success of liberty for Iraqis. To Obama even "preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there".

"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it".

No images of Obama springing up in your mind? The only defending of freedom I can see from the Democrats lately is the defending of trial lawyer's rights to sue telecom companies that cooperate with catching terrorists.

Of course, Obama avoids these real comparisons of himself and JFK in his speeches by talking about...nothing. By nothing, I mean evoking "hope", "unity", "change", "yes, we can"...without context is meaningless. Hope for what? Unify behind what? Change to what? Yes, we can do what?

Last week it was discovered that an Obama volunteer office in Texas had a Cuban flag with the image of Che Guevara hanging on the wall. Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe said it well:

IN 1963, John F. Kennedy was murdered in Texas by a fervent admirer of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. In 2008, a large Cuban flag emblazoned with the image of Che Guevara, Castro's brutal henchman, is prominently displayed in a Barack Obama campaign volunteer office in Houston.

In December 1962, Kennedy offered a blunt summary of the Castro/Che record. "The Cuban people were promised by the revolution political liberty, social justice, intellectual freedom, land for the campesinos, and an end to economic exploitation," he said. "They have received a police state, the elimination of the dignity of land ownership, the destruction of free speech and a free press, and the complete subjugation of individual human welfare."

Were he alive today, it's hard to imagine JFK feeling anything but contempt for those who extol a dictatorship that has been crushing freedom and human beings for nearly 50 years. And it would surely pain him that so many of the cheerleaders are members of his own party.

He concludes:

The lionizing of Che, a sociopath who relished killing and acclaimed "the pedagogy of the firing squad," is not just "inappropriate." It is vile.

But Che sure cuts a romantic revolutionary image in that famous photograph.

John Lennon's "All we are saying is give peace a chance" is a catchy tune and a lovely image. It is not a policy for the defense of our country. Perhaps that is why the Obama speeches are now being put to music. His lyrics are equally meaningless.