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 (Couldn’t resist posting this, but you don’t have to watch it to understand the post)

The Gunslinger linked to this piece by Robert Weissberg in American Thinker, and I’ve been trying to write about it for a while now. I encourage you to read it all, but here’s the basic point:

 “After auditioning countless political terms, I finally realized that the Obama administration and its congressional collaborators almost resemble a foreign occupying force, a coterie of politically and culturally non-indigenous leaders whose rule contravenes local values rooted in our national tradition. It is as if the United States has been occupied by a foreign power, and this transcends policy objections. It is not about Obama’s birthplace. It is not about race, either; millions of white Americans have had black mayors and black governors, and this unease about out-of-synch values never surfaced.

The term I settled on is “alien rule” — based on outsider values, regardless of policy benefits — that generates agitation.” 

It would be easy to dismiss this as racism, despite the author’s denials. And perhaps he really is a racist, I don’t know. But let’s take him at his word and suppose that he isn’t. What is it he senses from Obama that seems to him so foreign?

In his article, he lists numerous supposedly non-native things Obama has done, such as various appointments, his association with Bill Ayers (which isn’t much), his bowing to foreign leaders, his acknowledgments–Weissberg calls them apologies–for various things that America has done in the past, etc. 

But he is wrong. These things are not un-American; rather, they are merely the behavior of one who does not believe in American exceptionalism–at least not deeply. A simpler way of putting this is to say that Obama has a distinct lack of nationalistic feeling.

Now, let me make it clear that this does not (necessarily) mean Obama is lacking in patriotism. The distinction is a subtle one, and I find I cannot improve upon George Orwell’s description of the difference:  “Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation…”

Orwell, who was no nationalist, was a tad harsh in his language, but he spoke to a core truth. Nationalism is a feeling not merely of pride in one’s country, but rather a desire for–and it sounds worse than I mean it to–conquest, perhaps even for empire. And nationalism places far higher importance upon symbols and traditions than does the kind of pacifically patriotic cosmopolitanism that Obama embodies. To the nationalist, a bow to a foreign leader, or the failure to wear a flag pin, is of great significance, yet to the non-nationalist these things hold no meaning.

To this extent, Weissberg is correct in his assessment that Obama is not like “us”, if we take “us” to be the largely nationalist readers of the American Thinker. But this does not mean he is foreign. On the contrary; the philosophy of Obama’s is one that is common here, especially in the cities. This particular feeling of patriotic love of one’s own country, but lack of a desire to export it, is not foreign. It is merely the typical attitude of the cosmopolitan intellectual.

(Because this attitude is so common in the cities, it is no surprise that the nationalists have such low regard for them. When Sarah Palin spoke of “pro-America” parts of the country, it was to the nationalistic, rural areas that she was alluding, as opposed to the cosmopolitanism of the cities.)

And here we begin to see the true nature of the divide between right and left, Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal. All these titles are merely masks for the divide between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. That is the difference.

If one had to sum up what Weissberg sees in Obama in a single word, it would be not “foreign”, nor “alien”; but rather “internationalist”.

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“I’m not calling [Sarah Palin] a Nazi, but that’s the same kind of tactic that the Nazi troopers used in Germany in the ’30s.”–Joe Mcginniss.

Will this I-don’t-like-it-so-it-is-like-the-Nazis garbage never end?

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I once commented on L’Hote, after its proprietor had accidentally run afoul of Tiger Beatdown, that: “feminism is a philosophical concept, not an objective thing. And because it has no real objective truth, it can ultimately only be determined by what people believe it to be.”

I guess what I was driving at with that comment was sort of the same idea that Paul Graham articulated when he wrote: “Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words.” Feminism is a philosophy, and thus it is fundamentally subject to what we think “feminism” means, and that is subject to whatever any given person wants it to mean.

I am reminded of this by the news that Sarah Palin has been trying to claim “feminism” for the conservatives. Feminists are, of course, upset–or should I say that those we typically call “feminists” are upset; for what does it truly mean to be a feminist?

The real question, I suppose, is why does Palin wish to reclaim that word for the Conservatives?

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Over at Conservatives4Palin, C. Brooks Kurtz makes a good point regarding the complaints about Sarah Palin’s increased earnings since resigning the governorship. I’ve always been a little puzzled by this myself. Why does it bother people? Or, more accurately: why do the folks in the media seem to speak about it as if it should bother people?

Kurtz’s is an interesting, Francisco d’Anconia-esque piece, and well worth reading.

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William Saletan writes:

“There was no America, as a nation, until Britain foolishly behaved as Palin now wants America to behave. Her advice is a prescription for superpower suicide. If she understood the Boston Tea Party as more than a slogan, she’d know that.”

It seems to me like the British Empire declined for very long time–never completely ceasing to be an Empire until after World War II. So, if Saletan is right and Palin’s advice is indeed analogous to the British policy at the time of the Boston Tea Party, we’ve still got about 200 years left.

On the one hand, it’s tempting to give in to this idea that history repeats itself. On the other hand, it strikes me as a rather simplistic analysis. I’m no historian, but I do think that Britain’s superpower status should probably have an asterisk by it, because they almost never successfully beat any similarly-equipped enemy apart from (sometimes) the French. The United States has defeated most of Europe twice.

As an aside, Pat Buchanan–who I wrote a post about last week–has been saying for years that we’re behaving like the British Empire did to trigger its decline.  Yet, he seems to be something of a fan of Palin.

(Hat Tip to Andrew Sullivan for the Saletan article.)

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Well, I don’t know. But he sure didn’t want to say if President Obama was or not. Here is an excerpt from his interview yesterday on CBS news’ Face the Nation (My comments in red):

BOB SCHIEFFER: A large group of people in the Tea Party think the President is pushing the country towards socialism. Do you believe that?

SENATOR SCOTT BROWN: I know that the President should start to focus on jobs and job
creation and– and– and– and– and that hasn’t been done. [As Benjamin Bell pointed out, Brown voted for a “jobs bill”] Since I’ve been here we’ve done health care, which they obviously rammed through by using a parliamentary procedure that has never been used for something this big ever. And then the bill as we’re finding out is– is flawed, seriously flawed. It’s going to cost medical device companies in my state, you know, thousands of jobs. But then, we’re taking– we’re talking now about regulation reform. [At this point, it’s pretty clear he’s dodging the question.] We’re politicizing that. Maybe– I’ve heard illegal immigration is going to come forth. When we’re in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the only thing they talked about from the Presidents all the way down to the poorest farmer were jobs. Since I’ve been here, I’ve heard zero talk about jobs. [It’s occurring to you that you ought not to have voted for that bill, isn’t it?] So, I’ll let–leave that up to the political pundits, but I know from what I’ve seen that we need to focus on jobs and the President should start to do so.

SCHIEFFER: “But, do you decline to answer my question: is he pushing the country
towards socialism?” [Oh, dear, he’s making you answer the question.]

BROWN: “I don’t think he’s making proper choices when it comes to dealing with the– the free market and free enterprise and allowing businesses to– to really run themselves and create jobs. [So, would that be a “yes”?] And as a result, larger government is happening and we’re creating jobs but they’re all government jobs. And the private sector is definitely– definitely suffering.”

Hmmm. “Dealing with the free market”, eh?

Technically, if you subscribe to a free-market philosophy, you don’t deal with it if you’re in government. That’s the point. You get out of the way of the free market. If you watch the interview, you can see Brown catch himself here.

Scott Brown didn’t look too good to me in that interview, but then again,you’ve got to watch your words when you’re a Republican politician in Massachusetts. Perhaps I’m being too harsh. All politicians dodge questions; it’s just the politicians who don’t do it artfully (like Palin and now, it seems, Brown) who we call out for it.

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Andrew Sullivan writes:

“Palin is not appealing to the Republican super-ego (in so far as one has survived the last ten years); she is directly, umbilically connected to the Republican id (and some other male organs). Her appeal is visceral not rational….

 Who else puts all this together for the GOP? No one. Huckabee is crippled by a record of spending and leniency. Romney is crippled by being Mitt Romney and Mormonism. Pawlenty: seriously? Santorum? Ditto. Brown? We are beginning to see the depth of his predicament. DeMint? Rubio? C’mon.

Yes, many tea-partiers do not think Palin is “qualified” to be president. But primaries are won by enthusiasm and star power. Palin has both.” 

In other words, she is charismatic. No other known Republican candidate right now is. Sullivan is right to think she has a legitimate shot.

That’s not to say she will be the nominee, of course. She might not be seeking it. She could command nearly as much influence over the political system with less work by continuing to do what she’s been doing. Indeed; in the past, this has been the way of charismatic women. They do not hold the political offices that men do; they instead serve as symbolic figureheads for a movement. That’s hard to do if you’re going to be President.

It doesn’t help her cause that if she did run for President, she’d be going up against an opponent who is stunningly charismatic in his own right. I have to admit that, given the power of charisma that I have cataloged on this blog, it would be interesting to see a Palin vs. Obama election in 2012.

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Quoth the Palin:

“It’s kind of like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, ‘Go ahead, punch me in the face and I’m not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want to with me,'”

And Obama’s response:

“I would say to them is that if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I’m probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin,”

It’s hard to argue with Obama’s logic. (Although I have heard that the Secretary of Defense is against certain parts of the policy.)

My assumption is that there is all sorts of behind-the-scenes gamesmanship, and that the information which goes out to us private citizens (which Palin is, let it not be forgotten) is not even half of the story. Nuclear strategy involves lots of game theory, and I figure the information that governments put out is probably designed to influence the behavior of other “players”, rather than accurately describe its own behavior.

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Palin will be campaigning today to help McCain in his primary battle with J.D. Hayworth.

Let’s go over this again: having a charismatic person campaign for you does not work. Her followers–the Tea Party crowd–will not like McCain better for it. This seems strange, I know, but it is what past experiences tell us.

I think it’s largely because charisma involves projection of one’s own ideas onto the charismatic person. So, even though a lot of the Tea Party crowd likes Palin, they will project their own liking for Hayworth onto her, and rationalize that she was only campaigning for McCain out of gratitude for him. So, the bottom line is that they’ll vote for Hayworth and think no less of Palin.