The ultra-left foreign affairs columnist of the Boston Globe H.D.S. Greenway today admitted (Boston Globe, July 8, 2008) that Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations " theories [first published in 1993] are looking ever more prescient."
To stress his point, Greenway quotes Professor Fouad Ajami (Director of Middle Eastern Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies) who, echoing Huntington, observed that the "youth bulge," the "young Arabs and Muslims" -- as represented by "the 19 young Arabs who struck America on 9/11" --."were the shock troops of a new radicalism. . . . Islam has grown assertive and belligerent."
John S. McCain says this is the "transcendent challenge" of our times. With hundreds of billions of dollars in oil money pouring into enemy, unfriendly and not-too-friendly Middle East regimes in which millions of young men have been taught to hate the West, they are more of a threat than they were in 1993 or even on 9/11/2001.
Barack H. Obama dismisses the Islamist threat as "the politics of fear."
Who, then, has the experience and the understanding to defend the country as Commander-in-Chief in these perilous times?
Professor Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at Stanford's Hoover Institution, is a widely read columnist writing for the Creators Syndicate.
Dr. Thomas Sowell examines the phenomenon of the media, teenagers and other usually sensible people swooning over Obama and gives us this warning:
Voting is a right but it is also a duty-- a duty not just to show up on election day, but a duty to give serious thought to the alternatives on the table and what those alternatives mean for the future of the nation.
What Professor Sowell sees is people not paying attention to facts and "the future of the nation," but only to campaign rhetoric and skin color. They aren't being serious.
What is becoming ever more painfully apparent is that too many people this year-- whether conservative, liberals or whatever-- are all too willing to judge Barack Obama on the basis of his election-year rhetoric, rather than on the record of what he has advocated and done during the past two decades. Many are for him for no more serious reasons than his mouth and his complexion. The man has become a Rorschach test for the feelings and hopes, not only of those on the left, but also for some on the right as well. Here is a man who has consistently aided and abetted people who have openly expressed their contempt for this country, both in words and in such deeds as planting bombs to advance their left-wing agenda.Despite the spin that judging Obama by what was said or done by such people would be "guilt by association," he has not just associated with such people. He has in some cases donated some serious money of his own and even more of the taxpayers' money, as both a state senator in Illinois and a member of the Senate of the United States.
Barack Obama is on record as favoring the kinds of justices who make policy, not just carry out laws. No matter how he may “refine” his position on this issue, he voted against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts, who was easily confirmed by more than three-quarters of the Senators.
Like people on the far left for literally centuries, Barack Obama plays down the dangers to the nation, and calls talk about such dangers "the politics of fear."
Back in the 18th century, Helvetius said, "When I speak I put on a mask. When I act, I am forced to take it off." Too many voters still have not learned that lesson. They need to look at the track record of Obama's actions.
Back in the days of "The Lone Ranger" program, someone would ask, "Who is that masked man?" People need to start asking that question about Barack Obama.
Indeed.
