Posted on 09/24/2012 11:17:56 AM PDT by Hunton Peck
President Obama will be among the world leaders arriving in New York on Monday for the U.N. General Assembly, but unlike other presidents or prime ministers Obama plans to head straight for a daytime TV interview.
The president’s schedule has him and first lady Michelle Obama sitting down for a taping of ABC’s “The View" shortly after arriving in New York.
Though Obama will deliver a major speech Tuesday before the annual assembly, he has largely left the one-on-one meetings to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sparking criticism that he appears more concerned about his re-election effort than talking directly to other world leaders about such issues as Iran’s quest for nuclear capability and the violent, deadly protests in the Middle East and North Africa.
“People around the world listen to the president because he is commander in chief,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News on Monday morning.
Clinton will be handling meetings Monday with some of the heavy-hitters who are critical in managing the latest wave of unrest and violence. Clinton is set to meet with Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney defended the president, saying he's had "extensive consultations" with those and other leaders in recent weeks. "Those consultations will continue," Carney said, adding that Obama will surely...
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
With that said, another thread today contains an article about potential "complacency" among Americans.
If American citizens are so "complacent" that they don't see that a President who smoozes with super-wealthy celebrities, appears on Letterman and The View while the Middle East is burning him in effigy, along with the flag he represents, and millions of his citizens are suffering loss of pay checks and the resulting indignity of his failed policies, then perhaps they no longer represent an intelligent voting group.
While he chit-chats with wealthy Hollywood types, he disparages and punishes what he calls "rich" people who have earned their wealth either by "making" things or risking their own money in investments that enabled others to produce wealth. That is not a leader whose actions match his words and ideology.
Back in 2010, just before the November landslide vote for Republicans, hundreds of thousands of orderly and concerned citizens assembled in Washington, D. C. for what was called a "Restore Honor" demonstration of strength.
President Barack Obama stated: “It’s not surprising that someone . . . is able to stir up a certain portion of [the American people]. … "
Hundreds of thousands of peaceable, well-informed, independently knowledgeable citizens of the United States voluntarily assemble themselves in their nation's capital because of their concern about the future of liberty in America, and their President views them as being "stir(red) up" by "someone"?
How arrogant and insulting!
Does Mr. Obama view them, as he must have viewed the thousands who attend his campaign rallies, as just ignorant puppets who can be yanked around by "someone" like himself or Glenn Beck?
What does this say about the honor and sincerity of the man who sought and holds the office of President of the United States?
Can anyone imagine any one of America's first four Presidents holding such a view of a peaceable assembly of 300-500,000 of his fellow citizens, as occurred in 2010?
Informed citizens are the bulwark of liberty for a nation, and they should be considered a treasure. Here are quotations from two Founders and former Presidents. Note the tone of those Presidents' comments regarding the need for the kinds of citizens who attended that 2010 Saturday event in Washington--citizens Mr. Obama discounted as merely "stirred up":
"I do not think it for the interest of the General Government itself, and still less of the Union at large, that the State governments should be so little respected as they have been. However, I dare say that in time all these as well as their central government, like the planets revolving round their common sun, acting and acted upon according to their respective weights and distances, will produce that beautiful equilibrium on which our Constitution is founded, and which I believe it will exhibit to the world in a degree of perfection, unexampled but in the planetary system itself. The enlightened statesman, therefore, will endeavor to preserve the weight and influence of every part, as too much given any member of it would destroy the general equilibrium." --Thomas Jefferson to Peregrine Fitzhugh, 1798. ME 10:3
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278
"If Caesar had been as virtuous as he was daring and sagacious, what could he, even in the plenitude of his usurped power, have done to lead his fellow citizens into good government?... If their people indeed had been, like ourselves, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the answer would be obvious. 'Restore independence to all your foreign conquests, relieve Italy from the government of the rabble of Rome, consult it as a nation entitled to self-government, and do its will.' But steeped in corruption, vice and venality, as the whole nation was,... what could even Cicero, Cato, Brutus have done, had it been referred to them to establish a good government for their country?... No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and their people were so demoralized and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholesome control. Their reformation then was to be taken up ab incunabulis. Their minds were to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and deterred from those of vice by the dread of punishments proportioned, indeed, but irremissible; in all cases, to follow truth as the only safe guide, and to eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after another in endless succession. These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure of order and good government. . . ." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819. ME 15:233
"An enlightened people, and an energetic public opinion... will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of the government." --Thomas Jefferson to Chevalier de Ouis, 1814. ME 14:130
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820.
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782.
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787.
"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789.
"Whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, the people, if well informed, may be relied on to set them to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789.
"Although all men are born free, and all nations might be so, yet too true it is, that slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant – they have been cheated; asleep – they have been surprised; divided – the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson?... The people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it." - James Madison
"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people." - James Madison
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison
"To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea." - James Madison
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