Why Exceptionalism Matters (and why Obama must reject it)

Asked whether America was an exceptional country, Mr. Obama famously replied that every country is exceptional. North Korea is exceptional? Castro's Cuba is fine? Zimbabwe is great? Really?

Obama's response accords with the left's theory of universalism, whereby one's general allegiance to mankind outweighs that to any particular nation, including one's own.......

.......From a practical perspective, universalism is a dead end -- quite literally -- because there are always powerful adversaries who do not share one's soft-hearted faith in universal brotherhood. The left's goals of unilateral disarmament and global equality play right into the hands of these powerful adversaries. Only a nation that is incredibly naïve or blatantly suicidal would lower its guard in the presence of rising nation-states like China and fanatical terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda.

There is a second difficulty. Even if a mechanism could be devised to assure universal cooperation -- an absurd hope -- one has to ask whether egalitarianism would be desirable......

....Adherents of cosmopolitanism consider themselves citizens of the world, and Obama is a perfect example of this type. With an ethos based on nothing more than relativism and pragmatism, they scorn all particular traditions. They are not guided by longstanding assumptions and alliances, nor do they embrace any single conception of human nature or any definite idea of culture.

What they do embrace, and this adamantly,is the rejection of moral and cultural distinctions that would lead one to believe that a particular set of values is superior to any other........

.....what is most galling to the left is the sheer excellence of Anglo-American civilization and especially America -- not just its remarkable success in material terms, but its achievement of an extraordinary degree of liberty and general welfare.

...”America does not realize it yet, but the government of the United States is at war with its own People.

When that shoe drops, there will be unimagineable suffering.

Obama now seeks to disarm us, while his family and leftist friends are secured by armed guards.If he persists, then there will be open warfare between the government and the people. There is already a planned future war between the IRS and the People, between the People who think themselves free to travel and the DHS”...

What a nightmare it is to think your President is that diabolical. Are we getting used to the unthinkable?..That large blocks of us might be expendable or enslaved? Most people want peace..Only those with criminal and psychotic intentions want to harm their fellow citizens. Surely, there are always problems and conflicts to be resolved but to think that the goal is to garner enough power to remove all evidence that different ways of thinking can exist is insane and is the way to pull your country back into the dark ages. The idea of absolute power comes right out of the bowels of hell and that, many fear, is where we are headed. We have excellent evidence that the mass shootings our country has experienced over several years now can be strongly tied to the use of drugs, especially anti-depressant drugs. Why can’t drug use, then, be potentially responsible for much of the irrational decision making which comes from the top levels of government and the media? Politicians and Presidents have put us into the mess we are in to aggrandize themselves. Unusual causes are out there for changes in the course of history..Disease is one and in our culture where drug use is heavy, why could that not be potentially disastrous for us as malfunctions of the frontal brain lobes in the user creates an unusual sense of power and bad judgment, not to mention a feeling of narcissistic entitlement..How I wish our lawmakers had to undergo periodical and random drug and alcohol tests. Of course, I understand, they are above the law along with the media and if found out, would have the cover-up all ready to go. I still believe some kind of event no one has thought of could happen to change the disastrous dynamics we are under. However, something like that would probably come from our Creator. Disease? He could send that. It is now being proven that Chavez is mortal, just like everyone else.

“.....what is most galling to the left is the sheer excellence of Anglo-American civilization...”

A couple things:

I get a kick out of this because it is so completely inconsistent with the whole ‘diversity’ shtick! It can be one thing or it can be the other...but it can’t possibly be both!

Also:

• It is incredibly puerile to think that humanity is universally homogeneous in everything and that every single human is right up to the genetic blueprint

• Along with this idiotic concept is the belief that all men in all times and in all cultures are ‘good’… possessing a virtuous and indelibly pristine nature.

REALLY?

Why do we put locks on our doors?
Why do we hire police?

MOST people STINK! Given the least opportunity, most people will take vile, shameless and unfair advantage of the next guy.

If that isn’t bad enough… think what selfish, irresponsible and violent brutes people were BEFORE Christianity.

The whole idea of mercy, sharing, restraint and basic humane behavior were laughable concepts in the ancient world and for that matter, still are in any culture where Christianity is weak or absent.

I know… Christians commit crimes and behave like animals, too…. But the point is, you cannot conceive what the world WAS when things like theft and murder were more like ‘bad form’ than shameful and punishable crimes.

Liberals want inherently imperfect and fallible humans to return to a society so childishly and recklessly irresponsible and selfish that I can’t believe my ears when I hear them. Just to secure a docile and dependent populace, Liberals would abandon centuries of accomplishment and human achievement to reduce humanity to the level of brutes they can more easily control.

Capaldi: “...rationalist humanism amounts to the attempt to construct civil and political society from an ethical vacuum...Ortega...stressed that a prior normative context was indispensable.”

However, something like that would probably come from our Creator. Disease? He could send that. It is now being proven that Chavez is mortal, just like everyone else.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Yes but we also need to help ourselves as best we can giving the Divine the opportunity to bend events into our good fortune as a people, just as has been done in the past.

Our country does not yet realize that it needs committees of safet6y organized in every county across America.Thats really what needs to be done right now:

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Setting up a Committee of Safety

Many Committees of Safety were established throughout Colonial America at the start of the American Revolution. These committees started to appear in the 1760s as means to discuss the concerns of the time, and often consisted of every male adult in the community. The local militia units were usually under the control of the committees, which in turn sent representatives to county- and colony-level assemblies to represent their local interests.

Committees of Safety formed before and during the Revolutionary War, to keep watch of and act upon events pertaining to the public welfare. They were sometimes possessed of almost supreme executive power, delegated to them by the people. Massachusetts took the lead in the appointment of a committee of safety so early as the autumn of 1774, of which John Hancock was chairman. It was given power to call out mandatory militia, with penalties for failing to respond to a call-up, and provide means of defense. It provided many of the functions of a provisional government. Other colonies appointed committees of safety. One was appointed in the city of New York, composed of the leading citizens. In the spring of 1778, the New York state legislature abolished all committees in New York in favor of “Commissioners of Conspiracy”.

These committees were in constant communication with committees of correspondence, which disseminated information among the militia units and provided a clearinghouse of information and intelligence on enemy activities.

How a modern Committee of Safety was set up

In early 1995, the commanders of about a dozen militia units that had been formed in nearby counties in south central Texas decided to set up a Committee of Safety for the region that would provide a governing body for militia units and confer some legitimacy on them in the public perception. They took the following steps:

1.Adopted a set of by-laws for the CoS that prescribed the number of members, the method of election, a quorum for making decisions, rules of procedure, and relation to militia units.

2.Appointed a nominating committee to nominate members, with many more nominees than there were positions to be filled, and a procedure for allowing additional nominees by petition of a few citizens of the counties who were qualified to vote in local elections.

3.Selected an election day, and issued public notices of it, explaining that anyone qualified to vote in any public election in the counties in which it would be held would be qualified to vote for members of the Committee of Safety. They also issued the list of nominees, invited petitions for additional nominees, and publicized the by-laws of the Committee of Safety.

4.Selected and announced at least one polling place in each county. (All of the counties were rural.)

5.Recruited volunteers to man the polling places on election day.

6.Just prior to the election, after some additional nominees had been added by petition, printed ballots with the names of all the nominees, and allowed a space for write-in votes.

7.On election day conducted the election, counted the ballots, and announced the winners. The number of voters was about 3% of those qualified to vote, which was more than some voter rates for minor offices. Most of the voters had never attended a militia muster, yet seemed knowledgeable about the candidates and the issues, and made wise choices.

8.The newly elected Committee of Safety met, and elected its officers according to its by-laws. It then met regularly for several months.

However, the by-laws had some critical flaws: There were no provisions for the Committee of Safety to amend them or replace members who might resign before the next election, or to reduce the quorum to a percentage of remaining members. A number of members began to resign to run for other public offices, such as constable, sheriff, and county commissioner. (One was elected county commissioner.) When the number fell below quorum, no further decisions could be made and the CoS stopped meeting. Because the by-laws had been issued in a public notice, the remaining members concluded they needed to be amended in another public election, and until then, lacked the authority to amend them, but without a quorum, they were unable to conduct another election.

How to set up Committee of Safety

Despite the problems with the ways the Committee of Safety was set up in south central Texas, the procedure outlined above can be used as a model for others, if the defects noted are avoided.

The formation and operation of the Committee of Safety succeeded brilliantly in legitimizing militia units with the general public. Almost every candidate for local public office, especially constables and sheriffs, felt they had to appear before it and before militia units asking for their votes. Practically everyone accepted that holding that public election, by public notice, as well as issuing public notices of militia musters, made the militia units public institutions, requiring no other sanction such as state legislation. Their activities became newsworthy, and many local newspapers who had required them to pay for public notices began to publish them at no charge. The concept of militia became better known, and met general approval.

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http://constitution.org/mil/cos/cos_setup.htm

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