Victor Davis Hanson: Growing Worries about Our Pied Piper

National Review Online ^ | July 10, 2009 | Victor Davis Hanson

[KansasGirl]

[The tunes of last year’s Pied Piper are no longer mesmerizing, but becoming sort of creepy and even ominous.]

I’ve always found it creepy.

[Gritty]

As if we need any more proof of about what this feckless Marxist jerk is all about, check this one out...

Obama releases Iranian Quds commanders

[Dysart]

Now we’re back on point. Good stuff.

[RocketMan1]

Bookmarked for future mass emailings.

“President” Hussein ZERO brings to mind the much feared German battleship, the Bismarck. It was hailed (as the DimoRATs hail their saviour and messiah 0bummer) as the largest warship of its time. Every Navy on earth feared the Bismarck. In theory, it could have greatly helped change the war against the U.S. and Britain.

It set sail in mid-May 1941 and was sunk by the British Navy just two weeks later.

[bethtopaz]

As a wise man told me yesterday, “The economist says, ‘I believe that works in practice, but does it work in theory?’”

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting. Great article by VDH!

[Danae]

“Because Obama is a revolutionary who seeks to overturn 50 years of doing business in America both at home and abroad, his shortcomings have the potential not only to diminish his own stature through unmet impossible expectations, but to take all those who signed on to his megalomania down with him.”

I am waiting for that moment with baited breath.... That is with out a doubt going to be a very sweet moment.

[Tunehead54]

Google "Obama deeply" - LOL it deserves its own thread ...

Here - I'll save you the trouble of typing: Google: 'Obama deeply' ;-)

[Last Dakotan]

Few opposition leaders have presented systematic, clear alternatives to the Obama agenda, and even fewer have been knowledgeable and charismatic in voicing them.

The above equation pretty much ends at zero, as in nobody.

[Free State Four]

That is “deeply embarrassing” - for the media!

[Blind Eye Jones]

Very reasonable but wrong. Hanson is the one of the most reasonable and well read commentators — everything makes perfect sense. But when has he been right? Obama didn't implode as he predicted. Remember nothing sticks to this guy. Things will just carry on the way they are going, the way Obama wants.

[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out.

Links:    FR Index of his articles:  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
                His website: http://victorhanson.com/
                NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
                Pajamasmedia:   http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/

 

Catching up with the last week:

	What is Wisdom?—Sarah Palin and Her Critics
	Laugh or Cry? deconstructing Maureen Dowd
A Thug’s Primer - How to win liberal friends and oppress your people
Writing Sarah Off

[AxelPaulsenJr]

Surely there is more to America than slavery and Hiroshima.

I must say I love VDH, but I do have problems with his linkage in this statement.

[AZLiberty]

... czarred and fettered.

That's an awesome turn of phrase!

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Thanks!

Well.. I mean, there was a column posted recently called Czarred and Feathered.

I guess the author wasn't as old as me and did not recall all those Army Air Corp W.W.II movies where the pilots were always having to fetter one of their bomber's engines.

I agree, czarred and fettered is absolutely fitting vis-à-vis the Obama Administration; as is bullshitvik. However a search revealed that some have already coined the word. That's good especially because the Left is not likely to (as usual) steal this word and use it against us.

IMO everyone should know that they are being czarred and fettered.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

I believe the correct terminology is to: “feather an engine”.

[r9etb]

If Obama wasn’t married to the most beautiful woman in the world, he’d never get by with this stuff.

And it's a twofer ... Her beauty is a positive boon to our national security!!!

Her face, after all, is so incredibly beautiful that it will inspire the launch of a two thousand ship navy!

[r9etb]

So many Americans are vaguely beginning to sense that Obama is simply ignorant of Valley Forge, the Oregon Trail, and Iwo Jima. What happened at these places seems absent from his knowledge of the past, and so fails to inform his present narrative of and future plans for the nation.

Here, I think, Hanson doesn't go nearly far enough. Obama is probably not "ignorant" of them, so much as he simply does not care about those things. They're simply not relevant to the way he thinks about the world.

To Obama the narcissist, history is unimportant in comparison to Obama's sense of the world, which is based on how he thinks things should be; and that's based on a worldview that's informed by juvenile feelings and juvenile logic, applied to the leftist ideas with which he was brought up.

I truly believe that Obama's thinking is little changed from when he was 19 years old. That's the age where most of us begin to realize that our idealism isn't necessarily congruent with reality. To a narcissist, though, idealism is reality, and "real" reality doesn't count.

And if we sum up the various parts of VDH's list, I think we can approach what Americans are beginning to think, even if they haven't yet stated it in words: Obama's narcissism poses a real and serious danger to the nation.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Thanks for the correction. All these years I thought the actor was saying fetter (to restrain; i.e., reduce the power).

[AxelPaulsenJr]

I can see how it would sound like fetter. But the action being taken is to feather the angle at which the propeller blades of an engine strike the air. The term can also be applied to feathering the oar of a boat in such a manner that the oar has no drag, i.e. "pull" through the water.

Now as to why the word "feather" is used instead of some other word, I can't say.