First Citizen Of The World

posted at 3:25 pm on October 11, 2009 by Doctor Zero

It’s fairly obvious that one of the major reasons for giving President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was influencing American politics. The Nobel Peace Prize committee is selected by the Norwegian Parliament, and represents the best opportunity for tiny Norway to influence global politics each year. When they announced Obama’s award, the Nobel committee cited “the change in global mood wrought by Obama’s calls for peace and cooperation, and praised his pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease U.S. conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthen its role in combating climate change.”

Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel committee, defended the award by asserting:

Some people say — and I understand it — ‘Isn’t it premature? Too early?’ Well, I’d say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now.

What does he mean when he says it could be “too late to respond” in three years? He knows Obama’s term of office will most likely be over in three years. Jagland has access to the same Internet and news sources as readers of this blog. He can read U.S. Opinion polls. He’s rather candidly stating that Norway saw the need to prop up this troubled President, and influence his future decision-making, particularly in the area of foreign policy. The Nobel committee admires Obama’s efforts to “ease” U.S. conflicts with Muslim nations, not “win” them. I doubt they can imagine the winner of a Peace Prize – explicitly awarded in advance for things he hasn’t done yet – taking a more aggressive stance in Afghanistan, or authorizing military action against the Iranian nuclear program. If he does, the press releases from the Nobel committee should be fascinating.

The Nobel affair helps to illustrate the folly of isolationism. We cannot disengage from the rest of the world, because the rest of the world would never permit it. The siren song of our centralized, highly corruptible government’s titanic power and wealth is heard far beyond our borders. The Nobel committee joins a long list of foreigners making blatant attempts to influence American government. A tidal wave of questionable foreign donations poured into Obama’s coffers during the 2008 campaign, a scandal studiously ignored by the mainstream media. The Hungarian-born British immigrant George Soros has more power over the American Democrat Party, and its media auxilliaries, than almost any other individual in the world. The Clintons were bankrolled by the shadowy Riady family of Indonesia, which boasted openly of its influence over the President. On the Republican side, liberals have often complained of the Saudi royal family’s close relationship with the Bush family, and the media empire of Australian Rupert Murdoch. Many more examples could be named, connected to politicians of both parties.

Even if we tried to fulfill the fondest dreams of the most ardent isolationists, and crippled our economy by blocking foreign trade, the rulers and billionaires of other countries would still find ways to manipulate American politics, much as the Nobel committee has done. One of the great dangers of the outrageous deficit spending built under Bush, and blasted into the stratosphere by Obama, is the degree of financial leverage it gives other countries over the United States, particularly China. They wouldn’t have to launch some dark, twisted financial conspiracy to devastate our economy. They’d just have to refuse to buy any more of our debt, a decision they have every right to make. The dark and twisted stuff will happen behind closed doors, when they ask the President and his crackerjack team of economic advisers why they shouldn’t make that decision.

America, in turn, makes constant efforts to influence the governments of other nations around the world. Often this is a matter of security, for no one can seriously entertain the notion of American invulnerability in the wake of 9/11. Sometimes it is a question of economics. Most of the global economy is controlled by governments that make even less of a distinction between the State and private sector than ours does. Quite a few of them are outright dictatorships. When the State has such a high level of direct control over the economy, commercial interests are government interests. How can American business interact with state-run economies, without influencing the State? Foreign interests ask themselves the same question with increasing frequency, as they eye America’s highly-regulated private sector, which now features direct government control of certain industries… with more on the way.

Even if military and economic isolation from the rest of the world was possible, we still wouldn’t do it. America is a nation of supreme compassion and generosity. We have never been content to allow the people of other nations to suffer. We follow in the wake of famine, disease, and natural disasters, as morning follows the darkest night. We are also the stewards of the Liberty Bell, the champions of freedom, and we know in our hearts that freedom is not a gift to be cherished in silence, or a secret to be locked away, to avoid giving offense to the wicked. How many times must we read the vicious manifestoes of terrorists, how many times must thuggish dictators burn us in effigy, before we accept that our very existence makes us a target? The patriots who launched the American Revolution understood that it was a battle to the death. The Revolution is not over, and the stakes haven’t changed.

Six decades ago, we looked across the oceans, from both of our coasts, and saw the rest of the world had become a fortress of blades, bones, and fire. We can’t afford to let it become that bad again, before we take action. The imminent dawn of apocalyptic nuclear and biological terrorism means that peace and freedom must take the offensive. We have a moral responsibility to be strong and confident, because freedom around the globe would not long survive our descent into a self-loathing, European-style socialist cringe. It has often been pointed out that we can’t be the world’s policeman – not even our incredible military can subjugate every dictatorship on Earth. This only makes it more important for use to raise our voices, and influence the rest of humanity with our ideas. As we can see from the news of the past weekend, they are certainly working to influence us.

In other words, our true destiny is the opposite of the one Barack Obama earned a Nobel Peace Prize by promising the world he would create for us… a future very few Americans would have voted for in 2008, if he had been honest with them. Obama sees himself as First Citizen of the World, but America needs a President energetically loyal to her own interests, who speaks proudly and without qualifications of her history and achievements. In truth, America herself is the First Citizen of the World, and while our past is as complex as that of any other nation, our leadership of the global community has been exemplary by any rational standard. We are not doing the world any favors by mumbling an apology that only fools and villains are hungry to hear, and abandoning our leadership to crawl into a sick bed, while telling ourselves how much we deserve to suffer.

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