from Taras W.

“President Obama … grew up abroad, to be sure, but he spent most of his educational career right here in the United States, indoctrinated in the traditions of the progressives and the Frankfurt School [of Marxism]. Ironically enough, the biggest problem for America arises if President Obama was born here – because if he was, the problem of un-Americanism is now internal rather than external. Perhaps that is why so many Americans wonder about the birth certificate – they hope against hope that President Obama is a symptom of a foreign ill rather than a domestic one. … We have an ideological problem in our midst, and no amount of digging in Kenya and Indonesia is going to solve a problem that now starts right here.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/22/about-the-birth-certificate/

from Chuck Lipsig

Interesting article — and I think ideology does give Obama a certain … I don’t want to call it either un-American or anti-American, because those have more specific meanings, then the raw words … so say, non-Americanism, in that he does not buy into certain aspects of the American mythology (and, note, I do not use mythology to imply falseness here) that previous Presidents (even Clinton) have, as much as his relatively rags to riches story would be an example of one of the stories of said American mythology.

There is also another, less savory, reason that birtherism survives and that’s the same reason why many opposed to Bush insisted that he did not truly win the Presidency in 2000 and, therefore, was not truly the President. That is, the office carries a certain amount of respect. For many people, even if one is seriously opposed to the President’s politics, one respects the office. But if Obama is not truly the President, then one does not have to give respect for the office to the man in the office. Similarly, many Democrats were more willing to criticize Bush, while out of the country not (just) because of the philosophies discussed in the article, but, because, if he were not truly the President, then he was not due the respect of office.

Mind you, this likely will, if it hasn’t already, have the effect of eroding respect for the office itself. The practice of not respecting the office holder for reasons that are considered legitimate may seep into being disrespect for the office, itself, regardless of one’s belief in the legitimacy of the office-holder … I leave it as an exercise for the individual, of whether that’s necessarily a bad thing.

—
Chuck Lipsig — Gainesville, FL — chuck.lipsig@gmail.com

“When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” — C.S. Lewis

from MARTIN WOOSTER

Chuck, I think you’re right that “birtherism” is a way of showing that Obama’s election is somehow illegitimate and therefore he has no right to be President. It’s the hardline right equivalent of the hanging chad.

I believe that Obama would be perfectly comfortable being a European social democrat. Or a Canadian Liberal. That doesn’t mean he’s a socialist because we don’t have socialists in America (*koff* *koff* *koff*). But if Barack Obama Sr. had moved to Britain instead of the U.S. I could see Obama as housing or community development minister in a Labour cabinet.

Martin Morse Wooster.