Posted by Tina
Ethan Epstein at The Weekly Standard explains much better than I have why the photo of our president taken in front of the Che Guevara mural:
It was unfortunate that the president lent his imprimatur to Guevara, a totalitarian who was responsible for the death of thousands. But, in some ways, the photo-op was even worse than it looked. Because as we learned on our tour, the building that Guevara’s face adorns is home to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior.
Unlike our own Ministry of the Interior, Cuba’s is not charged with innocuous tasks like protecting endangered waterfowl. Rather, it operates the National Revolutionary Police, which, in addition to keeping law and order on the streets, harasses and arrests dissidents, and suppresses “counter-revolutionary” activities. In other words, it’s Cuba’s version of the Stasi.
President Obama boasted on his trip that he wasn’t going to tell Cubans to “tear something down,” a reference to President Reagan’s famous exhortation to tear down the Berlin wall. Of course, there’s no wall – only ocean – separating Cuba from the rest of the world to tear down. But Obama could have at least told Castro to tear down the monument to repression that he was happily photographed in front of.
To those with ears to hear…is it not incredible that in the United States of America we must explain?
This is Obama. This is the Democratic Party.
None of it was an accident. Obama is a communist.
No, he’s a socialist.
No, he’s a Muslim.
No, he’s a fascist.
No, he’s a Kenyan anti-colonial.
No, he follows black liberation theology.
No, he’s a radical abortion-loving baby-killer.
No, he’s whatever you’ve been told to be afraid of this week.
Nowhere in that article did Epstein explain why no one had a problem with other presidents “lending their imprimatur” to other dead totalitarian dictators by taking pictures in front of depictions of them on foreign countries–as Reagan and both Bushes have. Without addressing that, his argument is meaningless.
I repeat, “…is it not incredible that in the United States of America we must explain?”
There are major differences. Unlike ANY other president you mentioned, Obama’s ideology is closer to that of the communists in Cuba than the founders of our nation. Obama shares the socialist and authoritarian values that govern Cuba, the old USSR, and China.
Reagan did not share those values. Reagan always spoke of the value of the individual, entrepreneurship, capitalism, freedom and the rule of law. Reagan spoke out vociferously against the authoritarian and tyrannical policies that are present in those nations. He openly demanded of the leaders of those countries that they set the dissidents free and adopt the values that honored individual rights. Both Bushes were also clear on this although neither had the ability to speak, persuade, and command attention that Reagan had.
Obama poses in solidarity with the leaders of tyrannical governments and creates a sense of moral equivalence, making no/few distinctions. Obama does not GET the difference. He will not present America as a symbol of freedom because he believes in the socialist notions of government control, redistribution, and the silencing of dissenting voices through controlled speech.
Obama’s image melts with Che’s image; Reagan’s stood in stark contrast!
Tina: “There are major differences. Unlike ANY other president you mentioned, Obama’s ideology is closer to that of the communists in Cuba than the founders of our nation. Obama shares the socialist and authoritarian values that govern Cuba, the old USSR, and China.”
Two problems with this argument:
1) Even if it were true, it would be irrelevant. Posing in front of a picture of a dead dictator is either wrong or it isn’t; it shouldn’t matter whether or not the person doing so is a liberal or a conservative. Your argument here essentially implies that Obama doing *anything* a previous president has done–playing golf, getting a haircut, owning a dog–is wrong, because he’s doing so socialistically, while the others who did the same exact thing did so patriotically and heroically. You’re rationalizing hypocrisy, and the fallacies in your reasoning would be obvious if you were not so dedicated to your irrational biases.
2) It’s not true. Obama’s ideology is nothing like that of China’s, Cuba’s, or the Soviet Union’s, but more like that of the mainstream among Western democracies in Europe. There are clear differences, and your inability to distinguish between them severely your ability to analyze politics and world events at anything above an elementary level. You conflate totally different ideologies–democratic socialism, communism, even occasionally radical Islam–into one Big Enemy, because you’re scared crapless of all three, essentially making anyone even remotely to the left of yourself–on any issue–the equivalent of Stalin. This is radical extremism, no better than the radical leftists who call everyone slightly to the right of them racist warmongers who are the same as Hitler. It’s stupid, misdirected anger, and it gets you nowhere, and it makes you look ridiculous to moderates and anyone who is educated enough to understand the difference between American center-leftists like Obama, European social democracy, Communism, and everything in between. They. Are. Not. The. Same. Implying that they are is simply ignorance.