So what, after all that, are we to make of the great Obama-Cameron concord? What message exactly are we supposed to take from the speeches, the statements, the press conference and the ecstatic briefings? There was certainly an over-arching theme that no one was intended to miss: as a former US president might have put it, the torch has been passed to a new generation. These two national leaders who inherit the most effective alliance in modern history are significantly different from their immediate predecessors: we are not, repeat not, Bush and Blair, but that does not mean that we are about to funk the responsibilities which those men saw as defining their world role. So the question is: when the similarities are added up and the differences subtracted, what is the sum that remains? Is this really a revival of liberal interventionism, or a retreat from it that is being obscured by a lot of high-flown rhetoric?
The commitment to upholding the values of liberty and democratic freedoms as universal human rights was reiterated again and again in terms as unequivocal as any that the previous holders of their offices could have wished. No patronising cynicism about certain races and certain regions of the globe being insufficiently rational to cope with the modern idea of a free and liberal society. (George Bush and Tony Blair were the ghosts at the barbecue, you might say.)
Certainly, the moral obligation to spread the doctrine of democratic government and to support the efforts of any people who seek to liberate themselves from tyranny sounded uncannily like a revival of the Bush doctrine. It would be easy to conclude, as Amity Shlaes puts it in the current issue of Standpoint magazine, “…the reality is that we are all neo-cons now”.
But in fact there was nothing in Mr Obama’s comment that “the longing for freedom and human dignity is not English or American or Western – it is universal” that was the least bit contentious in American terms: the principle that all men are created equal and are born with a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is written into the nation’s sacred founding documents. Read on and comment » | Janet Daley | Saturday, May 28, 2011
My comment:
Despite the rhetoric, the US is going to hell in a handbasket! The economy is in the tank, and Obama has little hope of doing anything meaningful to stop it disappearing into the abyss. Obama is a good-timer, a poseur, and is work-shy to boot. Instead of flitting here and flitting there, he should stay at home and do some real work for a change, in order to sort out the appalling mess that is the American economy.
Moreover, once upon a time, America was 'The Land of the Free.' Alas, no more! Everywhere you turn in the States these days there are restrictions. New York under Tyrant Bloomberg is the best example of how a people can lose its freedom to satisfy the prejudices of one physically-challenged dictator. To talk about America and freedom in the same breath when a smoker can't even light up in a park for fear of breaking the law (I write as a non-smoker), is absurd. Similar laws are being rolled out across the nation, from coast to coast. Then there are the restrictions on so many other things too.
And all this talk of democracy. Empty rhetoric when you don't have it yourself. In any case, the US is technically not a democracy; rather, it is a republic. The people have very little actual say in the day-to-day governance of their once great nation.
Dubya started spending the US into the ground; BHO's grand economic schemes and spendthrift ways have only accelerated the the process. With America's new-found propensity for over-governance, if the torch of freedom is not to be doused, then some other nation will have to take it and run with it. It's doubtful America will be able to keep it alight; Americans, it seems, have forgotten what freedom is. – © Mark
This comment also appears here
