Obama's proletarian struggle

Individual conscience and service or a proletarian struggle?

personal conscience of each individual

For Obama it is the collective force that individuals can exert through mass action such as the Occupy Wall Street movement. Not the individual but the collectivity of individuals subsumed to some greater goal that causes important change according to Obama. Life is a proletarian struggle.

For Romney, “the call of service is one of the fundamental elements of our national character. It has motivated every great movement of conscience that this hopeful, fair-minded country of ours has ever seen.”

Recently, Gov. Romney told graduates of Liberty College that “the great drama is always personal, individual, unfolding in one’s own life… and that Men and women of every faith — and good people with none at all — sincerely strive to do right and lead a purpose-driven life.”

Life is politics says Obama. Obama tells college graduates at Banard College that the road ahead is a fairly grim proletarian struggle and that they need to be ready to occupy everything. Mass political action is the way to make significant change says Obama.

The contrasting world views of Romney and Obama as to how change occurs through individual actions could not be starker.

What say you as to why individuals matter?

DrCameronJackson@gmail.com

See Opinion piece in WSJ A Tale of Two Commencements below

“Two days after Mitt Romney delivered the commencement speech at Liberty University, the big evangelical Christian school founded by Jerry Falwell, Barack Obama tutored graduates at Barnard College, the intensely liberal all-women’s school adjacent to Columbia University. As you might guess, the wisdom these two political elders imparted to the Class of 2012 was not the same.

Of course the first purpose for both men was to turn young graduates into believers. Mr. Romney, a Mormon, needs to win over ambivalent evangelical voters. Mr. Obama, a liberal Democrat, expects to have the 22-year-old college graduate vote locked up—if they vote.

Yes, of course, they pandered.
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Columnist Daniel Henninger on what Mitt Romney and President Obama’s commencement speeches say about their world view. Photo: Associated Press

Barack Obama, by now a master at faux self-deflation, admitted he was pandering: “Now I recognize that’s a cheap applause line when you’re giving a commencement at Barnard.” (Laughter.) He had said the women of this generation will help lead the way. (Applause.)

Mitt Romney solved his more problematic pandering assignment by piling praise onto the university’s late founder, the Rev. Jerry Falwell—”a cheerful, confident champion for Christ.”

But even amid pandering one may find truths about candidates revealed, and so it was in New York City and Lynchburg, Va.

The world that Barack Obama conveyed to the women at Barnard is totally, overwhelmingly political. To be sure, there were references to parental joy at the success of children completing college, but virtually every thought in the Obama commencement address—on the accomplishments of the past or a graduate’s goals—was defined by political activity.

He said they are about to grapple with unique challenges, “like whether you’ll be able to earn equal pay for equal work” or “fully control decisions about your own health.”
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Read a transcript of Barack Obama’s commencement speech at Barnard College

Read a transcript of Mitt Romney’s commencement speech at Liberty University

The role of the citizen in “our democracy” began 225 years ago at the Convention in Philadelphia, which had “flaws,” to wit: “Questions of race and gender were unresolved.” Nonetheless, it “allowed for protest and movements.”

And so: “Don’t accept somebody else’s construction of the way things ought to be. It’s up to you to right wrongs. It’s up to you to point out injustice. It’s up to you to hold the system accountable and sometimes upend it entirely. It’s up to you to stand up and to be heard, to write and to lobby, to march, to organize, to vote.”

Mr. Obama described his own early job as a community organizer: “I wanted to do my part to shape a better world.” He cited the accomplishments of previous generations of young people who “stood up and sat in from Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall.” This, Mr. Obama said, is how “we achieved” women’s rights, voting rights, workers’ rights and gay rights.

Barack Obama seems to inhabit a world of history and personal experience in which good people at every turn are held back by individuals or oppressive forces that one only overcomes by personal or public resistance.

Someone in high school told Labor Secretary Hilda Solis she wasn’t college material. Mr. Obama’s grandmother worked for a bank but hit the glass ceiling. And today there are “those who oppose change, those who benefit from an unjust status quo [and] have always bet on the public’s cynicism or the public’s complacency.” He predicts they will lose “this time as well.”

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The president giving remarks at Barnard College, May 14

Fair enough. That’s how the world works for Barack Obama, though it strikes me he is telling America’s 22-year-olds that the road ahead is a fairly grim proletarian struggle. Be ready to occupy everything. Where’s the joy in that?

There was less tooth and claw in the Romney speech at Liberty University. In a discussion of the uses of religious freedom, one passage in particular separated Mr. Romney from Barack Obama’s default to mass action. “The great drama of Christianity,” Gov. Romney said, “is not a crowd shot, following the movements of collectives or even nations. The drama is always personal, individual, unfolding in one’s own life.” Out of this, he said, “Men and women of every faith, and good people with none at all, sincerely strive to do right and lead a purpose-driven life.”

Progress, he argued, emerges through “conscience in action,” for him “the nation’s greatest force for good.” Mr. Romney referred several times to the idea of personal service. “The call to service,” he said “is one of the fundamental elements of our national character. It has motivated every great movement of conscience that this hopeful, fair-minded country of ours has ever seen.”

For Barack Obama, life is politics. For Mitt Romney, life includes politics; politics, he said, does not define us.

To wage a presidential campaign in our nonstop media age, the man who sees politics as a battering ram may have an edge. But Mitt Romney, with his politics of optimism and personal conscience, could be onto something that will serve him well.

Write to henninger@wsj.com

new "Adopt-a-Jihadist" program

Read her latest article below which quotes a satirical, imaginary letter to a Canadian group that sees no threat to freedom posed by radical Islam. The letter by British Freedom suggests that the Canadian group try out a new “Adopt-a-Jihadist” program. It’s doubtful that the politically correct or Santa Cruz progressives will get the humor.
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Laina Farhat-Holzman: Fear and loathing or analysis and perspective?
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Posted: Santa Cruz Sentinel, 04/28/2012

“There are two ways to analyze the violent eruption of global terrorist attacks that have marked the past three decades: analyze the nature of the threat and the culture supporting it, or blame it all on the evils of Western colonialism and American militarism.

“The latter analysis is the choice of the “politically correct,” who say that terrorism is as rampant in the West as it is in the Muslim world. A truth check, however, will tell us that for every Western terrorist such as Timothy McVeigh, there are hundreds almost exclusively from the Muslim world.

“If colonialism is the villain of this piece, why do ideologues only talk about Western colonialism? Why ignore that Arab Muslims and European Christians suffered under 500 years of Ottoman Turkish colonialism well before Western colonization, and how about the Muslim world in Central Asia that suffered under both Russian Tsarist and Communist colonialism?

“Arabs themselves were dreadful imperialists 700-1000 A.D. and every land they conquered is still dysfunctional today, according to Harvard economics professor, Eric Chaney: “Democratic Change in the Arab World, Past and Present,” in the April 7 Economist and Fareed Zakaria in Time, April 7. Wherever Arabs conquered, bad governance and economic development remain smothered to our day. This is even true for countries temporarily conquered but not converted to Islam by the Arabs Spain, Portugal, Southern Italy.

“Islamist terrorism is not just aimed at the West revenge for colonization, but also at Thailand Buddhist; Muslim Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia; and Nigeria, where jihadis murdered Christian church goers on Easter Sunday. Black slavery was an Arab business long before it was European.

“American deniers and apologists for Islamist terrorism have a colleague in Canada: Mira Blinkers, president of “Canadians-are-Under-No-Threat,” who has passionately denounced the treatment of “captive insurgents” her term for terrorists and thinks that they should not only be treated better, but should be integrated into Canadian society. The current object of her attention is Afghan jihadi, Ahmed Allah-Akbar.

The satirical website, British Freedom, has offered an imaginary letter from Canada’s Department of Defence, providing Ms. Blinker with a new “Adopt-a-Jihadist” program designed specifically for her. See britishfreedom.org/canada’s-new-adopt-a-jihadist-program/

“In accordance with the guidelines of this new pilot program, we have decided to release one terrorist and place him in your custody. I am pleased to inform you that your personal detainee has been selected and is scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard from Pearson International to your residence in Toronto next Thursday.

“Ahmed Allah-Akbar you can just call him Ahmed is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of complaint. In other words, the standards which you and most people of your ideological persuasion demand of civilized democracies like Israel, but not of Islamic dictatorships.

“We understand that you plan to offer counseling and home-schooling. Be warned. Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. We advise that you do not ask him to demonstrate these skills at your yoga class or while you are piloting your Cessna aircraft. He is also expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless you think that this might offend him. [Canada permits ruinous lawsuits against those who "offend" Islamists.]

“You will appreciate that Ahmed, as an Islamic fundamentalist, views females as a subhuman property without rights, including the right to refuse his sexual demands. This is a particularly sensitive subject for him and he has been known to show violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the new dress code that he will “recommend” as more appropriate attire. I’m sure that, over time, you will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the burka. Just remember that it is all part of respecting his culture and religious beliefs’ as described in your letter.”

The letter was signed by “General I. M. Perturbed.” A man after my own heart.

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of How Do You Know That?’ You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

Dr. Farhat-Holzman, www.globalthink.net

Laina Farhat-Holzman was born in Rochester, New York; received her BA from UCLA and her MA and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. She was married to an Iranian student for 15 years, lived on and off in Iran, and had two children in that marriage. She is now married to E. H. Holzman, an American businessman, ostrich rancher, and a former Baseball Coach at Stanford University. They live in Aptos, California.

Cairo woman whipped for texting bad word

The two Saudi women, aged 33 and 31 years, had decided to go out with their children for a weekend night but differed on where to go.

“An argument ensued and the two women decided to split … one of them later sent a text to her friend’s mobile phone swearing at her,” the Arabic language quotidian Kabar reported.

“The other woman went to court and showed the judge the message … although that woman said she was joking, the court ordered her lashed 50 times.
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Bring that law here and there’d be a whole lotta whipping goin on… JAJ48@aol.com

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