Now it would be one thing if this was a speech that nobody knew about, but it was broadcast on ever cable station live including FoxNews. So it isn't like Mike Huckabee doesn't know the real context of the quote. But lets go to the transcript anyway.
In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.
But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad.
On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise. They do not represent the truth. They threaten to widen the divide across the Atlantic and leave us both more isolated. They fail to acknowledge the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America.
Ironically enough of course is that when President Obama talks about the arrogance and the dismissive and derisive attitude towards Europe in general and France in particular, he was DEFINITELY talking about the FoxNews crowd which champions such attitudes to their viewers. Now lets keep in mind that Huckabee is a bible thumping preacher. I could have sworn that in MY Bible there is a 10th Commandment prohibiting bearing false witness against your neighbor (I guess he didn't have enough time left over to study that part of the bible after he got done perverting any mention of "teh gays" in the scripture). But I digress. So does President Obama think America is just ordinary? Does he resent his country?
Why not start building high-speed rail? One thing that, as an American who is proud as anybody of my country -- I am always jealous about European trains. And I said to myself, why can't we have -- (applause) -- why can't we have high-speed rail? And -- and so we're investing in that, as well.
That's taken from the question and answer part of the speech but more to the point we can go to the answer he gave to Ed Luce of the Financial Times in response to a question about whether he believe in American Exceptionalism.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. In the context of all the multilateral activity that's been going on this week -- the G20, here at NATO -- and your evident enthusiasm for multilateral frameworks, to work through multilateral frameworks, could I ask you whether you subscribe, as many of your predecessors have, to the school of American exceptionalism that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead the world, or do you have a slightly different philosophy? And if so, would you be able to elaborate on it?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don't think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.
And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.
Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we've got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we're not always going to be right, or that other people may have good ideas, or that in order for us to work collectively, all parties have to compromise and that includes us.
And so I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone.
Here lies the fundamental difference between President Obama and the people who believe in him and a guy like Sean Hannity. See Hannity believes that leadership means you preach rainbows and unicorns no matter what. You never criticize or recognize shortcoming because in his world thats considered "weak". His view is the classic example of an enabler. As a parent he would be the type to never admonish his kids and who would always blame the teacher if the child failed. For Hannity's type its more important that you convince everybody that everything is great than taking the steps to make sure that things actually get to a situation where they ARE great. Thats why up until the day the White House finally had to admit that we had been in a recession since 2007 last September, Sean Hannity kept insisting that then Senator Obama was just making it all up and everything was fine. Its also why nobody should ever take anything he says seriously.
Now what it boils down to is that Mike Huckabee now is more concerned with joining in the smearing of our President than he is in presenting real honest criticism. You can bet that every misstatement of fact would come back to haunt him in any election campaign. Which is why I have no doubt that he is just banking on keeping his Tee Vee gig now. Whatever the case I have lost any respect for the man that I may have once had.
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Even in its context, not a well thought out or worded speech because it really is not appropriate to go over seas and say "hey were arrogant, but so are you."
ReplyDeleteDumb, thing to say imho and he should have seen the criticism of the statement.
Are we arrogant because some politicians do not think it is a good idea to enter into an EU style arangment and that globalism can be taken to far if our rights are ceded?
It is good that he acknowledged America's good deeds now and throughout history, but he kind of poisoned the whole speech with his introduction.
Actually to everyone except the actual arrogant assholes who have in fact been arrogant about Europe it was EXACTLY the right thing to say. Its people like you who come up with every excuse for the dumb shit that George Bush and the rest of his Republican band of idiots did including the freedom fries bullshit that President Obama was referring to in the first damn place. And in the end our country will be a lot better off from him handling it they way he did than we would have ever been if he continued the ignorant practice of acting like America's shit don't stink. Kinda hard to make that statement when we had a President that lead us in the single most unwarranted and idiotic wars in modern times. So maybe if you don't like what he said then you shouldn't support stupid muthafuckas like George Bush next time.
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