Baseball player Yogi Berra once said “you can see a lot just by looking.”
Simple wisdom, that President Obama is not likely to heed. In order to see
you have to want to look at the truth that’s actually out there.
With reality so different from how our president wishes to portray it, he
has little interest in seeing things as they really are.
The president delivered a “Kumbaya” appeal this past week to the current
session of the United Nations General Assembly. The pitch, about peaceful
resolution of disputes, tolerance, and free speech, was clearly aimed at
Muslim nations.
The following day, Egypt’s newly elected Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi
stood before the General Assembly and gave his reply. No thanks.
Sure, Egypt will respect free speech, as long as it does not offend “one
specific religion or culture.”
The message we got from candidate Obama in 2008 was that the rift between
the Muslim world and the West was one of misunderstanding, of lack of
empathy on our part toward them. Candidate Obama said he was the man, given
his personal history, who could bridge that gap.
In 2009, the first year of the Obama presidency, the Pew Research Center
reports that the favorability rating in Egypt toward the US was 27 percent.
Now in 2012 it is 19 percent, down eight points.
More misunderstanding? I don’t think so. Egyptians are quite clear about who
they are and quite clear about their distaste for the moral relativism
Barack Obama peddles as freedom. Conflicting attitudes and world views
emerge from different beliefs, not misunderstanding.
In the same Pew survey of last June, 11 percent of Egyptians agreed with the
statement “It is good that American ideas and customs are spreading here.”
Has Mr. Obama just not had enough time, as with producing an economic
recovery at home, to get Muslims to learn the words to Kumbaya?
The real problem, as I see it, is how do you peddle to others what you don’t
understand, or won’t be honest about, yourself?
While our president refuses to honestly look at Muslim societies, they do
look at us. They see American double standards and mixed messages very
clearly.
In his UN speech, President Obama quoted South African leader Nelson Mandela
saying “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in
a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
This from an American President who is now forcing American employers to
buy condoms and abortion pills for their employees, even if it is against
that employer’s religious convictions.
Or from a nation where poor children are forced to attend public schools
where teaching traditional, religious values that they desperately need are
prohibited.
Or where the people of the State of California voted to define marriage as
between a man and a woman, only to have this referendum overturned by a
federal court.
Can President Obama stand with credibility before any Muslim nation and
claim that he represents religious freedom?
How about economic freedom? Economic freedom – which measures a nation’s
respect for private property and limits arbitrary government power to
interfere with economic transactions – is critical because it correlates
perfectly with prosperity. Nations with more economic freedom are uniformly
more prosperous.
The latest Economic Freedom of the World report, published annually by over
70 think tanks from around the world, shows that in 2010 the US dropped
to number 18 in world ranking. This after years of the US being one of
the most economically free nations in the world.
So why should Muslim nations take seriously an increasingly weak America
that does not practice what it preaches?
They don’t and won’t.
If we want Muslims to respect us and respect freedom’s cores values –
protection of life and property – America should once again represent those
values.
Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban
Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market
based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised
Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and
What We Can do About It.
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