Robert Kagan wonders. Of course, talk is cheap, and in South Carolina, Obama showed a different side. As Kagan reflects,
So maybe his speech only reflects what he and his advisers think Americans want to hear. But that is revealing, too. When it comes to America’s role in the world, apparently they don’t think there’s much of an argument.
I know that our paleo readers will say that this says more about the neocons than about Obama and the Democrats, but Kagan may be right that Festung Amerika isn’t either realistic or principled.
Perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me, but I don't recall a time when the Democratic Party ever had a strong isolationist strain. Nothing in Obama's remarks could not have been said by Bill Clinton. Or Hillary, I suppose. I don't see whats remarkable.
Festung Amerika
That's beneath you. It's bad enough the Democrats liken the "neocons" to Nazis, isn't it?
The Democrats were traditionally more isolationist than the Republicans in the periods before and after Wilson.
The Democrats were pro-slavery, or at least anti-anti slavery, in the time of Lincoln. (I don't recall that either, but I've read about it. Jaffa, in fact.) Its not news if they don't have that position today.
And whatever else you want to say about the isolationists, Democrat and Republican, they were not Nazis. Heck, the Nazis were not isolationists. You're dealing with two totally disjoint sets here.
Interesting take on Obama here.
It's a libertarian mag, so they throw around "statist" like you people do neocon and paleocon. That aside, its worth reading.
There's a bit of Chance the Gardener from "Being There" about Obama. He seems to be made up mostly of other people's projections. Bill Clinton allowed his personal charisma to lead people to infer political beliefs that he didn't hold, or didn't hold faithfully. His political brilliance was in accepting with charm the projections people put on him. Barack Obama seems to have studied Bill Clinton's model — so it's somehow fitting that he's competing against Clinton's wife for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The pre-Progressive Era Democratic party has little relevance to the modern Democratic party. What we have today is the contemporary Democratic party, not whatever it was 100 and 150 years ago. The contemporary (post-1968) Democratic party is globalist and peacenik, albeit to varying degrees. There is every reason to believe Obama is on the left wing of the party in terms of both foreign and domestic policy. We do not help ourselves or the cause of conservative government if we persist in trying to find signs of intelligent life in the Democratic field. FUGHETTABOUTIT.
4: John, you're onto something. Obama is a black Clinton, perhaps without the zipper problem (though I wouldn't be on that). Slightly more liberal, but fundamentally a black Clinton, which is to say, a phony who happens to be black. That makes him a potentially formidable candidate, but not someone for serious people to take seriously otherwise, any more than they should study comic books.
Correction: "wouldn't BET on that."
I think calling Obama a 'neocon' is stretching it, but he is probably a neoliberal, and the differences between the two are minimal. Both are globalists, support the third-world invasion of the West, and are interventionists. Although Crackhead Obama was opposed to the war in Iraq, he does want to start a war in Darfur. He also said at an AIPAC meeting in Chicago that he wouldn't rule out nuking Iran.
There are enormous differences between the neoconservatives and the neoliberals. They are not obvious to those whose thinking is confined within off-the-shelf, two-dollar formulas.
"There are enormous differences between the neoconservatives and the neoliberals."
Huge differences. The neolibs want to intervene in Africa, and the neocons want to intervene in the Middle East.
:-) Ron Paul 2008. He ain't neo nothing.
The difference IS huge, Dan. There's oil in the Middle East.