Comment on The Belmont Club,"You first. No? Ok, me first."

Obama may well be on the other side but Gordon Brown is a different and possibly more troubling case. Obama is either actively working to empower islamists and totalitarians because he identifies with them or he really is a post judeo-christian civilization one worlder who is so badly educated and narcissistic that he simply does not have any conception of what the consequences of his actions will be. Obama is an outsider and at best treats the nation he is responsible for with the detached interest that a spoiled child would treat a neglected pet.

Brown comes from within a more established community of thought. Perhaps our friends from across the pond can give us more information regarding his motives. There is a long standing pacifist strain within the Church of Scotland, it has been opposed to nuclear weapons for decades. The Reformation gave rise to the Whig, then the Liberal and ultimately the Labour Party in England and in Scotland the Liberals dominated in the earlier periods and Labour more recently until the rise of the Scottish Nationalists. With the decline of the Unionist-Conservatives in Scotland there is essentially no right of center perspective in the political market. Therefor it is possible for a man like Brown to propose policies that may seem irrational to an outsider or at best appear to be evidence of a Free Rider effect that marks most of Nato without his being intentionally antagonistic to the community he represents.

The religious and political forces that shaped Brown's politics are also present in America. The left wing of the Democratic Party draws from a pacifist evangelical tradition. My contention here is that Brown is a more authentic if misguided representative of that tradition in the UK and that Obama is part of a movement that cynically manipulates that tradition to gain power and weaken its host community.

Therefor Brown troubles me because he is less of an outsider. For comparison consider a conversation I had the other day. My contention is that the worst thing that ever happened to New York City was not the attack on 9-11 but rather was the destruction of Pennsylvania Station in the 1960s. The attacks of 9-11 were carried out by foreign barbarians. The destruction of Penn Station we did to ourselves.

It is my belief that we should deal with Obama by resolutely rejecting him and denying any connection between him and our civilization. Large billboards should be erected with his image and the message;
"For Shame, How Could You?"

-------
Thrasymachus,
(who emphasized the native roots of American leftism)
We differ in emphasis and proportions not in the basic recipe.
For me the influence of Soros and the Chinese combine with Obama's overseas connections, both temporal and emotional (the book is titled "Dreams of My Father") to convince me that he has no emotional attachment to America. To him we are merely a laboratory or a stage that his ego plays on. As I say in my third paragraph above the native soil is there in America to grow this crop. In my mind Brown is less of an alien to his home then Obama is. Both may prove to be destructive and the distinction may be without a difference.