Obama Speaks to Islam - Part I

Earlier today, President Obama spoke to the Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt. (See the White House for full transcript http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/). In many ways he should be commended for his speech. He appeared to achieve his primary goals of assuaging mainstream Muslim anger towards the US and opening a ‘new’ dialogue between the West and Islamic world. He spoke tactfully to address mutual issues and brighten the Islamic world’s view of America. Furthermore, his discussion on democracies made some very strong points. To be intellectually honest, his successes must be praised.

However, there were a number of instances where his previous foreign policy gaffes and his harmful and misguided views of international relations seeped through. There were at least three major areas where his language was most unfortunate. First, Obama continued his regrettable apologetic tone and America criticism. Second, he was overly critical of Israel. Finally, he reemphasized a poor nuclear policy. These three issues will be discussed in the following three blog entries.

As he has done in the past, Obama overplayed America’s supposed mistakes and wrongs. While he was certainly not as intense as in past speeches, his words were embarrassing and degrading towards America. Throughout his speech, Obama claimed that he wanted to paint a picture of America and Islam on equal footing, as two brothers that had a shared and sometimes painfully history, but ultimately needed and wanted to work together. This is a fair and just goal and one that is appropriate if properly executed. However, Obama frequently appeared to put greater emphasis on the West’s alleged mistakes and misdeeds than Islam’s. For instance he began to address the historical relationship between Islam and the West by expounding on historical misdeeds completed by the West.

We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world -- tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

He then seemingly attempted to show the Muslim harms committed against the West. He said,
“Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims.” It is important to note that this is explained only as violent minority. Obama’s attempt at painting a picture of two equally culpable parties fails. In his eyes, the West, as a whole, has harmed Islam; while only a few members of Islam have harmed the West. This unfortunately continues the slamming of America in order to appease the world community.

He continued to disparage America in his discussion of Iraq. As compared to his discussion of Afghanistan, Obama portrayed Iraq as an unfortunate disaster that should never have happened. This streak of self-criticism continued with his discussion of post-9/11 policies. He stated,

The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.

For some reason, Obama thinks it is prudent to consistently point out polices that he, alongside his new anti-American, and Islamic friends dislike. He seems more interested in being popular and liked, than doing the right thing. Even if he is right (which he isn’t) regarding Iraq or Guantanamo, continually harping on them does no good. He has recognized this to some degree by thankfully deciding not to release the latest rounds of photos. However he continues unhelpful and unnecessary discussion and disparagement of the US.

All of this leads to a world view of America as weak and morally reprehensible. If Obama truly thinks that there are mutual misdeeds, then he should equally outline them both (or just avoid saying anything). However, by stating the message that both parties are to blame and then only displaying one side’s supposed wrongs sends a drastically different message. It reeks of regret and weakness, and fails to truly talk openly as supposedly desires. The job of the President is to protect America, not to criticize and undermine our world position. Unfortunately Obama can’t seem to help himself.

Give Me Healthcare, Or Give Me Death?

The state of US healthcare system is atrocious. It is in need of desperate reform. Unfortunately, the Republican Party lacks any coherent proposals to fix the broken system. This leaves the American people with a choice between the current unwieldy system or the big government, nationalized, nearly Socialist plan of the Left.

For years, the Democrats have been proposing state control of the healthcare system. They want to offer universal healthcare to every American on the taxpayers’ dime. While seemingly noble in aim, this is absolutely foolish. Not only will a government system crowd out the private industry, but it will be vastly inferior. As most know, the government does a substandard job at providing services, particularly services that can be supplied by the private sector.

Unfortunately, this is where the discussion stops for most Republicans. The criticisms of the Democrats’ model of universal healthcare are solid and well thought out. However, the Republican’s offer little in terms of a solution to the obvious problems in the healthcare industry.

A relatively clear-cut answer is to fall back on the free-market principles that form the base of American conservatism. While unquestioning defense of the healthcare industry often comes hand-in-hand with criticism of universal healthcare, this need not be the case. One of the bases of free market capitalism is the notion of competition. However, the current structure of the health insurance industry limits competition.

Contrary to other, non-health, insurance industries, the health insurance system is an employer-based system. This severely reduces the number of buyers of health insurance. A health insurance company only needs to pitch its product to a few large companies in order to capture a substantial portion of the market. This forces the insurance company to structure products that will appeal to HR representatives, not the insurance consumer. This limits the diversity of the products offered and gives the insurance companies greater market control. Health insurance consumers can veto bad insurance plans only by leaving their jobs. Certainly, this puts some limits on the downward movement of insurance quality- as competition remains at the firm level. However, it drastically reduces the specialization that would occur if each consumer were responsible for his or her own insurance.

The easy solution is to end the employer based health insurance system. Individuals would be responsible for finding their own health insurance. Companies, since they no longer have to pay for insurance, would increase salaries accordingly. This would leave individuals with the same amount of money as they previously had to purchase health care on the free market. Naturally, many new, specialized products would develop. This would allow individuals to spend more or less based on the type of care and services they want. Insurance companies would have to compete rigorously with each other to capture new, separate segments of the market. All this would lead to greater competition, lower prices, and increased services. Insurance companies that fail to deliver would find a swift exit from the market, thereby creating a marketplace of higher quality companies.

Critics of such a proposal argue that health insurance is far too complicated for the average American to purchase on their own. This, however, unfairly diminishes Joe Six-Pack’s ability to obtain the appropriate information that he would need. The average American is capable of doing their own taxes and finding homeowner’s or car insurance. For those that cannot, or do not want to be bothered, there are a myriad of brokerage services available. It is quite likely that insurance brokers would expand in scope as they aided individuals in searching for the right health insurance plan.

The answer to the health insurance issue is not increased consolidation and government regulation, but a move towards greater free market competition. Government controlled, universal healthcare will only deepen the systemic problems that already exist. A greater number of differentiated healthcare providers will facilitate cheaper, more universal healthcare, without sacrificing the quality of healthcare in America.

Reverse Racism, Sotomayor, and Some Firemen

The term “reverse racist” is about a meaningless term as one can get. What’s the difference between a racist and a reverse racist? The artificial distinction seems to imply that someone who is prejudiced against minorities is a racist, while someone who is prejudiced against whites is a reverse racist. But why is a distinction necessary? Racism is racism, pure and simple. If one is discriminatory based on race, it is racism. That’s it.

It seems that the use of “reverse racist” is mired in a philosophy that systematically separates races and automatically defers to the Democrats’ talking points and language. Racism is often an accusation hurled at the right from the left. Whites have historically been pegged as racist (often because they were). However, it is seemingly un-PC to call a minority racist. It touches on some sort of sensitivity to use the language of victimhood for the supposed [historical] perpetrator. So instead, the right soft-toes around the Democrats’ feelings and coins a new term- “reverse racism”.

This is at best inane and worst outright harmful. Racism, to whomever it is directed at, should be labeled as such. By having two terms, the argument is still one of white vs. black- not one between discrimination and non-discrimination. It is foolish for America’s conservatives to give the Democrats free rein to structure the debate around skin color and claim that only one or two groups in America are truly victims. Rather, Republicans need to brand racism propagated against whites not as reverse racism, but simply as racism. It is the same beast.

This is essential to shifting the focus of the equality and discrimination debate in America from one of skin-color to one of tolerance. In this day and age, skin-color should not matter. The so-called Civil Rights movement should no longer be one of emancipation for blacks and other minorities, but one of eradication of race based thinking, regardless of the racial category of the victim. The emancipation movement for blacks has already succeeded. It is high time we recognize this. The Left is very reluctant to do so, as there are a milieu of special interests and politicians (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton) whose existence is based on racial tensions. The Republicans only fuel this mode of thinking by acquiescing to Democrat standards of language use.

This issue has been widely prevalent in regards to Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court. While I would not go so far as to call her a racist, Judge Sotomayor’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano is clearly racist and discriminatory (See my prior discussion here http://anewrepublican.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-race-is-your-fireman.html). She approved of a system that blatantly and unfairly signaled out (and failed to reward) individuals based on skin color. Republicans have been doing a great disservice by terming it reverse racism. It implies that Sotomayor’s decision does not have the same gravity as it would have if the races of the firemen involved were inverted. In fact, the Ricci decision is as heinous as if New Haven refused to promote any black firefighters simply because of their skin color.

It is time to take charge of the debate. Republicans have to move the focus from the partisan, racial agenda set by the Democratic Party to a new post-Civil Rights conversation. We have to appeal to the notions of equality and fairness. We have to seek to eradicate racism and raced-based thinking. We have to stop automatically terming any differences between blacks and whites as racism and focus on true discrimination- regardless of who it is targeted at. Defining the debate not as skin-color versus skin-color, but as discrimination versus non-discrimination will broaden the appeal of the Republican Party to minorities who previously bought the demonized racist image broadcast by the Democrats. Until we do that, the Republican Party will continue to suffer by playing the game under the Democrats’ rules

The Union Between Failure and Inflexibility

As GM heads towards a government deadline, it is scrambling to restructure and avoid bankruptcy. In the process, bondholders are getting the short end of the stick, being cast as the bad guys. The big winners are, of course, the unions which may receive, according to the latest plan up to 20% of the new GM. (See MSNBC report http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30938307).

This is a most unfair solution for the failing auto giant. The United Auto Workers (UAW) and the bondholders share an equal claim to GM’s assets. However, our leftist, pro-union government is demonizing the bondholders and unfairly assisting the union. (See a great editorial by the average American bondholder in the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124338330278956585.html#mod=djemEditorialPage).

If anything, the situation should be reversed. The UAW has way too much power and control in the auto industry. The worst possible solution is to give the unions even greater control over the failing industry. While not the sole cause of the auto industry’s failures, the unions have profoundly contributed to its current state. Unions, in general, contribute to rigidity in an industry. They prevent jobs from being phased out when no longer necessary. This ultimately undermines research and development and technological growth, causing unionized companies to lag behind those without unions. While it is impossible to know what GM would look like today without unions, it is clear that it would have had greater flexibility to change its business model, modes of production, and more. Instead, the stiffness of the system has forced GM and other auto companies to continue a model that should have been discarded long ago.

In non-unionized industries, companies are rewarded – or fail – based on their innovations and specialized superiority. Competition encourages them to reinvent and routinely redesign themselves. If they fall behind, everyone – management, workers, suppliers, retailers – lose out. However in the rigid system of the auto industry, as consumer demand shifts the auto companies are unable to appropriately shift the business. Workers cannot be let go and plants cannot be shut down. This prevents the company from developing new products and methods that could be more efficiently performed with workers or factories with different abilities. Instead, the company must continue an outdated business model and sell an inferior product.

And so for all their contribution to the downfall of the industry, the unions are being rewarded. Once again they are unjustly being a given a piece of the pie that they do not deserve. If our government wants to save the auto industry, it better think long and hard about the role of the union. The answer is not to reward those who made the system too inflexible to succeed, but to create a new, more competitive company that excludes the rigid structures and players that previously dominated. This approach may save the auto industry- giving the UAW undue ownership will not.

Flouting the Rules

Once again North Korea has flouted international rules.  This time it has conducted nuclear tests and launched short-range missiles. (See Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,521821,00.html?test=latestnews).  As it has done before, North Korea is testing Washington and thumbing its nose at the world.  So far, the current administration, alongside the international community, has done little to stem North Korea’s unacceptable behaviors.

As has been discussed in this blog and elsewhere, North Korea’s rogue actions are unacceptable.  The Obama administration pays lip service to this. However, it has thus far failed to send a convincing message to the North Koreans.  Instead, North Korea receives a pleasant message that Washington will only talk and will not act decisively against belligerent actions.  Kim Jong-Il and his cronies are responding to Obama’s rampant pacifism by testing how far they can go.  These missile launches and nuclear tests are a gauge of America’s willingness to impede North Korean actions.  So far the message is clear – North Korea can do what it wants.

The administration does much to weaken its position, by packaging condemnations of belligerent actions with the stated policy of appeasement and discussion only.  This weak position is seen clearly in the President’s statement following the nuclear test (See the White House website http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/STATEMENT-FROM-THE-PRESIDENT-REGARDING-NORTH-KOREA/).  Obama condemns the actions, but then reverts to the policy prescriptions of discussions.  The press release outlines everything that is wrong with the tests, but only offers a response of more talk about and less international acceptance of North Korea.

The United States has to offer a decisive and firm response to these latest tests.  It must be unequivocal that these behaviors are unacceptable.  Kim Jong-Il must understand that North Korea will suffer severe punishments if it continues to test the world.  This can be accomplished through open discussion of possible military action against the rogue state.  As of now, it is imprudent to launch an attack against the country; however, laying the option on the table could go a long way towards emphasizing the gravity of failing to abide by international standards.

North Korea must see the folly of their ways.  Strong language and threats of severe action must be made to deter further provocations.  If strong statements from the UN are stymied by Chinese hesitation, the United States must stand up to North Korea alone (or with any willing participants).  While a military attack is certainly a response that should be discussed, other less severe actions should be laid out- and acted upon immediately.  Otherwise, Kim Jong-Il will know that he has freedom to do whatever he desires, with only the risk of a mild tongue lashing in response.

The Great Divider

President Obama has become a great national divider. Despite his calls for bipartisanship, he has tactfully drawn a heavy line in the sand. Unfortunately, this line falls very far on the right end of the political spectrum. Obama doesn’t have to be bipartisan because his side of the playing field now incorporates most of America. He, helped by a number of far-right conservatives, has constructed a strong us-versus-them system, where many conservatives are afraid to affiliate with the Republican Party.

This has left a small nub of the political spectrum that still considers themselves to be Republicans. This group of stalwart Republicans has now moved from being one wing of many in a broad based Republican Party, to a new core in a much narrower party. While the individuals in this group generally have not changed their conservative values, they now have become a larger voice within the party. As they grow in power, so does their rejection of the moderate wings of the Republican Party. As we are seeing, greater numbers of people are continuing to flee the Republican umbrella.

While I often agree with certain ideologies and policies proposed by the Ann Coulters and Rush Limbaughs, these are not the public faces we want representing the Republican Party. These people should be strong members of the party, preaching to the choir, and rallying the base. They should do their work from the inside. Ann Coulter is never going to convince a liberal, or even a moderate, to vote Republican. While her ideas might often be sound, her delivery and presentation is one that pushes people away. Her methods are superb when rallying the people that agree with her, but ineffectual in forming a broad coalition under the Republican banner.

As the Republican leadership refuses to distance themselves from these individuals, we drive more of the moderate Republicans and independents across Obama’s line in the sand and into the hands of the Democrats. The Republican Party has to replicate exactly what Obama has done. We have to push the line back towards Obama, stealing the middle to support the conservative values that the Republican Party once stood for. Most of American does not support the intense liberalism of the left; however, they do not want to be associated with a party that is perceived to be narrow-minded, intolerant, and out-of touch. Unfortunately, that is where the Republican Party is headed these days.

It is unfortunate that when leading Republicans make this point, they are silenced, ridiculed, and outcast from the nub-Republican Party. Obviously, there are serious issues going on within the Republican Party. Any American can see that. We need to open discussions on how to best rebuild the big-tent Republicanism that existed under the likes of Reagan and Kemp. We have to stop shrinking the party, and begin to grow it. New voices of reason need to speak out and challenge the current voices of the party. While the hardcore Republicans talk in the language of Reagan and heap praise upon him, they have all-but failed the party that he helped create.

This is not a criticism of conservative ideals, or even a disparagement of specific wings of the Republican Party; but a call to grow the base, not shrink it. There are meaningful debates that happened within the party. Let’s keep those debates within the Republican Party, rather than between a nub-Republican Party and expanded Democrat Party. The path to electoral success is not through vitriolic small-mindedness, but through a broad appeal to the logical, conservative ideals held by most of America.