Posted by
David C. Innes on Friday, October 16, 2009 8:25:36 AM
Morris sees Obama's Peace Prize as Europe's second attempt in three hundred
years to civilize America. "Europe wants to reverse the American
Revolution and re-colonize us and it sees in Obama a kindred spirit
willing to do its bidding." (Townhall does not allow its bloggers to use the nickname for Richard, out of concern that it may be used in another context as inappropriate language.)
John Bolton
sees a leftist Norwegian record of interfering in American politics
with the Nobel. He writes, "Their message really is quite
straightforward: 'Jimmy Carter in 2002,Al Gore in 2007 and now Barack
Obama. Do you Americans get the point yet?'"
Hendrik Hetzberg at The New Yorker is harsh on the Nobel Prize itself ("Obama's Nobel Surprise").
If President Obama really had to get a gift postmarked Scandinavia this
month, he would probably, on the whole, have preferred the Olympics. At
least at the Olympics the judges wait till after the race to give you
the gold medal. They don’t force it on you while you’re still waiting
for the bus to take you to the stadium. They don’t give it to you in
anticipation of possible future feats of glory, like a signing bonus or
an athletic scholarship. They don’t award it as a form of gentle
encouragement, like a parent calling “Good job!” to a toddler who’s
made it to the top rung of the monkey bars. It’s not a plastic,
made-in-China “participation” trophy handed out to everyone in the
class as part of a program to boost self-esteem. It’s not a door prize
or a goody bag or a bowl of V.I.P. fruit courtesy of the hotel
management. It’s not a gold star. It’s a gold medal.
But he is sympathetic to the Nobel's most recent
recipient. "Given that his perceived political problem is exaggerated
expectations, does he really need a Nobel Peace Prize before he has
actually made any peace?"
But the best of the columns that I have read on the Obama Nobel prize
come from one who fully supports the award, Bret Stephens in The Wall
Street Journal ("
A Perfect Nobel Pick"). Stephens has figured out the Nobel Committee. They are what Oriana Fallaci "Goodists."
They are the people who believe all conflict stems from
avoidable misunderstanding. Who think that the world's evils spring
from technologies, systems, complexes (as in "military-industrial") and
everything else except from the hearts of men, where love abides. Who
mistake wishes for possibilities. Who put a higher premium on their own
moral intentions than on the efficacy of their actions. Who champion
education as the solution, whatever the problem. Above all, the
Goodists are the people who like to be seen to be good.
Yes, there is a long history of their influence in the previous
century. They gave us the League of Nations. They gave us "peace in our
time" back in 1938. They gave us permissive child-rearing in the
generation following the war. In the 1960s, they addressed "the root
causes" of poverty, and gave us vastly more. At the same time they
addressed "the root causes" of crime, and gave us a pandemic outbreak
of that too. The last Goodist President made human rights the
organizing principle of his foreign policy, but did so in Goodist
fashion, so only succeeded in making the world safe for oppression by
weakening America.
Now the Nobel
Committee has helpfully identified our current President as a
thoroughgoing Goodist (for those who were unable to see it during the
election campaign). So when Iran starts firing nuclear missiles, when
former residents of Guantanamo Bay blow up densely populated American
targets, and when the engine of American prosperity splutters and dies,
we'll all know why.