The Conservative Soldier

The radical left in America imposes political correctness on every aspect of our lives to reinforce its sense of self-importance. It preaches “inclusion” but viciously and aggressively divides our nation at every opportunity. Eventually, the iron fist of political correctness will become so divisive it will threaten to destroy us because it is not merely a denunciation of traditional American values by social liberals; it is, more accurately, soft tyranny.

The PC Police Department is populated by millions of willing volunteers in communities across the country. Its foot soldiers infiltrate school boards, municipalities, churches, youth organizations and classrooms. But its most effective and zealous operatives are not volunteers. They are a professional hit squad recruited from within the radically perverse mainstream media.

Many of us have lost friends to the hit squads, formerly fair minded journalists who have devolved into societal menaces. They assign rights to any set of victims they can find, the more extreme the better, then label as bigots and haters anyone who does not embrace their victims. Very often, respected individuals are devoured by the media hit squads, whose members delight in the vilification.

A recent target was gymnastics champion and lifelong American Olympic ambassador Peter Vidmar. (Pictured above; photo courtesy: USA-Gymnastics.org).

After winning two gold medals and one silver as a member of the 1984 Olympic gymnastics team, Vidmar set forth to build a life of service to his sport, his country and his religion. He is Mormon. By any standard, his is an exemplary life. He and his wife have raised five college-educated children. Peter has been inducted twice into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, in 1991 as an individual and in 2006 with his Olympic teammates from the ‘84 Los Angeles Games. He is one of the most successful corporate motivational speakers of the past quarter century. And he has worked as a television commentator, combining his encyclopedic knowledge of gymnastics with a sharp wit. He has volunteered actively and, in 2008, became Chairman of USA Gymnastics, the sport’s national governing body.

Late last month, Peter was accorded another honor by the U.S. Olympic Committee. He was named “chef de mission” of the 2012 U.S. Olympic delegation that will travel to London for the Summer Games. This title is not one an individual lobbies for and is not merely a ceremonial feather in the cap. The person named to this volunteer position becomes the sole liaison between Team USA and the International Olympic Committee and the London Olympic organizers. When the Games begin, it is a round-the-clock job that requires political savvy, sound judgement and calm leadership.

Anyone who has known Peter Vidmar over all the years since 1984 knows this: He is precisely the type of individual who should represent his country’s Olympic team as chef de mission.

Last Friday, Vidmar abruptly resigned the post a week after accepting it. He was being devoured by a campaign advanced by two self-righteous journalists to depict him as an opponent of so-called gay rights, specifically gay marriage. A resident of California, Peter and more than seven million fellow voters supported a state Constitutional amendment known as Proposition 8, which is summarized in 14 words: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Voters approved Prop 8 in November 2008 by nearly 600,000 votes. What Prop 8 really stood for was the fundamental belief that, in the United States, elections matter. Prop 8 inspired citizens of California to rise up and declare their allegiance to the tenants of American democracy contained in the Constitution. Prop 8 meant that voters decided the legal status of gay unions, rather than allowing an activist state Supreme Court judge to overrule an existing law and summarily allow gay couples to stampede to courthouses to legalize these unions. (Subsequently, another activist judge came along and overturned the Prop 8 vote, and the appeals process is under way).

Vidmar contributed $2,000 to the campaign supporting Prop 8. It reflected a deep commitment to his Mormon faith, but millions of others in states across the nation support traditional marriage because they believe that forming a gay union is not a civil right, and because they acknowledge the reality that civilization can not exist apart from thriving marriages between men and women and the strong families they engender. The fabric of society is under attack every time a fringe group claims to exercise a civil right when, in fact, it mainly seeks to seize political clout.

In “revealing” to the world Vidmar’s personal view on this matter, the Chicago Tribune deliberately smeared him. Its reporter contacted an openly gay figure skater and gleefully quoted the skater’s characterization. It was “disgusting” that Vidmar would be the Olympic team delegation leader. The skater, Johnny Weir (left; credit: Sundance Channel), who never has won an Olympic medal, complained that Vidmar would dare to support a movement that opposed equal “rights”. The Tribune did not quote any prospective member of the 2012 team from a summer sport.

Perhaps there was a reason. It is certainly possible there was no gay athlete out there with designs on the 2012 Olympics who was willing, or compelled, to speak out against Vidmar. Or maybe it is even less complicated than that: Maybe there won’t be any gay members on the team. Period.

But that hardly matters. What matters to journalism’s PC hit squads is that they identify the target, move in swiftly and take him down. Any collateral damage or unintended consequences are somebody else’s problem. They know best. If you oppose them, they lash out dismissively, “What is wrong with you?”

They have not asked this question of Johnny Weir, the eccentric U.S. champion who has skated a program in which he impersonates Lady Gaga. It was heralded as “the gayest thing you will ever see” by the blog Best Week Ever. However, a profile by the digital media site Slate begged to differ. In reviewing a series about him produced by the Sundance Channel called Be Good Johnny Weir, Slate’s Torie Bosch wrote:

“If Best Week Ever thought that Weir’s skating to Lady Gaga was gay, well, clearly those editors hadn’t seen Weir relaxing in a bubble bath, in a blond bob wig, sipping Champagne, with his (male) best friend and roommate, Paris.”

When anti-fur activists complained about Weir’s fur-trimmed costumes, nothing disciplinary happened. When he sported a CCCP jacket (the symbol of the former Soviet Union) while representing the U.S. at the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, no journalists expressed outrage and called for his banishment from the team.

The self-absorbed deviant is celebrated. The patriot is vilified. And the fabric of American life unravels before our eyes as a once great nation begins a precipitous, apologetic decline.

What is wrong with all of us?

The Obamatrons are giddy. The bullet lodged in Osama bin Laden’s head killed the master terrorist and, more importantly to them, gave life to the master campaigner, Barack Obama.

In fact, the very American citizens who were delighted that Obama shut down the War on Terror in 2009 are now certain that Obama’s order to kill OBL in a cold, tactical manner will guarantee the President’s re-election next year.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was tingling when Obama was elected. One can only imagine what physical reaction Matthews had upon hearing the news that Obama, with a little help from the CIA and precision trained military personnel, had taken out the father of al Qaeda. After cleaning himself up, Matthews wasted no time weaving a narrative that Republicans’ 2012 designs on taking the White House are fading quickly, warning the GOP to cease “cheering their buffoon parade” and go to work “finding a real pick to put up against a proven master and commander.”

The proven master. The proven commander. Amazing, isn’t it, that the cool hand of an armed Navy SEAL under unimaginable pressure can resurrect a rudderless Presidency even as the soldier removes the smugness from the face of a mass murderer?

Let’s clear up where we’ve come from and where we’re headed now that OBL is fish food. The Obamatrons gushed about the courage Obama displayed in green-lighting the mission. More accurately, it tells us he is a master of the obvious. How would you respond to an intel alert that reads: OBL no longer cowering in a cave. Moved to Islamabad suburb. Permission to take him out requested.

The bullet that killed OBL was nonpartisan. All that matters is that it was an American bullet fired by a member of the United States military under orders handed down from the top. The SEAL’s allegiance was to his country, not to a political party or an ideology. That he was standing in OBL’s bedroom nearly a decade after the Saudi-born terrorist handed down his own order to attack the U.S. was the culmination of an awakening on Sept. 11, 2001. After years of passivity, Americans were face to face with a murderous enemy and eager to embrace what became known as the Bush Doctrine: identify the enemy, call them out for who they are — namely, radical terrorists — and pursue them preemptively.

That’s where we were as a nation 10 years ago. More recently, we’ve elected a President who: denounced the Bush Doctrine; dishonored the U.S. military by disparaging its mission and its efforts in waging war; threatened to close a Guantanamo Bay prison full of terrorists and their sympathizers; directed his cabinet and staff to scrub “war on terror” from the administration lexicon; authorized his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to subject CIA officers to a “criminal investigation” of their terrorist interrogation methods; alienated families of 9/11 victims by supporting the Gitmo shutdown and the end of military commissions endeavoring to pursue justice; and, incredibly, stood by as three Navy SEALs faced court martial proceedings for roughing up a radical who’d ordered the murder of American contractors working in Iraq.

If Obama and Holder had managed, as was their stated intent in 2009, to undo all of the Bush policies, writes law professor John Yoo on today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed page, “the SEAL helicopters would be idling their engines at their Afghanistan base even now.”

That covers where we’ve come from. Where are we now? The master commander has quickly reverted to campaigner in chief. Barack Obama on Thursday will go to Ground Zero, where he will lay a wreath and meet with 9/11 families, at least the ones who agree to show up. On previous visits to New York since he became President, Obama has been too busy appeasing member of the United Nations, taking his wife out to dinner and a show, or appearing on “The View” to stand at the place where the towers crumbled on 9/11.

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We’ve come from years of not always popular, even maligned, coordination of military and intelligence objectives (including phone surveillance) to take the fight to the al Qaeda networks. We’ve deployed troops and sacrificed lives to keep the enemy on the defensive, though frequently the successes have been lumped under the mainstream media heading, “unfunded wars”. We’ve refined predator drone technology to a point that not even Obama can resist using it to take out bad guys in Libya. And we’ve been protected by a volunteer force that never wavered from its mission, that stayed vigilant and, at the moment of truth last Sunday, efficiently swept in and killed Osama bin Laden and members of his inner circle inside a safe house in Pakistan.

Where are we going? The American radical left thinks we’re going toward a resounding Obama re-election victory in 2012. They have spent the past few days assuring themselves, cheered on by Chris Matthews and his ilk, that the OBL-fueled uptick in the national mood will become an elixir that calms the citizenry in the face of persistently high unemployment, persistently rising gasoline prices and persistent policies that threaten U.S. economic solvency. Look at those poll numbers, they’ll say.

But there are several realities Obamatrons seem to be missing. The Democratic National Committee doesn’t have the political equivalent of a Naval SEAL “Team Six” to call in. There’s no “Camp Gitmo” where Obama can receive tips from campaign insiders about what the GOP’s strategists have up their sleeves. There are no precision “drones” that can fly around undetected, intercepting campaign donations before they reach Republican coffers.

In other words, Obama has a much more formidable task before him in trying to convince an increasingly skeptical electorate that he is competent on domestic policy, that he is a master of economic prosperity. If given a choice today, there are millions of Americans who would have chosen job security over a successful bin Laden hit. The jobless and those who have jobs but little or no disposable income probably wonder why their President isn’t hunkered down on Sundays in a situation room where their situation is on the radar.

Even without his Bin Laden moment, some on the left will argue, Obama already was gaining momentum toward 2012. Why, didn’t you see the news? Stronger than expected tax receipts following the April household filing deadline has moved the pending debt ceiling crisis to August. Despite staggering increases in gasoline prices at the pumps, the economy is strengthening and Wall Street has been acting bullish.

And what do you suppose is omitted from that rosy outlook? Just a small detail. After the American people resoundingly denounced Obama’s presidency in the 2010 mid-terms, do you recall the concession he made with the politically rebalanced House of Representatives? The preeminent commander yielded to public opinion and allowed the Bush era income tax rates to remain intact for two more years. Those stronger-than-expected tax receipts reflected economic growth which would have been stymied if Obama had gotten his way and jacked up the tax rates on the upper end from 35% to 39.6%.

So what’s his next move? Until and unless Republicans identify a candidate for President who can appeal to a broad spectrum of voters with crystal clarity on pocketbook issues, there is a good chance a modestly improved economy will be all Obama needs to win narrowly in 2012. As he exploited the Bush Doctrine so, too, will he gladly exploit Bush’s still intact so-called “tax cuts” and any elements of Congressman Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” that might work their way into law between now and then.

Remember, Obama is a master … opportunist.

It was observed in this space as recently as January that Barack Obama confounds a majority of Americans because he views his country, and thus his duties as President, through a prism of unaccountability. This was painfully evident again on Wednesday when Obama delivered a budget speech panned very accurately by the Wall Street Journal as “dishonest even by modern political standards.”

Because he is so “wise”, so “transformational”, his thoughts and the words through which he conveys them are sufficient. Deeds are not required. Deeds are for the little people, the insects perched all around him. Reality is for chumps, for voters, for Tea Party activists, and for the most inconsequential human beings of all, members of the U.S. Congress.

In his youth, uncontained rage erupted in Obama’s core, an abject contempt for a class of people he dismissed as cold-hearted capitalists and, in most cases, as oppressive colonialists. Author Dinesh D’Souza detailed the origins of these deeply entrenched feelings in his acclaimed book,The Roots of Obama’s Rage, and in a Forbes cover story last September, in which D’Souza chronicles how Obama’s hostility toward private enterprise only makes sense upon examination of his roots.

History has shown us that men who rise to prominence on the wings of rage are willing to do almost anything to achieve vindication. Whatever carnage litters this journey is of no concern to them. Whatever stands in the way, be it individual opponents or the stability of a society as a whole, must be obliterated.

Every day, more Americans are awakening to a realization that someone very different occupies the White House — someone unlike any past President who comes to mind. Yet in the mainstream media and across a majority of the disengaged population (such as those glued to the countdown to England’s royal wedding), there are two persistent conclusions: Obama is just doing what he thinks is right, so give this young president a chance; or, he’s always in campaign mode, playing to the working- and middle-class voters who are certain to re-elect him in 2012.

Much analysis followed Obama’s stunningly arrogant speech Wednesday in which he laid out his recipe for harnessing American indebtedness without touching bloated entitlement programs he characterizes as sacred to the nation’s fabric.

How many sage pundits are asking: Can this President, having moved to the “center”, suddenly become so mule-brained on budget cuts (his so-called compromise with Republicans now exposed as a numbers con), and so resolutely defiant on spending? Why, how can Obama trash Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget remedies as not being “serious”, vowing to tax those who already pay most of the federal income taxes more aggressively in the future?

Respected commentator Charles Krauthammer said Obama’s vilification of the Ryan blueprint was a “disgrace”. The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof predictably agreed with Obama on raising taxes on those mischaracterized as “rich”, and the Times’ editorial proclaimed the speech as proof that Obama is “reinvigorated”. After all, you can’t have a listless messiah, can you?

Applying logic and conventional thinking is what real-time historians must do. Yes, it is disgraceful for a President to diminish the economic crisis that has defined the opening two years of his time in office by throwing partisan daggers at the opposition game plan. Yes, Obama is reinvigorated, any time he can recite age-old liberal passages from the left-wing hymn book.

But the Times’ editorial touched on the true motivation for Obama’s defiant polarization of the budget debate.

“The man America elected president has re-emerged. … He set out a very different vision of an America that keeps its promises to the weak and asks for sacrifice from the strong.”

Sadly, the Times’ Kool-Aid quenched editorial board and Americans who voted for Obama in 2008 will not comprehend that the President has not re-emerged. The rage never subsides. His contempt toward the Americans the Times calls “the strong” (and to whom Obama assigns less complimentary labels) does not become dormant or neutralized by the magnitude of Presidential responsibility, or by threats to our economic solvency.

The man America elected president counts himself among the “weak” to whom much must be promised. Of course, he does not believe he is physically weak, or intellectually feeble. But Barack Obama firmly believes he was sentenced at birth to weakness caused by the oppressive boot on the neck, a boot belonging to bigotry, racism, economic inequality and colonialist arrogance.

Though he escaped the oppression to rise up as a transformational god, it is unlikely he feels godlike in moments of quiet solitude. Rage does not coexist with confidence, with leadership, or with benevolence. Rage feeds on itself. It churns. It bubbles. It flows through the fibers of his being like a psychological lava, obliterating clear thought and blinding him from the perils of his choices.

No one better understands the paradoxical Obama than the author D’Souza. Conclusions about what motivates Obama “aren’t wrong so much as they are inadequate,” D’Souza wrote in Forbes last September.

“The real problem with Obama is worse — much worse. … Across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama’s own history.”

And, in failing to adequately fear Obama’s potential to wage war on the very citizens he was elected to serve, we ignore the peril ahead.