July 18, 2008
I AM BECOME BLUTO, DESTROYER OF WORLD HISTORY:
Barrack Obama in West Lafayette, IN (7/16/08)
Throughout our history, America's confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.
Most of us are too distant n space or time to have the memory of the day those treacherous Nips dropped the big one on Pearl seared into our memory, but you can understand why a guy from Hawaii is so familiar with the event. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 18, 2008 10:50 AM
Americans have never adapted to threats. The rest of the world may adapt and cower behind talks of soft power, our lefts can't come to terms with the world hating us. But every time Americans faced threats, they confronted and conquered them. Paraphrasing Patton's let the other son-of-a-bitch die for his country, Americans let the others adapt to their threats.
Posted by: ic at July 18, 2008 12:23 PMRaoul: Remember that in Obama's world, calling someone a "cowboy" is the worst insult imaginable...
Posted by: b at July 18, 2008 12:35 PMObama went to school in Indonesia until he was 10 (4th/5th grade?) and then in Hawaii where I'll bet American history isn't at the top of the pedagogical charts.
Why don't we trade off Hawaii for Australia as the 57th state?
Posted by: erp at July 18, 2008 12:52 PMerp: Punahou, the ultra-elite prep school Obama attended, is a stone's throw away from Punchbowl, the National Cemetary of the Pacific. His teachers there were probably on the whole more educationally distinguished & capable than his professors at Occidental. And while HI has horrific public high schools (which Obama of course had nothing do with), Pearl Harbor Day is kind of a big deal there. This is of course a slip of the tongue, but it is truly bizarre--like if he were to say that FDR was the first president or something equally ridiculous.
Posted by: b at July 18, 2008 1:12 PMDon't stop him. He's on a roll.
Posted by: Earl Sutherland at July 18, 2008 1:30 PMMaybe he's just a big Animal House fan. That would be the most promising thing I've heard about him.
Posted by: Mike Earl at July 18, 2008 1:44 PM
"Forget it, he's rolling."
And I like that "lawlessness of the frontier". A little reading of history will show that the whole point of the American Project was to bring civilization to the frontier, often (in the form of land surveys, for example) before people showed up. The "lawlessness" was often not even on the same order as what happens on the South Side on a Saturday night in August.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at July 18, 2008 12:10 PM