Tracinski on Obama & Netanyahu at U.N.

Robert Tracinski made an excellent observation on the two speeches made at the U.N. last week by Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his TIA Daily post dated 28 September 2009. Obama, as usual when he speaks to non-Americans, was all apologies for America's past actions and all pledges of good, cooperative behavior in which the United States will follow the lead of the other countries of the world. He seems to believe all countries are created equal and actually are equal and that the only way to make decisions in this world is by a kind of democracy among nations. Netanyahu made a much stronger speech in which he said the U.N. has failed to perform its moral job.

Here is how Tracinski characterized the difference between Obama and Netanyahu:

It is in contrast to Netanyahu that the deadly inversion in Obama's worldview becomes clear. In Netanyahu's outlook, good people come to the UN and hold it up to their own independent moral standards. Putting forward moral challenges they expect the UN to live up to, they judge it by its response. (And the judgment is necessarily harsh.) But Obama reverses that approach. In this outlook, it is the UN that stands in judgment of the United States, which has to crawl to the UN begging for the world's approval.

The issue here is far deeper than the two leaders' views of the UN. The difference is something in their souls. Ayn Rand described the theme of her novel The Fountainhead as "individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in man's soul." The story contrasted her hero Howard Roark, the innovator who upholds his own independent standards, against the glad-handing Peter Keating, whose goal is to conform to the standards set by others.

Well, we have just discovered how much our president is a Peter Keating, a man with collectivism in his soul. If the thugs on the UN Human Rights Council don't approve of us, an independent man's immediate reaction is: to hell with them. Obama's instinctive reaction is that we have to do something to appease the thugs.

I would make a small amendment to this assessment. Obama is largely Peter Keating, but he is also a bit of Toohey Elsworth. Obama is somewhat more manipulative, somewhat more driven by a passion for the socialist ideology, and somewhat more evil than Peter Keating. He is not as much so, probably, in any of these things as Ellsworth Toohey and he certainly is not as intelligent as Ellsworth Toohey, but he is more of a threat than Peter Keating.

Tracinski goes on to note that he does not think Obama's strategy to get the U.N. to line up more to help the U.S. in its quest to control Iran's nuclear weapon ambitions will work. He points out that French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave a speech in which he indicated he had no expectation that Iran would change its course despite further talks.

It has long been clear that nothing short of internal revolution will deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran intends to intimidate their Muslim neighbors into following their lead for the purpose of destroying Israel and establishing an Islamic Caliphate.