Post-American Presidency (4 page)

The United Nations was putting itself in the position of policing Sharia rules on blasphemy. The West had accepted the Islamic narrative of victimization and intimidation to such a degree that large segments of the Western elites seemed ready to accept the proposition that it was blasphemy to criticize Islam.

Barack Obama was putting the world’s only superpower behind this outrage. The Obama administration took a decidedly friendly attitude toward this initiative.
The Weekly Standard
noted that “in order to please our European allies and our Third World critics, the Obama administration may be tempted to surrender one particular manifestation of American ‘dominance’: central management of key aspects of the Internet by the U.S. Department of Commerce”—and that some countries are already agitating for this. And not just countries: “If we give control of the Internet naming infrastructure to an international organization, we must expect attempts to censor the Internet. The Organization
of the Islamic Conference will doubtless demand the suppression of websites that ‘insult Islam’ or ‘encourage hatred,’ and a number of European countries may well go along.”
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Meanwhile, the Obama administration moved swiftly to show a conciliatory face to the OIC. Within two weeks of taking office, Obama wrote to the secretary-general of the OIC, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, seeking improved relations.
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Ihsanoglu visited Washington on June 23, 2009—the same day that the State Department announced the establishment of the Office of the United States Special Representative to Muslim Communities, as Ihsanoglu had urged.
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This office is so important that the special representative to Muslim communities reports directly to the secretary of state.
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With the OIC engaged in its all-out international effort to restrict free speech about Islam, including speech designed to alert non-Muslims to the motives and goals of the global jihad movement, Obama’s outreach to the OIC had ominous overtones—especially in light of the other indications that his administration had been giving that the defense of free speech was not exactly high on its list of priorities.

THE UNITED STATES BECOMES AN ENEMY OF FREE SPEECH

Ominous overtones became ominous reality in October 2009, when the Obama administration actually cosponsored (with Egypt, itself not a bastion of free inquiry and free expression) an anti–free speech resolution at the United Nations. Approved by the UN Human Rights Council, the resolution calls on states to condemn and criminalize “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”
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What could be wrong with that? Everything.

There is, after all, the First Amendment, which preserves Americans’ right to free speech and freedom of the press.

“Incitement” and “hatred” are in the eye of the beholder—or more precisely, in the eye of those who make such determinations. The powerful can decide to silence the powerless by classifying their views as “hate speech.” The Founding Fathers knew that the freedom of speech was an essential safeguard against tyranny: the ability to dissent, freely and publicly and without fear of imprisonment or other reprisal, is a cornerstone of any genuine republic. If some ideas cannot be heard and are proscribed from above, the ones in control are tyrants, however benevolent they may be.

Now no less distinguished a personage than the president of the United States has given his imprimatur to this tyranny.

The resolution also condemns “negative stereotyping of religions and racial groups,” which is, of course, an oblique reference to accurate reporting about the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism—for that, not actual negative stereotyping or hateful language, is always the focus of complaints by the Organization of the Islamic Conference and allied groups. They never say anything when people like Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed issue detailed Qur’anic expositions justifying violence and hatred; but when people like Dutch politician Geert Wilders and others report about such expositions, that’s “negative stereotyping.”

Eugene Volokh explained why even the First Amendment may not be able to stand up against Obama’s assault on free speech. “If the U.S. backs a resolution that urges the suppression of some speech,” he explains, “presumably we are taking the view that all countries—including the U.S.—should adhere to this resolution. If we are constitutionally barred from adhering to it by our domestic constitution,
then we’re implicitly criticizing that constitution, and committing ourselves to do what we can to change it.”
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Volokh added that in order to be consistent, “the Administration would presumably have to take what steps it can to ensure that supposed ‘hate speech’ that incites hostility will indeed be punished. It would presumably be committed to filing amicus briefs supporting changes in First Amendment law to allow such punishment, and in principle perhaps the appointment of Justices who would endorse such changes (or even the proposal of express constitutional amendments that would work such changes).”
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In 2008 the secretary-general of the OIC, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, issued a warning: “We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed” regarding free speech about Islam and terrorism. And he reported success: “The official West and its public opinion are all now well-aware of the sensitivities of these issues. They have also started to look seriously into the question of freedom of expression from the perspective of its inherent responsibility, which should not be overlooked.”
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No American president had ever taken more seriously his “responsibility” to restrict the freedom of speech and bow to Muslim demands than Barack Hussein Obama. When he said during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that “peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely,” the irony was blistering.
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And he worked to erode American sovereignty in other ways as well.

GIVING UP AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY AT THE G-20 LEADERS’ SUMMIT

Obama scored a major victory for his internationalist agenda in April 2009 at the G-20 Leaders’ Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy in London.

Dick Morris, the author, columnist, and former aide to Bill Clinton, explained it to Greta Van Susteren of Fox News: “Literally from April 2nd of this year, that is, today,” said Morris, “it’s a whole new world of financial regulation in which, essentially, all of the U.S. regulatory bodies and all U.S. companies are put under international regulation, international supervision. It really amounts to a global economic government.”

At the G-20 summit Obama helped establish this global economic government by signing off on the establishment of an international Financial Stability Board (FSB). The assembled world leaders agreed to “a framework of internationally agreed upon high standards. We will set up a financial stability board with a strengthened mandate to extend regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets to endorse and implement tough new principles on paying compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of all firms.”
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Thus American financial institutions, instruments, and markets would be subjected to international regulation and oversight, including regulation on salaries and the “corporate social responsibility” of “all” firms. Not just some of them, but all of them. “Just when Obama is accused of socialism,” Morris said, “he’s essentially creating world economic governments.” This was no exaggeration: the FSB would have authority over regulations on salaries for executives and other issues that the U.S. Federal Reserve Board could apply to major American
companies. American economic life would be institutionally made subject to international supervision and control.

The G-20 leaders, according to Morris, slipped this in “under the radar, which is absolutely creating an international economic union.” He noted that Obama, oddly enough, “was the one pressing for less regulation and more spending, and he had to convince the Europeans.” But this wasn’t done out of conviction, in Morris’s opinion: “Obama himself is a socialist, I believe, and he had no problem really with this. This truly created a global economic system. From now on don’t look to Washington for the rule making, look to Brussels.… European socialists are going to be making the regulatory rules concerning compensation for all, all, systematically important US firms. All.”

A global economic system: just the thing fondly envisioned by many Marxist theorists Obama studied with and learned from.

And now he was the one poised to bring their dreams to fruition.

THE LISBON TREATY

Those same European socialists, meanwhile, had already been moving to consolidate their own power. The Lisbon Treaty significantly strengthened the power of the Brussels bureaucracy that oversees the European Union. Ireland held out against this treaty for a long while, rejecting it in June 2008 but finally voting to approve it in a second vote in early October 2009. Shortly after that, Polish president Lech Kacynski ratified the treaty, remarking: “The fact that the Irish people changed their minds meant the revival of the treaty, and there are no longer any obstacles to its ratification.” The Czech Republic remained the lone holdout.
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Obama applauded the Lisbon Treaty, saying: “I believe that a strengthened and renewed EU will be an even better transatlantic partner with the United States.”
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Not surprisingly, the treaty he was
praising was one that provided for centralization, increased government control, and the weakening of democracy in Europe. The post-American president was happy to see an internationalist, socialist partner on the global horizon.

In fact, the EU could never have brought the treaty back to a vote so soon after Ireland had voted it down had it not been for the weak, globalist U.S. president.

The treaty creates the position of President of the European Union and removes member nations’ right to veto EU legislation. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, warned Dubliners about it just before the 2008 Irish vote: “The only people you elect have a very limited role and I think this treaty will further enhance the power of institutions in Brussels without extending democratic authority to people.” He added that the treaty could also undercut NATO.
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This strengthened Brussels bureaucracy, on the verge of being given the power to override the will of majorities in EU member states, could now also gain oversight of the American economy—courtesy of Barack Hussein Obama, with the creation of the Financial Stability Board.

Internationalism and socialism run as consistent strains through Barack Obama’s associations and policies.

But Americans can’t say they hadn’t been warned. They should have noticed that the charismatic young Democratic presidential candidate had numerous socialist associations, going back to a childhood spent among internationalists. And even as recently as nine months before he was elected president, he sponsored a bill in the Senate that would compromise American sovereignty. Even if Obama and his associates would deny that they are socialists (and it is an open question as to whether or not they actually would), their commitment to the redistribution of wealth is a core socialist principle—and is abundantly documented.

SENATOR OBAMA AND THE GLOBAL POVERTY ACT

A year before he took the oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, Barack Obama, senator from Illinois, sponsored the “Global Poverty Act,” which was passed by the Foreign Relations Committee in February 2008. Ultimately the bill never came to a vote and died with the end of that session of Congress, but it is telling for what it reveals about the post-American president. According to Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid, if the bill had become law it could have meant the “imposition of a global tax on the United States.” Even worse, the Global Poverty Act made “levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations.”

Significantly, Senator and future vice president Joe Biden (D-DE), said Kincaid, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee “was trying to rush Obama’s ‘Global Poverty Act’ (S. 2433) through his committee without hearings.” The costs would have been prohibitive. “The legislation,” according to Kincaid, “would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends.”
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And that spending would have been at the discretion of UN officials, not representatives accountable to the American people.

A socialist, internationalist bill subverting American sovereignty and burdening the American economy through the forced redistribution of wealth. This was not just your run-of-the-mill Marxism: this was redistribution of wealth on a global scale. Productive and wealth-producing countries would be enslaved and forced to give up their hard-earned money to impoverished nations. Most disturbingly, the chief beneficiaries of the redistribution of our wealth would be one continent and one religion: Africa and Islam.

GIVING UP AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY FOR CLIMATE CHANGE?

Toward the end of his first year in office, Barack Hussein Obama again laid plans to sign away American sovereignty and accept international supervision of American affairs. He had initially planned to travel to Copenhagen in December 2009 for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, where he would sign the United Nations Climate Change Treaty. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, on which that treaty was based, had ominous implications for American sovereignty. It provided for the establishment of what was essentially a governmental body, which would have the power of enforcement over the states that signed the treaty.