Is Obama “American” Enough?

As Barack Obama continues to tally up delegates in his bid to win the Democratic presidential nomination, the question should be asked not if Obama is “Black” enough, “White” enough, or whether he has ties to Islam, but simply, is Obama “American” enough? Not in the technical sense, of course. The man was born in Hawaii, and is thus a U.S. citizen. I mean “American” in a cultural, socio-political way. This is an important issue, because we will be going to the polls to elect a President of the United States, not a “We Are the World” feel good ambassador who will cater to the international community. And let’s face it, Obama’s “Proud to be American” credentials are shaky at best.

Forget about Obama’s middle name. I won’t even mention it, for there are plenty of patriotic Americans with foreign names. What’s at issue here is his culturally “American” upbringing, which for most of us was formed by our parents’ views toward our nation, its history, its political and religious institutions, and whatever civic organizations and traditions they participated in, which in turn, influenced each of our own views toward the same. Granted, I’m painting with some broad brushstrokes here, but bear with me.

No matter what their ethnicity, political orientation, or socio-economic status, most multi-generational Americans basically believe in a lot of the same stuff. We believe in the “righteousness” of the United States’ place and mission in the world, despite any historical and current missteps. We believe that we’re the best country on Earth, despite our problems, because we know that it’s worse anywhere else. In other words, we’re a “good guy” country, whose intentions are noble, and whose countless global “good deeds” are in the historical record. We often face “bad guy” countries and organizations in diplomatic and military struggles, and we believe that “talking with them” doesn’t always work. We believe that freedom is not free, and must be defended and promoted, even abroad, and sometimes with military force.

Likewise, we believe in our founding as a nation steeped in the Judeo-Christian faith, whether we are adherents or not, and hold to the separation of church and state. Our parents join the PTA and take us to baseball games. We participate in the girl and boy scouts, pledge allegiance to the flag, sing the national anthem, and our hearts fill with pride at our Olympic victories. We’re never self-conscious about waving the red-white-and-blue, and a flag pin is what it is. When standing before our national shrines and historic battlefields, we get choked up and are proud of our ancestors’ sacrifices and of our country. And in a way, we all kind of expect the same from the man or woman whom we choose to lead our great nation.

Let’s take Barack Obama on the other hand. He’s not sure whether we’re the best country. He thinks there’s all sorts of things wrong with America, and keeps talking about how the rest of the world mistrusts us, has lost respect for us, and how, if elected president, is going to “unite everyone” and make the world like us again. Even his wife, Michelle, only recently felt proud to be an American. I wonder if in the past, she claimed to be “Canadian” whenever she traveled abroad.

Obama wants to “sit down and talk” with dictators like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who’s fomenting communist revolution throughout South America, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who’s defying the U.N. at every turn in his efforts to obtain nuclear weapons and undermine U.S. efforts in Iraq. Obama believes in the “nuanced” diplomacy of his European counterparts. And apparently would only go to war in specific instances, in which the international community agreed that the U.S. had a legitimate fight, like Afghanistan, which Obama thinks is the only place we can rightfully fight Al Qaeda. Obama puts a lot of weight in how other countries view us—his is almost an “internationalist,” it-takes-a-village, welfare state outlook so common in other countries.

It’s no surprise that Obama sees himself as a “world citizen.”

Obama was born to Barack Obama, Sr., a Black African Muslim from Kenya, who married a self-proclaimed atheistic American college student who came of age during the turbulent Fifties. Obama, Sr., apparently had little interest in becoming an “American” for he moved back to Kenya to start a career in the government. As for Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, she spent her formative years outside Seattle, WA, at Mercer High School, where the chairman of the school board testified that he had been a member of the Communist Party. Two of Ann Dunham’s favorite teachers taught across the hall from one another, a hallway dubbed “Anarchy Alley” because of the discussions generated by the teachers, who had their students read “The Communist Manifesto” and “Atlas Shrugged,” among other controversial texts, all the while asking their students to question authority and the existence of God.

Shortly after Obama was born, his mother married an Indonesian Muslim, and they moved to Indonesia. It was there that Obama attended a school where he learned about other faiths (i.e., other faiths were “tolerated”), the way a student might learn about capitalism versus socialism, or of the philosophies of Kant or Plato. Obama himself has said that in his home there was always a Koran, a Bible, and a book about Hinduism. This is just the kind of smorgasbord, here’s-what’s-out-there “education” an intelligent, left-leaning, atheistic mother, who apparently didn’t care for her homeland or American men, might provide for her multicultural son, whom she was going to influence in the best manner she saw fit.

If one were going to come up with a plan on how to raise a patriotic, “Proud-to-be-an-American” child, Obama’s early years would not be the model. The fact that Obama himself touted his Indonesian experience as qualifying him, in terms of his “international relations” resume, for President of the United States, is naïve and suspect. He proudly likened family gatherings at his home, where one could find relatives of different ethnicities and nationalities, to being “more like the United Nations,” as opposed to an American “melting pot.”

The United Nations?

Obama’s later scholastic, legal, and early political career are typical of the left-leaning pursuits of the “oppressed classes” of newly minted lawyer/activists. Championing civil rights for minorities, women, and other underrepresented groups is admirable, and is what America stands for—freedom for all. But there are certain activists, lawyers, and politicians who “fight the power” at every turn, often to the point of overtly or covertly maligning the “mainstream culture/society”—as if just being a white, Christian American who’s patriotic and wears an American flag pin, automatically makes you offensive to minorities and foreigners across the board; as if having voted for George W. Bush makes you a war-profiteering violator of international law and human rights.

Speaking of Bush, Obama is always careful to state that Bush “invaded Iraq,” a place in which the former believes we should never have gone. Does this mean that President Obama would have continued to let the Iraqi people suffer under the murderous Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein? I would love to see someone ask Obama if he would like to see the United States succeed in Iraq. How would he answer that? Could he answer with a definitive “Yes,” as Senator John McCain would? Or would Obama suddenly lose his poetic eloquence, and start stammering with explanations about how we shouldn’t have been there in the first place, how Bush misled the public, etc.

Obama gets uncomfortable talking about his so-called Christian faith, as if he just bought it on eBay and is not quite sure how to put it together because it didn’t come with instructions. All we know is that his “faith” came later in his life (no doubt on the day he decided he wanted to run for public office), and he views it the way a biology student looks at a dissected frog. In fact, he’s very non-religious about his religion, latching onto the general, humanistic “do as to others…” aspects that are found in almost every other “spiritual” type of belief system. The fact that Obama belongs to the controversial, “Pan-African” Trinity United Church of Christ, whose pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, frequently makes racist proclamations about “White America” while fraternizing with the anti-American, anti-Zionist Louis Farrakhan, is troublesome.

When Obama speaks eloquently of “bringing people together,” just what does he mean? One could argue that Hitler and Stalin brought people together too, often at the point of a gun. I’m not comparing Obama to those evil men. I’m just making a point that flowery rhetoric can get people into just as much trouble when the substance behind the words aren’t examined. When Obama has to explain why he doesn’t wear an American flag pin, what is he really saying? When he intimates that the United States might not necessarily be the best country in the world, who is he talking to? And just what country might he think is better? And why not run for president of that country? Do Americans want a president who has to squirm in his seat when speaking about his religious beliefs or his patriotism? Is he really secular? Is he a socialist at heart? We don’t know yet, but we have a right to.

Obama has a tough road ahead of him, whether he wins the democratic nomination or appears as the number two on a ticket. He has a lot of questions to answer, a lot of explaining to do—in essence, he has to prove to the voters that he is a loyal, patriotic American who will put our country first. The President of the United States’ number one job is to do what’s best for America, first and foremost! Sometimes, what’s best for America isn’t always best for Europe, or Iran, or even Al Qaeda. Would Obama, as President of the United States, do what’s best for America and Americans? Or would his presidential actions be guided by what he thought the rest of the world wanted America to do?

Who would President Obama root for in the finals of the World Cup, if Team USA was playing the underdog, newly independent Palestinian National Team, while all of his European friends were watching?

Troublesome thought, isn’t it?