Obama’s not the only Manchurian Candidate in this race

Speaking of Obama’s less than fully American qualities that Hillary Clinton strategist Mark Penn unsuccessfully urged her to attack during the primaries, an L-dotter says:

Have you ever heard obambi speak of an unqualified love for his country and its greatness? This is a requirement for becoming POTUS.

Oh, yeah, like McCain has an unqualified love for America and its greatness? Listen to him:

[O]ur one shared faith is the belief that a nation conceived in an idea … will prove … better than any nation made from a common … culture or to preserve traditions that have no greater attribute than longevity.
—McCain at Al Smith Dinner, New York City, October 2005

If there was ever such a thing as a noble cause, it is the one we are embarked on now. Anyone who is afraid that somehow our culture will be anything but enriched by fresh blood and culture, in my view, has a distorted view of history and has a pessimistic view of our future.
—McCain addressing Congressional Hispanic Leadership conference, May 2006, supporting passage of amnesty and open borders bill.

We all know this issue can be caught up in extracurricular politics unless we move forward as quickly as possible.
—McCain at May 17, 2007 Capitol press conference urging that the open-borders comprehensive immigration reform package, the most radical, ill-thought out bill in American history, must go immediately to a Senate floor vote without debate. What he meant by the “extracurricular politics” that must be dispensed with was the deliberative process by which a free people make their laws.

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LA writes:

If any VFR reader has posting privileges at Lucianne.com, it would be neat if he or she could post the first above McCain quote there. It might make some L-dotters realize that McCain is not the unqualified lover of America they imagine him to be. Or maybe even all three quotes. But don’t mention where you got the quotes.

Philip M. writes from England:

You quote the commenter at Lucianne.com:

“Have you ever heard obambi speak of an unqualified love for his country and its greatness? This is a requirement for becoming POTUS.”

Would this commenter really want presidential races to resemble King Lear’s daughters vying for their portion of the kingdom with insincere hyperbole? No country is perfect, and America has its faults. America needs a Cordelia, not a Goneril (not that Obama is either).

LA replies:

I agree that many conservatives or at least Bush supporters have in recent years frequently indulged in excessive expressions of patriotism, including at times a fascist-like identification with Bush, nationalist boastfulness, and so on. However, I think this excess is in large part due to the fact that the liberal opinion shaping apparatus and other elite institutions in this country are wholly in the hands of leftists who either hate America or seriously dislike it. When the things that ought to be the norm in a society are not supported by the leaders, when hostility or contempt for that norm becomes the norm, then ordinary people understandably become more aggressive in asserting and defending those things that they now, correctly, see as threatened.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 12, 2008 09:03 AM | Send