Last month, former Newsweek editor and current CNN talking head Fareed Zakaria had boasted that he had been advising President Obama on foreign policy matters concerning the Middle East.
One could be forgiven if one thought Zakaria's claims were mere bluster or hot air in an attempt to establish some credibility among peers in the media.
However, one look at this interview and I'm wholly convinced.
Note the derision and condescension directed at America's founding in Zakaria's smug monotone. After viewing that brief clip, I'm almost certain that not only is Zakaria advising President Obama on a number of domestic policy issues.
Although I'm just a lowly blogger and Zakaria is a highly-respected intellectual (who served as editor of a magazine that sold for $1), I would like to challenge Zakaria to find me what countries out there we're supposed to be learning from.
The European Union is an even bigger basketcase than the USA as far as finances and sovereign debt is concerned, with more productive countries like Germany and Holland having to bail out pseudo-welfare states like Spain or Greece.
While economic forces to be reckoned with, half the countries in the BRIC (Brazil/Russia/India/China) axis have an inglorious history of citizens being murdered by the millions in the last century- by their own governments, no less. While post-Apartheid South Africa didn't bring the full-fledged race war that so many had feared, high crime and the staggering murder rate has led to a massive 'brain drain' as sought-after professionals both black and white leave for more secure locales.
But like I said, as an intellectual Zakaria probably has an answer all lined up...perhaps even one of the aforementioned countries that he might view as a flawed gem. But I have one question for the naturalized citizen of America- and to be fair, it's the same question I ask of other American who hold similar views as he does: Why stay in America if you want it so badly to be like other countries?
Hey Fenway - great post my friend. And you could also ask, if America is so bad, why are so many people trying to get IN?
ReplyDeleteI don't want to give away my C2 essay on Independence Day, but have to say this: America is now and has always been about FREEDOM. Our Bill of Rights is unique: no other nation in the world has such guarantees and protections for its citizens. Freedom of Speech is, I believe the greatest Freedom (notwithstanding the often stated "the Second Amendment is because it secures all of the others.") Free speech is more dangerous to Royalty, Theocracy and Thugocracies around the world. Hell, look at the ME right now; what started the Arab Spring? Why is Iraq, after hundreds and hundreds of years, now a democracy and unlikely to change from that (thank you, President George W. Bush)while other nations murder their own people in the streets, hmmm? Why do you think that is you pompous, overblown, semi-literate but hardly intellectual Muslim you? (Yeah, he was born in -irony of ironies - Mumbai, India, but of Muslim parents).
What have you got that's been tried as a political system ANYWHERE at ANYTIME in the history of the World that grants the citizens of that country greater individual freedom than the U.S.A., hmmmmm?
Now go away, son, y'all are bothering me.