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| 2010-10-28 |
| James Taranto, "Best of the Web" @ WSJ Barack Obama is a pragmatist, James Kloppenberg tells the New York Times. No, he doesn't mean Obama is practical-minded; no one thinks that anymore. In fact, Kloppenberg, a Harvard historian, disparages the "vulgar pragmatism" of Bill Clinton while praising Obama's "philosophical pragmatism"... ...Professors imagine Obama is one of them because he shares their attitudes: their politically correct opinions, their condescending view of ordinary Americans, their belief in their own authority as an intellectual elite. He is the ideal product of the homogeneous world of contemporary academia. In his importance, they see a reflection of their self-importance. Kloppenberg's thesis reminds us of another elaborate attempt at explaining Obama: Dinesh D'Souza's "The Roots of Obama's Rage." D'Souza, like Kloppenberg, imputes to Obama a coherent philosophy, in D'Souza's case "anticolonialism." It is a needlessly elaborate explanation for an unremarkable set of facts. Occam's razor suggests that Obama is a mere conformist--someone who absorbed every left-wing platitude he encountered in college and never seems to have seriously questioned any of them. Kloppenberg characterizes Obama as a skeptic, not a true believer. We're not sure he has an active enough mind to be either one. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #2 Obama is about as bright as a burnt match. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2010-10-28 19:01 |
| #1 Glad we have such smarties on this. Didn't Obama say something like you see yourself in me? To be as generic as possible to be all things to all people, letting the individual fill in the gaps of personality which should be there. Dude even bragged about it. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2010-10-28 18:35 |