Selwyn Duke has some good thoughts about Honduras and Obama
Obama’s position is striking. More than almost anything else — almost anything — this dance with the Devil reveals his true colors. Sure, he was criticized over his handling of Iran, but even I will say there are two sides to that story. After all, you could make the case that overt support for the protesters would provide the clerics and President Ahmadinejad with invaluable propaganda material. And Obama looked foolish when he paraded about the world issuing mea culpas on behalf of big bad America, but, hey, that’s a reflection of the standard liberal America-as-villain narrative. I don’t think it surprised too many people. But, as bad as Obama has been, his position on Honduras occupies a different realm all together. And I think most fail to appreciate the gravity of what I will not even call a policy, but an offense.
Obama has sided with a thug, a man who — for completely self-serving reasons — sought to subvert his nation’s constitution. Obama has sided with a man who — like Pancho Villa on a cross-border raid — led a mob in an effort to execute this illegal scheme. And Obama does this while paying lip service to democracy, even as he imperils it; he claims to stand for freedom, even while supporting those who would extinguish it. It is un-American. It is ugly. It is, in a word, evil.
Yet it doesn’t surprise me. Some may think the issue is simply that, although Obama despises Zelaya’s tactics, he is driven to support a fellow traveler. Others may think that Obama wants to support a fellow traveler and is indifferent about the tactics. Neither analysis is entirely correct. Rather, Zelaya has certain tactics. Obama has certain tactics.
And they are largely the same.
In fact, they are shared by virtually all leftists.
Ignoring the rule of law, manipulating the Constitution, acting as if the end justifies the means . . . . Sound familiar? This is standard liberal doctrine.
Examining this further, let’s look at two comments Obama and H. Clinton made about Honduras. Obama said that the U.S. would “stand on the side of democracy” and Clinton said, “we have a lot of work to do to try to help the Hondurans get back on the democratic path . . . .” These comments reflect a common theme. There is gratuitous emphasis on democracy, but what of the rule of law? What of recognition that, technically, Honduras and the U.S. are not democracies but constitutional republics? We don’t hear much talk about these things from liberals, and I have a theory as to why.
This is very close to what I’ve been thinking the past few days. (I even think pretty much the same thing about Iran, that there are two sides to that story and not much that the United States can do without a military intervention, and I no longer favor military interventions in order to bring democracy to countries that aren't ready for it. See Iraq.)
Leftists don’t respect the rule of law. In the Ricci dissent, Ginsburg doesn’t care about what the statute says, or whether the fire department in New Haven had fair procedures. Obama and his ilk are similarly disinterested in trying to understand the Honduran constitution, and don’t care if the election that Zelaya was trying to hold was illegal according to an obvious reading of the Honduran Constitution, and they don’t care about the principle of separation of powers.
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