Naive, Intentional, or Both?

Last week, President Obama made another foray into the world, spreading his good news that America is not what many of us think it is. He began his tour with a rather startling revelation: America is sort of a Muslim nation. Really?

Never has an American president gone to such lengths to distance the country from its Christian roots. I agree that America hasn’t held fast to those roots; nevertheless, our entire system is based on Biblical principles. What we are seeing now is our deviation from those principles. Is Obama saying we should change over to a society based on Koranic law? That would be frightening indeed.

In his address to the Muslim world, which I watched, he superficially maintained our commitment to Israel, but the greater context showed that he considers the past persecution of Jews and the current situation of the Palestinians to be roughly identical. Historians know this approach as “moral equivalence.” Some used it to say that there was really no moral difference between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War. Obama is now saying there is no real difference between what Jews have suffered and what Palestinians have had to endure. The Holocaust during WWII killed 6 million Jews. The Palestinian problem began with Arab nations attacking Israel and trying to wipe it off the face of the earth. Palestinian refugees have become so due to their fellow Muslims’ attitude toward Israel. There is no moral equivalence here. Yet Obama has strained relations with Israel. He seems much more at ease in the Muslim world.

The cartoon above shows the disparity between Reagan’s challenge to tear down the Berlin Wall, a symbol of Communist oppression, and Obama’s attitudes toward Israel. The two couldn’t be farther apart.

This moral equivalence continues to reveal itself in Obama’s view of the United States. There is no one nation, he lectured the Muslims, that is better than another.

While it is true that God looks upon all people as valuable and He desires all to come to repentance, turning aside no one who genuinely seeks Him, there is a distinction among people—some are open, others are not—and among nations—some are closer to Biblical concepts than others, and have been more beneficial to the world. The United States has been the prime example. Yet whenever Obama speaks about his own country, he spends far more time critiquing than praising.

Yes, the United States needs to be critiqued for some of its policies, but when you compare with other nations, there really is no comparison. It’s actually more of a contrast. Does the President truly understand the force for good that this nation has been? I don’t think so.

This is why some people have started calling his speeches overseas his “Apology Tour.” He’s always apologizing for America. He doesn’t have nearly as many criticisms of countries bound by totalitarian Islam or totalitarian socialism.

Is President Obama just naive in his understanding of our country’s history and the nature of radical Islam? Or does he understand what he is doing and is deliberately leading America away from its past and into a new future dedicated to socialism and moral equivalence? Perhaps it is both. They are not mutually exclusive.