For almost two years now, I have wondered why I find it impossible to understand President Barrack Obama or accept his vision for our country. Why do his actions seem so out of sync with the will of the majority and why does he exhibit such seeming disdain for America and our traditions? Why, for example, would he be the first newly inaugurated President to skip the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball that, for 50 years, has recognized the living recipients of the Medal of Honor? And why would he choose to pass on the traditional Presidential visit to Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day in favor of a vacation trip to Chicago? Why would he decline to participate in the National Day of Prayer but attend Muslim prayer services on the capitol grounds? And why would he skip the 100th anniversary Boy Scout Jamboree and instead go to New York for a taping of “The View?“
Sociologists tell us that the one thing common to every society or social group is a “value system”, what Mosby’s Medical Dictionary defines as an “accepted mode of conduct and the set of norms, goals, and values ….. for determining what is right or wrong, good or bad, and desirable or undesirable …… .” These sociologists further tell us that value systems are generally developed between the ages of six and twelve. Most Americans spent those formative years in grade school learning the Pledge of Allegiance and being taught about our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. We watched Gunsmoke on TV and John Wayne at the movies. We went to the Memorial Day parades and celebrated America’s independence with 4th of July fireworks. We learned the words to our National Anthem and believed that this truly was “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” These shared experiences helped form our national identity.
So where did Barrack Obama, born August 4, 1961, spend those formative years developing his value system? In Jakarta Indonesia, a country that is 90% Muslim. While you were learning the Pledge of Allegiance, he was learning the Koran. In July 1969, as America watched her astronauts walk on the moon, Barrack Obama was studying the Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, which he has recently described as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” Perhaps this is why he found it so easy to abandon the Space Shuttle program and to state NASA’s new mission as building ties with the Muslim world. In 1967 as America watched LBJ support Israel during the Six Day War and confront Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin to stop the spread of communism during the Cold War, Obama watched General Suharto’s purges give rise to Islamic jihad in support of his “New Order.” While Americans saw the creation of the Civil Rights Act , Indonesia was establishing penal colonies and imprisoning dissidents.
The co-founder of the Jesuit Order, Saint Francis Xavier, said, “Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man” And, as teacher Jean Brodie said in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie“, ‘Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.” Perhaps the reason our current President seems so disconnected from America’s traditions and values is that, culturally, he is simply not one of us. This might explain his indifference to the seventy percent of Americans who oppose government health care and his stand on Arizona’s immigration laws. And it might explain his controversial comments on the Ground Zero Mosque and his knee-jerk reactions to the professor and the policeman, the Fort Hood shootings and the “underpants bomber.“ His value system is just vastly different from ours. And as more Americans discover that his value system simply doesn’t match theirs, his already spiraling approval ratings can only continue to sink lower and lower.
