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The banality of Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast — 49 Comments

1. the false cognocenti speaking as the ignorati to the idiot masses whose numbers they play for…

2. Why on earth would you go to the National Prayer Breakfast with thousands of Christians from across the spectrum and insult them?

   Narcisistic passive agressive behavior?

   Sociopathic duping delight as you thumb your nose at those who can do nothing about it…

3. I’m not the only one to point this out, but isn’t it interesting that he tries to draw a moral equivalence between the misbehaviour of Christianity via the Spanish Inquisition and modern day Islam (i.e. we’re no better than they are) while simultaneously denying they have anything to do with Islam.

   Those seem to be mutually exclusive arguments. If the murderers in the midst of a killing spree all over the world have nothing to do with Islam why are you bringing it up at a prayer breakfast and why are you making a comparison to another religion?

4. Make up your mind. Is it related to religion or isn’t it?

   Or is he saying, since it has nothing to do with Islam, perhaps ISIS and the whole jihadi movement is a violent offshoot of Christianity? It’s really all our fault after all, I guess.

5. Kcom it s covering all the bases

6. kcom:

   If you read the entire text of his remarks, which I linked to at the outset of the post, Obama did make a sort of connection to Islam. Here’s the excerpt:

   From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it. We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism — terrorizing religious minorities like the Yezidis, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, and claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions.

   That’s the closest he comes to saying the terrorism is connected to Islam—they are “claiming the mantle of religious authority” and “professing to stand up for Islam” but actually “betraying it.”

   If he had confined his remarks to that, and skipped the ancient references to Christianity, it would have been okay. But he couldn’t help trying to really balance the scales in a way that they simply cannot (and at this point should not) be balanced.

7. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been among liberals and when anything remotely critical of modern-day Islamic terrorists comes up their response is, “Well, of course, all religions…” Or the crusades

   drives me nuts as its a way for the ignorant to pretent to be smart among other ignorant people… which is why they get all upset nasty and you become enemy big time once you expose them.

   they say: All religions?
   I say: What about the Jains?
   They say: Jain who?

   Jainism is an ancient religion from India that teaches that the way to liberation and bliss is to live a life of harmlessness and renunciation.

   i find that people know crap about the Crusads, or else they would never ask why Sept 11 and not another day… ahem… 1683 ring a bell? Vienna? Austria? Defeat of the Ottoman empire? Jan Sobieski?

   Sept 12 they were defeated…

   Anyway… he did it because of who he would be meeting with next..

   Imam Mohamed Magid
   Bilqis “Qisi” Abdul-Qaadir
   Comedian Dean Obeidallah
   Kameelah Rashad
   Farhan Latif
   Azhar Azeez
   Hoda Hawa
   Maya Berry

   Valerie Jarrett, Susan E. Rice, and Ben Rhodes

   they promised to use hate crime to control speech and asymetrically attack certaing groups…

   hegel..
   hold the strong down, lift up the weak, send them at each other to destroy each other…

   Also referred to as the blofeld method

8. Victor Davis Hanson has a good column on this at National Review. I like this comparison:

   “Did Churchill point to the excesses of Oliver Cromwell, or did Daladier to the French Revolution, to remind their contemporaries that National Socialism in Germany was not doing anything differently in the 1930s than had their own countries in the distant past? Those of the 1930s who sought to make such facile comparisons between their own past and Germany’s present were written off as appeasers.”

9. Artfldgr:

   Yes, for the most part they are profoundly ignorant of history, and/or are using it to make the political points they want to make rather than to foster serious thought.

   Most of the time the remark is just meant to get everyone in the vicinity to nod sagely in accord and move onto another topic, just a way to pat themselves on the back and to bond with each other over their political and social unity of thought.

10. you left out and pretend they are of the same fibre as the enlightenment rennaisance men…

11. Or as Ace put it:

    Obama delivers the same low-IQ, trite, Marxism for Dummies shit that all glittering mediocrities like himself traffic in, for they can not manage any better.

12. Obama is either woefully unable to track the path of history, or else he is willfully insulting the intelligence of his audience. The answer to that dichotomy has been explored constantly since he took office. The next question would be, “which is worse?”.

    Obama certainly appears to be a banal person because he utters banalities on a regular basis. The problem is that unlike some obscure Academic, he occupies the seat reserved for the “Leader of the Free World.” His words may not count for much to us, but they do for others.

    Regarding his remarks; it is as if he is totally unaware that the behavior that he attributes to Christianity as it was practiced 800 years ago occurred in the middle of the period that our own historians have labeled “The Dark Ages”. It was a time when the religious establishment was tightly controlled by a relatively small cadre of “educated” men. They wielded great power with the Laity, even Royalty, by playing on one’s fear for the immortal soul. The correct analogy is to swaths of Islam which is tightly controlled by the Mullahs; who ferociously protect their power. There has been nothing comparable to the Gutenberg bible, or Protestant Reformation to loosen their grip.

    Obama obviously cares deeply about Islam. If he were a Leader (capital L), he would be challenging the faithful to throw off the yoke of the anachronistic Clergy, and bring their religious practices into alignment with civilized society.

    Again; election have consequences.

13. Oldflyer:

    Obama carefully threw Jim Crow in there to counter the “it was so long ago” argument. It was still a long time ago, of course. He also ignores the fact that Christianity was enormously influential in the fight to end slavery and end discrimination against blacks.

14. The easiest way to die in a war is not to realize your in a war…

15. Ann, thanks for the link. Ace was en fuego.

    One error however (I think the commenters mentioned this): Obama was President of the Law Review…previously a position awarded to the top academic student in the class, but had recently changed to an elected position. He was not Editor-in-Chief, a position which would have had real responsibilities. And we know how much he likes that.

16. “But some of those so eager to condemn Christianity vs. Islam are in fact religious Christians–of the leftist persuasion.”

    Lib Prots, Lib Catholics, and Lib Eastern Orthodox are the enemy enablers within.

17. I am so sick of these self-centered provincial a**holes who have no idea about anything in the world. I just started reading Bloodlands. It makes you sick to hear in detail what Stalin did to the Ukrainians, primarily to prove that his theories were correct. The egomanical similarities between Obama and Stalin are hard to miss. I bet Obama would love to have the power that Stalin had.

18. BTW, did you all see Bobby Jindal’s response. I believe I read it at The Corner. Anyway, he said, I believe we have medieval Christianity under control The problem we have now is radical Islam. What are you going to do about it?

19. The Crusades and ignorance of its origin by “academics” has annoyed me to no end whenever it’s invoked to show that Christianity is the worst religion of all times.

    The Crusades didn’t occur in a vacuum, where a bunch of blood thirsty French knights woke up and decided it was time to invade Jerusalem.
    They were a reaction to a violent Muslim conquest and expansion into Europe, that had been taking place for a few hundred years.
    The war for Islamic supremacy started not long after the religion itself sprang up, and it has never ended.
    The characterization of the Crusades as an overreaction might also be re-examined, looking through our own experience with the so called “rise” of Islam.
    We’re calling for exactly the same thing that was called for then to deal with the problem — take the war to the enemy and finish it. Had they not, Europe probably would not have been a predominantly Christian continent- and the change would not have come voluntarily, but at the point of a sword.
    I’m amazed that what ISIS is calling for today is somehow called an aberration. If you care to put this into historical context and look back over the last 1500 years, nothing has changed. The war of conquest has never ended for Muslims; it’s us who are unable or unwilling to view the broader scope.
    BO may simply be a banal ignoramous,, but his tone, his facial expressions, and actions suggest to me he’s rooting for a caliphate, or in the least, for a Muslim super power to challenge the Western nations.
    I’ve never seen, nor could I have imagined a more despicable enemy of this country in my life. Every time I think he’s outdone himself, he ups the ante to a level that’s impossible to tolerate.

20. By omission, was Obama exonerating other religions including, dare I say, Judaism from historically exerting its wrath on their enemies in the name of religion? If I missed some anti-Israel barbs, etc., because I didn’t view/listen/read the complete message (I can no longer stomach more than about 30-seconds of anything that is forthcoming from him), I apologize for over-estimating our self-centered, immature leader. My message to him: I’d rather be on my high horse and take action for what is happening NOW than be on a rocking horse going no where like the one our president seems to be forever riding.

21. Obama keeps using the old “you do it too” (tu quoque) logical fallacy. Obviously the schools no longer teach the logical fallacies.

22. Peggy Noonan’s take is good, too:

    At the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, he airily and from a great height explained to the audience that ISIS exists within a historical context that includes the Inquisition, slavery and Jim Crow. “People committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.” Oh West, you big hypocrite. This is just the moment to dilate on Christendom’s sins, isn’t it? While Christians are being driven from the Mideast? He always says these things as if he’s the enlightened one facing the facts of the buried past instead of the cornered one defeated by complexity, hard calls and ambivalence.

    Of course, this does leave one wondering where the heck she was in 2008 when he was striding forth from all those Greek columns.

23. Ace pretty much nails it.

24. President Hopenchange intoneth, “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

    Now I am *far* from the only one to point this out, but, aside from all the valid points about comparing distant past with nauseating present and so on, . . .

    The abolitionist movements *and* the twentieth century anti-segregation movements all were inspired by the teachings and practice of one Jesus of Nazareth. Where would those movements have been without the support and agitation of the *Christian* clergy and committed congregants? Ever hear of *Rev.* Martin Luther King??

    (And I certainly do not mean to exclude Jews. I know little about Jewish abolitionist activity, although I’m quite sure that, given their own annual celebration of release from Egyptian slavery, they would have been active. As for twentieth-century anti-segregation activity, it is well known that Jews were very well represented in so-called civil rights activity, but I do very much regret how many of those Jews turned out to be irredeemable politically correct leftists. We (and blacks) would be far better off without them.)

    End of rant — but end of only the present installment.

25. One of my favorite posters from Althouse:
    Anglelyne said…
    So who exactly are these people who don’t know about the Crusades or the Inquisition, American slavery, or Jim Crow, and why does every event need to be devoted to supplying remedial history lessons for them?

    I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone whose views are predicated on lack of acquaintance with information about the Crusades, the Inquisition, American slavery, or Jim Crow. But a competent response to the world’s jihadi problem is somehow being chronically subverted by these people, as every atrocity committed by a Muslim is apparently the result of these incredibly powerful and influential people not knowing diddly about history, and the problem can only be addressed by pouring all of our energies into educating them on the sins of their ancestors.

    So who are they, why are they so important, and what’s up with them that it’s so god-damned, bone-crushingly necessary to always and everywhere shut down any and all reaction/discussion of misbehavior by those of an Islamic persuasion, and replace it with this same short-bus history lesson, over and over and over and over and over again?

    Do these powerful people have some kind of weird neurological disorder such that, not only can’t they remember what they were taught about the Original Sin and unique evil of European Man in every history class they ever sat in when they were in school, but they can’t even remember this stuff when they are helpfully reminded of it each and every day when they turn on a tee-vee program, watch a movie, read a news site, or listen to a politician?

    What, are the people running our incompetent foreign policy re Muslim countries the people who’ve never heard of the Crusades, the Inquisition, American slavery, Jim Crow? Well, if that’s why our foreign policy is insane, then, by all means, let’s corral these people and sit them down in a remedial history class. (Not recent and current affairs, mind you, but stuff that happened centuries, if not a millenium, ago.)

    Whew, and I thought all that incoherence, corruption, and incompetence constituted a far more intractable problem than just a few uninformed civil servants! But all we really need to do is to get these highly influential but regrettably retarded people with memory problems to remember and admit to the sins of their ancestors. Problems solved!

    I shall sleep better tonight, finally understanding the noble tutelary purpose of the last decade-and-a-half’s all-pervasive drone of “…but but but the Crusades!”

26. They may be banal but they have a purpose and the purpose was served. If we get concerned about the crusades we will never get to the point of recognizing that Islam took over most of the Middle East, Africa and India. They are today reconstituting those conquests. If we remain solely worried only about Europe and America, they will solidify and increase their grip on those areas. Islam must be rolled back but we are apparently OK with letting it expand just so long as it is not us that is being gobbled up.

    And let us not forget that the Dark Ages descended with the collapse of the Roman Empire which was certainly helped along by the Islamic conquests.

    We are not to ever recognize the retrograde effect Islam has had on the modern world. We can only guess at what was lost. So let us focus on our guilt as exemplified by the Crusades because we surely do not wish to know the truth about Islam.

27. Maybe Obama should sit down and study Al Sisi’s recent speech to the imams and mullahs about the dangerous state that modern Islam is in due to hundreds of years of teachings up to the current day. For some reason Al Sisi didn’t mention the Crusades or Jim Crow at all.

28. I would tell Angelyne that hectoring and lecturing are part of the human condition. But, for these folks it is more than that. To preach and teach, to scold, to chide, and to correct others is what these folks live for. Maybe they just don’t realize that they sound like dissemblers, or even liars, to the folks outside the beltway. Maybe they believe they sound profound and nuanced. But, I think the “church lady” tsk,tsking and cluck, clucking is the real tell. They cannot resist the opportunity to scold and insult the public(anyone outside the bubble) with insinuations of racism or imply that average Americans are on the brink of hysterical over reaction, as though everyone is a toothless, illiterate, bitter clinger. It’s all really about the passive, aggressive insult.

29. Lets remember that Obama had a secret meeting with Muslims in the White House. One of the attendants was a Muslim comedian who said that one issue discussed was Islamophobia. In that context Obama’s remarks are make sense. His attack on Christians and Jews was his opening salvo to make the Muslims comfortable that there will be no negative repercussions for them while their fellow Muslims murder, steal, and rape to their heart’s content. As someone who has lived among Muslims he knows all about Sharia law. He is afraid the rest of us will figure it out. That’s why Obama’s attack was so shrill; he knows that it is obvious to anyone who understands Islam that Islam itself is the problem.

30. Speaking of the Crusades, my wife and I attended a Catholic history conference at Christendom college back in 2013. One of the speakers was Dr. Thomas Madden, one of the best authorities on era of the Crusades and several other similar topics. He told us about when he was invited to speak on PBS about the Crusades, and they had also invited a well-known Muslim scholar as well (I don’t recall who he was).

    When Dr. Madden made the assertion that the Crusades were a defensive war because of Muslim aggression, throughout the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the Muslim scholar basically agreed. It was clear the moderator had intended to create controversy, and was clearly disappointed when the sparks didn’t fly. Dr. Madden said he hasn’t been on PBS since.

31. When Muslims and Islam’s defenders try to blunt or deflect criticism of the conduct of Islam today, they use the facile moral equivalency argument of the Crusades, and they point to an exaggerated notion of Christian violence, but not to the centuries of violent actions by Muslims which provoked those Crusades. See, for instance, the totally pro-Muslim propaganda film about the Crusades by Ridley Scott titled, “Kingdom of Heaven.” Moreover, they always want to talk about what Christians might have done a thousand or five hundred years in the past, but not on what Muslims are doing today.

    In truth, the Crusades were a violent, chaotic, and ultimately failed three hundred yearlong series of Western counterattacks against Islam.

    The usual (and insufficient) reason I was taught as a child, many decades ago, was that Muslims were attacking, plundering, and killing Christian pilgrims in the Middle East who they had pledged to protect, and that Muslims were also preventing Christian pilgrims from traveling to and getting access to Jerusalem and other Holy sites sacred to Christians, as they had pledged they would.

    Much that should have been remembered about the history of Islam and Muslims and their violent Jihad against “unbelievers” and the nations of Christendom during the thousand plus years between the 7th and 18th centuries has been long forgotten, twisted, or ignored.

    The real and greater reason for the Crusades is that they were a response to the three hundred years of very successful, non-stop Muslim aggression, warfare, and conquest, that began immediately after the death of Muhammad in 632 A.D., and which saw what had been a majority Christian Middle East and North Africa overwhelmed, conquered, and essentially erased, to be occupied and ruled by Islam and Muslims (as they still are today)–the native Christian, Zoroastrian, or Animist populations either forcibly converted to Islam, slaughtered, enslaved, forced to become quasi-slaves (dhimmis), or driven out; Islam has always been spread by the sword.

    Moreover, the forces of Islam, not content with these victories, were also invading India, and constantly staging raids (razzias) into the Mediterranean, and sending probing forces into Eastern and parts of Central Europe.

    After hundreds of years of constant Muslim attacks they also eventually overwhelmed, conquered, and occupied the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), an action that some historians say caused the Dark Ages, because these constant and violent attacks by Muslims destroyed/shut down travel, trade, and commerce throughout the Mediterranean, which had a profound ripple effect that spread throughout Europe.

    It was also during this first three hundred years of Islam ‘s existence that the Muslim conquest of Spain occurred, and what would ultimately be the eight hundred year Muslim occupation of Spain began.

    Muslim forces attacked slaughtered, looted, captured slaves from, destroyed, and sometimes occupied parts of the Mediterranean–in Italy, including, for one brief moment, parts of Rome itself (the Pope paying them “Jizya” i.e. “protection money” to make a raiding party of Muslims who traveled up the Tiber go away, so that he could buy time to strengthen the walls of Rome and St. Peters), in Crete, Greece, Sicily, Malta, Spain, and elsewhere.

    Muslim raids and slave taking were also directed against the coastlines of Europe, Muslims eventually raiding coastal areas of England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and as far north as Iceland, Muslims capturing so many slaves from among the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe that this is supposedly the origin of the word “slave.”

    Muslim forces kept thrusting further and further into Eastern and Central Europe and, in these first few centuries of Islam’s existence one early Muslim attempt at invasion was only stopped at Tours outside Paris in 732 A.D. by Christian knights led by Charles Martell “the Hammer.”

    As the centuries went on, at one point there was even a major Muslim staging base for raids at Arles in France, Muslims occupied and ruled large parts of Eastern Europe, Muslim forces advanced into in Poland and some parts of Germany, and some Muslim forces eventually reached as far as the frontiers of Switzerland.

    Eventually, at their high point, around, say, the 15th-16th centuries, and the Crusades having failed, Islam and Muslims ruled the majority of the then known world.

    The best background source I know on this subject is Dr. Andrew G. Bostom’s excellent, thorough, almost encyclopedic compilation that is taken mostly from Muslim sources titled, “The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims.”

32. Those who do not tell the truth about islam and its prophet have no hope of surviving.

33. Bobby Jindal is freakin’ WONDERFUL.

34. A truly masterful and brilliant response by Gov. Bobby Jindal.

    Obama isn’t lecturing us, he’s lecturing the LIVs and useful idiot liberals. Keeping them in the dark is vital to the left’s multicultural meme that all cultures are equal. If those in denial start to awaken, there’s no certainty that the Left can limit and control that awakening. If the Left acknowledges that Muslim ‘culture’ is barbaric in its treatment of women, its punishments for blasphemy (no free speech) and apostasy (no freedom of religion/conscience), what about urban American black ‘culture’? What about Hispanic culture’s indifference to the value of education, personal accountability and responsibility and delayed gratification?

    Ultimately, it’s a futile effort because Islam is not going to stop its aggression, for it cannot, it’s expansionist ideology being its most fundamental raison d’éªtre. Thus denial of Islam itself being a mortal threat to the West has an expiration date and reality will determine its arrival.

    There is now a shariah court in Texas, like a cancer it will spread and it is a cancer because shariah intrudes into every aspect of life and is completely incompatible with western legal precepts.

35. Wow! I just love those Bobby Jindal comments – they are spot on and funny to boot!

    Too bad the news media didn’t pick up and run with that.

36. Bobby Jindal is an interesting man. I turned on my car radio the other day and heard a man with an impressive voice commenting on Obama’s failures of foreign policy. Everything he said was spot on and well delivered – no ahs, ers, or pregnant pauses. It was the Michael Medved show and he was interviewing none other than Bobby Jindal. But he didn’t mention his name until the end of the interview. It took me by surprise. I realized then that he is a man to be reckoned with. His comment on Obama’s Prayer Breakfast inanities was just perfect – and with a humorous twist. I’m hoping he will run in the primary. IMO, he’s a potential candidate who might surprise..

37. That sharia court in Texas sounds just like Orthodox Jewish tribunals. Both appear to handle only things like divorce.

38. For now, Ann, for now.

39. Reverend Martin Luther King.

40. From Legal Insurrection;

    How many Americans were in the Crusades?
    Just one, Brian Williams

41. neo-neocon,
    You had me at, “I get weary”.

    And that can only mean one thing……..a little Otis Redding:

    “Try A Little Slenderness”

    Oh, she may be weary
    Neo-neocon gets weary
    Hearing that same old Obama fat mess, yeah yeah
    But when she gets weary
    Try a little slenderness, yeah yeah

    You know she’s aching
    Upon her waking
    For things that she’ll never, never, never, never guess, yeah yeah
    But while she’s there aching, Obama’s lips are fat shaking
    Try a little slenderness (that’s all you gotta do)

    She’s not temperamental, no, no, no
    She has her grief and care, yeah yeah yeah
    But Baraka’s words, they are spoke so judgmental, yeah
    It makes it harder, harder to bear, yeah

    Baraka won’t regret it, no, no
    Neo, she won’t forget it
    Above all this emptiness, yeah
    When he turns this greaz–y
    All you gotta do is try, try a little slenderness, yeah
    All you gotta do is, man, behold her honest–y

    Ease her, don’t tease her, never leave her
    Get to her, try, try
    Just try a little slenderness, ooh yeah yeah yeah
    You got to be proud of her, man, you’ll be surprised, man
    You’ve got to ease her, don’t displease her, never leave
    Got to behold her, don’t snub her awfully
    Try a little slenderness, ooh yeah yeah yeah
    She’s a tiger cub man, you gotta do, no no
    You’ve got to suede glove her, ease her, don’t deep freeze her
    Gotta try nah nah nah, try
    Try a little slenderness, yeah, watch her groove
    You’ve gotta to know what to do, man
    Take this advice

42. Obama’s lost it. If he ever even had it.
    The white house said he improvised that “preachy” part of his speech. Yeah, whatever…

    He is so confused it is painful to watch him. He does not know history—-either that or he’d prefer to replace Howard Zinn in rewriting it. He has no clue about the Crusades, how they came to occur.
    He really does not know, “The Prince of Peace”, Jesus Christ.
    He covers for “The Warrior Prophet”, Mohammed.
    It’s sad, watching this man-child fecklessly flailing away at Christians in effort to dilute the Islamist barbarism, depravity playing out in real time.
    His father was a muslim.
    His step-father was a muslim.
    Seeds planted long ago.
    The conflict born and roiling within this poor-excuse-of-a-president is painful to watch.

43. The GOP should counter this faux history narrative by inviting el-Sisi to speak before Congress.

44. Oikophobia.

    That is all ….

45. Exasperated:

    “How many Americans were in the Crusades?
    Just one, Brian Williams.”

    Yea, but which side was he on?

46. Exasperated: Perfecto..!!

    Clarity: You Rascal, you..!!*

    Charles: Damned good question..!!

    (*Otis: June 1967, on my way home to So. Calif. after graduating college in Washington, stopped off in Monterey—entirely on a whim—to enjoy some Rock…Who knew it would make history to this very day?? Otis was hypnotically fantastic as was this kid with Big Brother & The Holding Co., Janice something, and a scant few months later Dead on the Ice…Okay..End of flashback…Summer of Love, Baby!!*)

47. Exasperated:
    There is that “Vision of the Anointed” thingy …
    but otherwise mostly Oikophobia

48. southpaw:
    Meet Bill Warner:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Qpy0mXg8Y&feature=player_embedded

49. Since we are dealing with people with a short attention span, may I suggest we simply point out that “Muslims invaded and conquered most of Spain almost 400 years BEFORE the first crusade.” …..

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