Catch up with Fernandez
Sometimes I think this blog could consist entirely of daily links to the writings of Richard Fernandez and some choice excerpts, and it would be a net gain for my readers.
No, I’m not going to give up writing, and defer to Fernandez instead. But I will for this particular post.
On spying a copy of Mein Kampf in a rack of free religious pamphlets at his church, Fernandez writes:
Evil intentionally leaves its artifacts in the most sacred places of its victims in order to gauge whether there is any resistance left about. If there is no reaction they’ll enlarge the abomination…
Lately we don’t seem to notice anything; we have the responsiveness of a corpse and its interesting to consider how long till we become one. I wondered how long that Mein Kampf sat on that shelf, if one or several Western parishioners who recognized it stifled the impulse to object to its presence under one of the many inhibitions were are lumbered with…
We are conflict-averse. We want to be left alone but by ironic consequence, we will not be. As a whole we have tended to confuse Christianity with passivity, and civility with letting things slide, as if the whole message of the Gospels and the entire content of tolerant civilization consisted of taking punches on the chin and begging for more…
…the former idea of Christian otherwordliness was to never fear the consequences of doing the right thing. You did the principled thing and took what came, trusting that in life there was nothing to really fear but cowardice and evil. “For what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but suffer the loss of his soul?” It is the complete opposite of passivity. And we have lost the sense of it. We have lost its secular equivalent too.
Today we as a civilization are far more worried about what people will say…For so long as we ask: “If I argue shall I be considered bigoted?” ”Will we be judged as lacking in civility?” ”Will I still be invited to cocktail parties?” And that classic: “who am I to judge anyway?” then we will deserve to perish.
Please read the whole thing. And some of the comments are excellent, too.
Actually, I could just say read everything Fernandez ever wrote. But I’ll highlight one more essay in particular:
…[Obama] needs Iran to get him out of the jam caused by his feckless withdrawal from the region. ISIS flourished in the resulting vacuum and daily humiliates the president with publicized outrages. With Obama powerless to prevent it, he needs someone who can pull him out of the quicksand.
But as the Daily Beast notes the price will be steep. “The bargain for making a deal with Iran, these critics say, has allowed Iran a free hand to assert dominance in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.” Having spent years campaigning against American military action Obama has essentially left himself no other choice but to rely on someone else…
…Micah Zenko at Foreign Policy is calling the debacle Obama’s Bay of Pigs in the Desert. The Obama administration has effectively destroyed its own credibility, by the ample display of stupidity, possibly past the point of recovery. As a Brookings Institution article puts it “If America leads, will anyone follow?”…
Who wants to join the club where Obama’s the leader of the band? Not unless you want a knife in the back. The late Russian oppositionist Boris Nemetsov speaking from beyond the grave in a September, 2013 Foreign Policy article said: “Obama is a Hollywood actor, a weak man with no balls. Nobody should ever expect him to help Russians seeking civil freedom.”…
The president who is publicly nursing his wounded honor in anticipation of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech is also the same president pathetically hanging on Tehran’s rulers every word, like a waiter expecting a tip. The Iranians themselves have characterized Obama as ”˜desperate to reach a nuclear deal’, as if he were some loathesome toady. All the same he is counting on them to beat ISIS, having made a hash of his own efforts. What a crazy situation it is when an American president’s fortunes depend on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard…
…By outsourcing operations to Iran Obama is giving up the last shreds of American freedom of action in the region. He is thereby opening the door to a great danger.
Again, I suggest you read the whole thing.
Wretchard the Cat was ON FIRE with that exposition.
OBama doesnt need Iran to get him out of anything. he is already acting like a dictator usurping powers that the office of president doesnt have, threatening to veto anything that may stop him, and now deciding that after giving amnesty, social security numbers, benefits, and more – has decided hs is now going to use that same power to make tax law…
we have a dictator here…
and such does not need an excuse for anything…
Artfldgr:
…and yet he is consumed by a white-hot fury, at the prospect of an allied head of state speaking to Congress… and the Head of the Free World, the most powerful man on the planet, who is claimed by friend and foe alike to be assuming dictatorial powers, can do no more than stomp his foot in impotent frustration.
I think we learned some of the reasons for Obama’s anger when Israel was shut out of all discussions about Iran’s nuclear threat… and when John Kerry reportedly warned Netanyahu not to leak details of the Iran deal during his speech to Congress.
Netanyahu is in a position to spill Obama’s toxic secrets, and Obama doesn’t want him to do so. As I write, the speech is an hour away; it’ll be interesting to see what Netanyahu does… and what Obama does in response.
I read him everyday. And the comments. The commenters on that blog are amazing. Yours are pretty wonderful too!
One of your best compendium …
Write to think, write to learn…
It must all link to action somehow:
L’homme de pensée prepare l’homme d’action, il ne le remplace pas. DeGaulle
Il faut agir en homme de pensée et penser en homme d’action. Bergson
I will definitely be reading more from Richard Fernandez!
There are three blogs I check every day, primarily because the blogs themselves are very good, but also because the commenters are always worth reading.
The one I’ve been reading the longest is NeoNeoCon, and it continues to be a great resource.
The second is Eric Raymond’s blog at (http://esr.ibiblio.org/). ESR is a giant in the software field and is a major player in the open source software field. He doesn’t talk much about politics these days, but leans very libertarian in his views. He talks a lot about computer-related topics and cultural things, and he has an amazingly high quality cadre of commenters. ESR has tremendous insight into his field, as well as human nature in general.
The third is John C. Wright, who is a science fiction writer of supreme talent. He is also a fairly recent convert to the Catholic Church and speaks frequently on philosophical and religious topics, as well as science fiction related stuff (a recent recurring topic is the attempt to combat the takeover of the science fiction awards by the forces of political correctness who value preaching their message over, you know, writing good stories. (http://www.scifiwright.com/author/admin/)
From these blogs, I’m also always finding other great resources to follow for good commentary and intelligent discussion.
The third is
I have been reading Richard Fernandez daily for quite a few years now, long before his blog moved to PJ Media. I never fail to be impressed and surprised by the depth of his discernment, breadth of his knowledge, and his understanding of humankind, strategy, moral thought, and so much more. He truly is one of the very most important public intellectuals of our time, an observer and a prophet. He has no pretense, so the right kind of people are mostly unaware that he exists, much less appreciate the quality of his insights and wisdom.
Thanks for linking to him, neo
The disaster that is Obama is growing daily; and it seems we can only watch in horror as it accelerates exponentially to God knows what unthinkable conclusion.
from Vanderleun’s site and his link to this post:
If there is a single genius revealed by blogging, it is Fernandez.
Breitbar opines on Obama/Netanyahu:
Here
He calls the Kapos …
The messiah needs a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Soros whispers in his ear. We are being played by a vast left wing conspiracy from the fed to the msm to the whores and thieves of dc. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without the constraints that shackle.
“a vast left wing conspiracy”…. with lots of beans:
Billionaire George Soros spent $33MILLION bankrolling Ferguson demonstrators to create ‘echo chamber’ and drive national protests
Here
For a classic post try this from Sept. 2003. “The Three Conjectures” and the followup “Postscript.”