Obama in Leftland

...Unless they have grown up in regions or families with an unusually strong grasp of tradition, patriotism, and reality, gen-CR’ers tend to have a fuzzy view of history, an unconditional belief in tolerance and diplomacy, and contempt for the military and warmaking...

...To understand this generational shift in the making, consider the resignation of Harvard president Lawrence Summers in 2006, under attack for having said that, just possibly, the far greater number of male than of female scientists might have to do with innate differences between men and women—something that a large majority of working scientists (male and female) almost certainly take for granted (whether or not they are willing to say so...

...Of course Bush is no Nixon...

...Biden last week recalled how President Roosevelt appeared on TV to calm Americans after the stock market crash of ’29...

...Last July he listed crises America has faced, including “the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor...

...both planned on widespread opposition to the war and dislike of the incumbent (aka “a need for change”) to power them to victory...

...Yet Biden may well have forgotten more history than Obama ever knew...

...In the gen-CR age now approaching, such embarrassing accidents will no longer happen...

...We know what to expect of genCR...

...Forbidden ideas simply won’t occur to the Harvard presidents of the future...

...That’s progress.David Gelernter, a WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor, is a national fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and professor of computer science at Yale...

...Youth wants change by defi nition...

...He might look back at his nation’s history and see only a blur...

...The same applies to Sarah Palin, but she hasn’t said the sort of crazy things Obama has...

...The fervor of young Bob Dylan telling us in 1963 that “the times they are a-changin’ ’’ is still sad and touching...

...But many of today’s young teachers—in consequence of the long march’s brilliant success—don’t even realize that they are left-wing ideologues...

...In the end, Bush policy plunged Iraq into chaos, but Obama was smart enough to pull out before more American lives were lost...

...But we have an obligation to ponder Obama’s views of American reality in the context of his membership in the first generation fully shaped after the Cultural Revolution...

...Obama is the quintessential child of the Cultural Revolution, who grew up in a society that was up to its neck in change...

...Because Obama (evidently) does not listen to history, he seems to have no sense of its hints and warnings...

...World leaders should not meet with other world leaders unless they know what the agenda is, so you don’t end up being used,” was the way Joe Biden, then an Obama opponent, put it...

...Whatever he had in mind, he was obviously not bothered by the ugly historical overtones of muscular national police forces or parallel armies...

...He spoke of “constantly evolving danger,” not of “enemies...

...It’s obvious to all sorts of Americans—as it was obvious to Hillary Clinton at the time—that Obama’s offer was dangerous and wrong, but the reasons are not easily reduced to a formula...

...For every “morning in America” campaign there are ten New Deals, Fair Deals, New Frontiers, Great Societies, and Kinder, Gentler Americas on offer...

...However that may be, the statement is a prime specimen of gen-CR thinking...

...As far as they know, their ideas are innocuous and mainstream—just like the New York Times...

...And what they do know is often wrong...

...McGovern was forced to call the bullpen and send in Shriver for Eagleton partway through the campaign...

...speededup troop with drawals might weaken this new democracy and bring on its collapse like a burnt-out log into a blaze of terrorist violence...

...In broader terms, Obama is a warning: The CR generation is now in full flood and coming on strong...

...But in most other respects the Cultural Revolution was a disaster— one which is still unfolding...

...Obama is the perfect model for a modern Harvard president...

...The problem with Obama is not so much that he lacks experience but that he talks —like so many others of his generation— as if he had a child’s view of modern history and (hence) of modern American reality...

...But it’s hard to imagine him ever thinking (much less saying) the sort of erroneous thought that doomed Summers...

...Obama in Leftland Don’t know much about history . . . BY DAVID GELERNTER Barack Obama is America’s first major party presidential candidate to have come of age after the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and ’70s...

...And that’s what Democrats would “know” about Iraq...

...Of course Joe Biden has reassured us that you don’t have to come from gen-CR to talk nonsense...

...Start with a given: An Obama administration might still bring about defeat in Iraq...

...Yet all those things applied to Vietnam in 1972 just as they do to Iraq today...

...don’t invest American prestige where it tends to legitimize an international outlaw, unless urgent American interests stand in the balance” is still another...

...Don’t invest American prestige in a highrisk meeting where you are likely to it...

...But the fi nal outcome was a catastrophic defeat for the United States and (even worse) for all Vietnamese who had ever counted on us...

...True, Obama passes for mainstream more effectively than McGovern ever did...

...McGovern was a wartime candidate, like Obama...

...Before considering what sets Obama apart, consider what he has in common with the former candidate he resembles most, George McGovern—both affable, well-spoken gentlemen of the Democratic left with fanatic youthful supporters, who picked the wrong running mates...

...But Summers had expressed a forbidden thought, and (despite his abject confessions and apologies at the Harvard show trials) was duly banished...

...Thanks to the substitution of Abrams for Westmoreland in May 1968, the war was slowly and surely being won...

...Those were the big change years (Obama is small change by comparison), and some of the changes were marvelous...

...Gen-CR recoils from the idea of enemies...

...His announcement that he would meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions shows exactly why a president must not merely know history but have a decently nuanced view...

...As for “the bomb,” Obama was presumably conflating Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima...

...If the presidency is no place for on-the-job training, it is no place for remedial education either...

...nor is he up for reelection...

...History is full of such organizations, from the Committee of Public Safety wreaking bloody havoc in revolutionary Paris to the immense terror-force of the Stalinist NKVD to Mao’s murderous Red Guards...

...Later he seemed to say (maybe) that this organization would support the military in noncombat duties...

...on the other hand, thanks to a dramatic change of commanders and strategies, the United States is now winning its faraway war against terrorist armies and murderous ideologues underwritten by foreign powers, leaving Obama stuck for a foreign policy message...

...he said that we had “adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world,” not beaten our enemies...

...But if it did—if the left’s policies proved tragically mistaken—Obama’s supporters would never know it...

...Consider three Obama pronouncements...

...Their patriotism (such as it is) tends to focus on the “global community” or “the planet” or some other large, meaningless object...

...Americans who reached adulthood before or during the Cultural Revolution often differ over the big events of recent history...

...The permissible range of thought on such topics as protected minorities, protected species, protected psychosexual deviations, et al...

...But in that case, why does it have to be so powerful...

...Either way, you have to understand “American prestige”— which is not a gen-CR-type concept...

...Let’s call it genCR...

...Obama has proposed a “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as wellfunded [as the military...

...America had better try to understand whether he thinks for himself or is a true-blue member of gen-CR, who has been taught that losing wars is character-building and that serious Americans fi nd their own history embarrassing (and the less you know about it, the better...

...Beyond a certain point, patriotic devotion spread too thin simply evaporates—which is a good way to get rid of it if you are, say, an English intellectual trusting to the European Union to eradicate this primitive emotion...

...Young teachers in the 1970s proudly acknowledged their political biases: They were the New Left in action, on a long march through the institutions...

...Obama is the herald of Phase 2, in which self-conscious leftism is culture-leaders who misinterpret history by a new generation that barely knows any history to misinterpret...

...The near-eradication of race prejudice within a single generation is an achievement that Americans will always (or should always) be proud of...

...but it’s frightening nonetheless...

...Nothing is more traditional than change...

...America’s future has been intellectually housebroken...

...Every candidate makes mistakes on the stump, and voters allow for the gigantic g-forces exerted by the presidential campaign as it whirls candidates around the nation at terrific speed...

...If Obama is elected, the danger is real...

...It was wrong for Chamberlain to meet Hitler and foolish for JFK to meet Khrushchev, but right for Begin to meet Sadat and for Churchill to make repeated long, dangerous journeys to meet Stalin...

...Americans who came of age afterward, on the other hand, don’t necessarily know any recent history...

...He didn’t create it, and it’s not his fault...

...Obama’s candidacy also poses a more subtle and sinister problem...

...is clearly spelled out from kindergarten onward...

...What would the collapse of America’s noble project in Iraq look like in the funhouse mirrors of the New York Times, NBC, Time and Newsweek and NPR and the rest of the establishment media...

...In any case, McGovern got plastered...

...Washington politicians collaborated in that defeat...

...Members of the CR generation who had mainstream, establishment educations have been trained like pet poodles to understand where romping is allowed and where it is forbidden...

...Those who think that the ’60s revolution has run its course, that Americans are about ready to come home and live on friendly terms with their own history and traditions, should think again...