Midnight in Obama’s Garden of Good and Evil

By: Roger L. Simon

Increasingly, I am thinking that Barack Obama does not know the difference between good and

evil. Now I realize implying that someone can’t make that distinction, really the difference

between right and wrong, is a harsh condemnation indeed, but I think it is something that should

be examined in Obama’s case since it would explain many of the extraordinary missteps of his

presidency. Those missteps are only escalating at the present moment as evil stalks the globe at

an ever rising pace.

 

In fact, before looking very far backwards, consider this: Would the United States today

be doing anything at all about the Islamic State — now for the first time waving its black

flag above Kobane on the Turkish-Syrian border, on the brink of a massacre of its Kurdish

population, while still besieging Baghdad — had ISIS not bothered to behead publicly a few

Westerners?

 

Let’s be honest — not a chance with this president, although 99.9 percent of the horrific

activities of the Islamic State had nothing to do with the beheading of a handful of Americans

and Brits. ISIS had already provided us with more than enough examples of mass murder

and other Holocaust-like actions to last several lifetimes. In two videos I saw, dozens of

Middle Eastern men were decapitated, their severed heads placed on poles while others were

shot through the back of the neck and dumped unceremoniously into pits they had dug for

themselves. It was unclear whether they were alive or dead, probably a little of each. Those

videos, one of them almost an hour long, were like recruiting films for an Islamic version of the

Khmer Rouge or the Wehrmacht. Straight from Hell.

 

But they were largely ignored by our president, who had proclaimed these people the

JV or wanted to believe as much in order not to disrupt his post-modern, morality-free

weltanschauung. It was not until the American public was aroused by the beheadings of the

Westerners that Obama did much of anything – and even that was, and still is, as little as

possible. Evil does not interest him, especially if it has nothing to do with votes. Evil does

not even exist for him. Only fairness. If only those ISIS people could be “fair” — hence his

dopey remarks about what people do or do not do in the 21st century, as opposed, I suppose, to

the bloodthirsty 20th. (Ironically, the worst mistake — from their point of view — the Islamic

State made was to behead the Westerners. It may be have been good for recruiting, but had they

avoided it, they might be in Baghdad by now… even more powerful for recruiting.)

 

At the same time as ISIS is rampaging, Obama’s equally morality-challenged crew at the

State Department is busy criticizing (what else?) Israel, yet again for Jewish construction and

apartment purchase in Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods. (At least this time it wasn’t for murdering

civilians, one of the more hypocritical accusations of recent years, considering who made it.)

Netanyahu, a man with a moral center a tad larger than Obama’s, struck back on CBS’ Face

the Nation but (surprise, surprise) the court eunuchs at CBS removed the Israeli PM’s criticism

from the broadcast. Nevertheless, by then the State Department’s Jen Psaki had already taken

umbrage at Netanyahu for daring to question His Majesty. The Times of Israel summed up the

ensuing brouhaha:

 

When asked about Netanyahu’s allegations that the US was telling Jews that they could not

buy houses in the Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, which several Jewish families

moved into earlier the week, Psaki did not clarify Washington’s position regarding the Ir David

group’s independent purchase of Arab-owned houses there.

 

Instead, Psaki said that there were questions involving building permits and construction — an

answer that seemed to address the municipality’s involvement in Givat Hamatos rather than the

private initiative in Silwan.

 

Commentary’s Seth Mandel continued: “It wasn’t clear that Jen Psaki even knew what she

was being asked about. The degree to which this administration’s advisors and spokesmen are

uninformed about issues on which they pronounce judgment is simply incredible.”

 

Well, it’s not incredible if you don’t know the difference between something as elemental as

good and evil. Without that, there’s nothing to pronounce judgment on. Pick on Israel while

allowing the entire Middle East to turn into a veritable Islamist sea of beheadings, rapes, sexual

slavery and mass murder. It’s all a power game. You pick on someone who is sane and will

therefore listen to you. Never mind that the only ones genuinely trying to help anybody in the

region are the Israelis, who are actually treating Syrian ISIS victims and spending Israel’s

money to do it. As the old saying goes, “No good deed goes unpunished,” particularly when you

don’t know what a good deed is. (A distillation of Obama’s moral deficit is that he would prefer

Islamists like Egypt’s Morsi and Turkey’s Erdogan to Netanyahu.)

 

At its basis, the problem is cultural relativism, the tawdry mother philosophy of political

correctness that suffused the academy when Obama was going to school and still does. Under

CR, all cultures are equal, ours and the Islamic State. We are imperialist to think otherwise.

Morality is a thing of the distant past, some artifact of St. Anselm or Maimonides. Not cool,

even if it protects us from murdering each other.

 

Speaking of moral absurdity, I couldn’t resist having a grim laugh at the extraordinary naiveté

of Ben Affleck on the subject of Islam. It took Bill Maher to straighten him out — or try — that

Islam’s ideology just might have something to do with its actions. Who knew?

 

Good and evil are difficult concepts for everybody, especially we products of the modernist

educational system. But we ignore them at our peril. Otherwise, we really are at Midnight.