I can select many examples that illustrate this point. However, I chose the recent criticism of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize because it is fresh in our minds.
The main point of confusion for these conservatives appeared to be the question “What did President Obama do to deserve the Nobel Prize?”
The answer is so simple and so traditionally American that the real question should be “How can anyone, especially someone who calls himself/herself a conservative, fail to comprehend why President Obama won the prize?” However, in the spirit of good citizenship and my strong desire to help promote a well-informed citizenry, I will humbly attempt to enlighten these fellow Americans, as follows:
On this earth, there are many things that separate the world population. We are separated by politics, religion, class, ethnicity, location, and other elements of culture. We are also separated by governments that grouped us into territories, countries, nations, etc... So in many ways it is easy to think of ourselves and our neighbors, who share our culture and/or our nationality, as similar; and to think of all others, who do not share our culture and/or our nationality, as “different.” However, there is a mountain of scientific evidence confirming that the citizens of the world are more similar than different, especially when it comes to the exercise of their basic unalienable rights (the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). They all have the same basic concerns about safety, security, comfort, nourishment, and empowerment. They all want to make life better for themselves and their love ones. And they all want to help create a future world that is better and more user-friendly for their future generations. These are their hopes and dreams.
No one should understand these hopes and dreams better than a citizen of the United States of America, for these were the essential ingredients that made the United States of America the greatest nation on earth! Moreover, these hopes and dreams continue to be the motivating forces that are driving Americas to make the United States better for each subsequent generation!
It could be argued, however, as those who believe in the concept of Classical Liberalism might be inclined to do, that Americans put more importance on self-interest, competition, private property, a free market, and limited government than other world citizens. Even if this is true, and I seriously doubt that Americans put more importance on these liberal ideals than the citizens of Japan, China, India, Pakistan, and dozens of other countries; the concept of Classical Liberalism isn't a contradiction to the point I am attempting to make here. Instead, it reinforces my point.
Yet, there is an even larger point that needs to be added here, for it is central to understanding why President Obama deserves the Nobel Prize. And that larger point is this: The Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence made the crucial argument that justified the creation of the United States of America. The central point of their argument, which is written in the first and second paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, states that all citizens are entitled to “certain unalienable rights” endowed by their Creator – a point which James Madison considered to be so important to the creation of our democracy that he clarified and reinforced it in Amendment IX of The Bill of Rights. The Founding Fathers knew that without this understanding of “unalienable rights” or birth-right entitlements endowed by their Creator, the citizens could be brain-washed and indoctrinated into believing that they were placed on this earth to serve an emperor, a master, a king, a ruler, a dictator... and that they had no rights to realize their hopes and dreams for life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and other birth-right entitlements. (The evidence that justified the Founding Fathers fears could be seen in governments that existed then and now!)
Philosophers and world historians would probably agree that the “concept of unalienable rights” as defined in Declaration of Independence is the greatest moral, political, economic, and social strategy in the creation of democratic governments. For when it is understood and embraced by the people of a nation, it always culminates in some form of popular sovereignty or “a government of the people, for the people and by the people.”
In his short time in office, President Obama has done an excellent job of taking the "concept of unalienable rights" world-wide. And it has produced two significant outcomes:
First, it has changed the tone and the direction of the political conversation in the world. The discourse in no longer a dark vector pointing down to the axis of evil, contemptuous rouge nations, non-Christian secular sinners, despicable untrustworthy neighbors, and the isolated-lonely stance of “us against them!” Instead the conversation vector has turned a 180 degrees. It is now pointing upward where the promising elements of the discourse includes the spirit of cooperation, the presevation of the planet, embracement of diversity, mutual respect among nations, and an acceptance of religious differences. Nations, following the lead of President Obama, are now speaking to each other (especially to the United States) in inspired-hopeful tones!
The second significant outcome that President Obama's efforts has produced is far more profound than the first. However, like most peaceful revolutions in their infancies, it is so subtle that only the keenest observers of world political ideologies might be aware of it: Through his actions and his speeches about cooperation, mutual respect, religious tolerance, and other unalienable rights, President Obama has established the foundation of a New World Order, in which the ideas of men like Thomas Payne, John Locke, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson are the pillars of it! And anyone who truly understands the implications of this will agree with me when I say “This my conservative friends is truly Nobel Prize Winning stuff!”
by First Sergeant James A. Porter
