Corn on "Hardball": Did Obama Deserve the Nobel?

What makes me puke in this discussion is when I hear Norway referred to as some left wing liberal state. Norway in case Pat Buchanan didn't know is a member of NATO and unlike the US has mandatory military service or to those who qualify as conscientious objectors then obligatory social service is mandatory.

During WWII this tiny country (present population 4 million) was viewed by Winston Churchill as being worth a million soldiers on the battlefield because it was Norwegian ships and sailors that fed the supply lines to Great Britain and kept her breathing during those long dark hours of the Battle of Britain (the loss of supply ships at that time was 50% and many of these supply lines sailed unguarded and were easy prey for the German U-boats) while the Kingdom of Norway itself had been invaded and there sat 350,000 German soldiers—it was called the Norwegian Fortress and was where Hitler planned to make his last stand against the allied forces. Thanks to their merchant marines the allied forces did not go wanting for needed supplies. As master seamen they served in the way they could best and the tiny island of England stood the test and revealed Churchill's finest hour.

In the United States there isn't suppose to be “left” and “right” but rather there is suppose to be the United States of America and the question is what serves the nation best. In 1900 Norway along with Ireland were the poorest nations in Europe and among the poorest nations in the world, among those nations with the lowest life expectancy in the world, Sweden was not directly poor but it also suffered from a poor life expectancy and poverty was rampant. The consequences of finding a mixed economy and the use of socialized medicine as well as other social benefits have given these liberals as the ignorant Buchanan puts it, the highest standard of living in the world—where higher education is a good open to all citizens at very affordable prices thus these nations remain very competitive in the world of science and their population is on average contemporary with all technological advancement, but also where life expectancy is among the highest in the world and where the war against poverty is viewed as national security. To remove disease and to offer every member of the state the finest care the medical profession can offer, to ensure housing for all and yet to insist that every member of the state aid in its defense and if need be fight to the death to keep the nation free is part of their calling. No doubt it is a people that view war with disdain because they know the meaning of war—they know what it means to have the most powerful military forces in the world parked on their doorstep and to see the North Sea ablaze and filled with burning ships and floating dead bodies but in terms of choice they have always sided with the US in every military venture that has occurred in the last century and thus they represent a key partner in trade and a key ally and it is only ignorance that calls their superior sense of responsibility to their people as being liberal—when it comes to serving their people the government of Norway puts us to shame! Thus when I look at Norway I can only smile because they show what is possible, they show what responsible government can achieve and to them my hat is off in awe at their excellence.

The peace prize is a symbol, it is not peace itself. That Barack Obama is president of the US is a testament to the American people and the struggle of minority rights—the struggle of Blacks to be recognized as human beings and to take their rightful place among Americans in general. It is but 150 years ago that blacks were legal slaves and it is but 50 years ago the civil rights leader Martin Luther King was murdered while he fought for the cause of the right to sit on a bus, to use a public toilet or drink water from a public fountain in the same manner that whites did. Thus in this sense Barack Obama is a symbol of our progress and proof that change is possible and that the struggle for change is indeed worth that struggle. The civil rights movement is not a movement engineered by fanatics but rather it is and was a movement engineered by men and woman who have used the very system and ideology created by the founding fathers of this nation—that in order to obtain one's inalienable rights it is necessary to struggle and educate the ignorant and yet it is not a struggle entirely shrouded in darkness—there is light to be found. It is a struggle that the structure of democratic rule affords a people and it is a means by which guns are not necessary. In this sense it is a symbol of evolution towards a higher plane of understanding where might does not make right but rather where the appeal is towards one's sense of humanity and the call toward one's innate reason—one's common sense.

I would have thought that this prize would be seen as something positive. That the president of the United States is being called upon to be recognized as an agent of peace in a world of turmoil. We have enough war, enough senseless carnage and an olive branch in times such as these are things which should be accepted as a gesture that indeed we must seek out these lines of understanding between the peoples of this world so that the world as a whole can come to embrace the meaning of change and to struggle towards the endeavor of global peace, like say the elimination of all atomic weapons, so that we can meet the challenges that face humanity as a whole as one race—the human race and not divided into the feeble and ignorant mentality of war, race, religion, and ideology which threatens our very existence.

To President Obama I can only say thank you for being you, you make us all feel proud again, congratulations and good luck.