BOW-WOW – AT 7:44 A.M. ET:  The president of the United States has bowed down again, this time to the leader of China.  This follows the well-publicized bows to the king of Saudi Arabia, a place where a Christian cannot celebrate Christmas, and Japan, a nation whose unbowed democracy was created by American blood.

Scott Johnson, of Power Line, comments:

Whence the source of Obama's "respect" for the King of Saudi Arabia and the president of China as opposed to other heads of state? We are left to speculate on the meaning of Obama's bowing and scraping for ourselves.

Obama means to teach Americans to bow before monarchs and tyrants. He embodies the ideological multiculturalism that sets the United States on the same plane as other regimes based on tribal privilege, royal bloodlines and one-party rule.

Obama gives expressive form to the idea that the United States now willingly prostrates itself before the rest of the world. He declares that the United States is a country like any other, only worse, because we have so much for which to apologize. When it comes to the United States, he has a serious case of what Peter Wehner dubs denigration reflex.

Despite his obsequiousness to tyrants, Obama is not a humble man. On the contrary, Obama is a man of extraordinary arrogance. He seeks fundamentally to transform the United States. With him, a new age begins.

COMMENT:  Scott is correct.  The most painful element is Obama's seeming indifference to the contrast between democrats and dictators.  Like most graduates of the far left, he sees little value in democracy, and does nothing to advance it in the world.  Indeed, he appears to believe that the delivery of services by government to the "oppressed" masses is far more important than any democratic norm.

Obama does not bow down to the prime minister of England or Canada, and isn't even photographed with the prime minister of Israel. 

And yet, a young generation of Americans, miseducated in our increasingly left-wing schools, apparently has no problem with this president's behavior. 

A Republican takeover of Congress this fall may well clip Obama's domestic wings in some respects, but foreign policy is the province of the president, and the damage Obama does can continue, even with Congress potentially against him.

Imagine if this man got a second term, when he will have nothing to lose politically, and can run free.

April 13, 2010