What a comforting thought for those of us who thought we were living in a Judeo-Christian nation, to hear our elected president call the United States of America “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,” and follow that bizarre and inaccurate statement with “I WANTED TO COME TO THE PLACE WHERE ISLAM BEGAN," when asked the next day in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, why he was stopping there on his way to deliver a speech at the University of Cairo, which is 1021.47 miles from Riyadh. By the way, Israel is 251 miles from Cairo, but our president will not be making a visit to the only true democracy, and our most loyal ally, in the Middle East. Surely the fact that it is the place where Judaism and Christianity began had nothing to do with the snub.
We can only hope that he does not make this trip a continuation of his apology tour, but it would be out of character for him to do otherwise. For a listing of Obama’s Top Ten apologies click on this link to the Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell.
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/06/03/morning-bell-president-obamas-top-ten-apologies/
But wait! Here is an excerpt from Obama’s speech in Cairo in which he does not quite praise America, but at least he displays an understanding of that simple concept that defines our greatness: E Pluribus Unum – something that Al Gore totally misinterpreted as “one of many” when he was trying to become our president.
“And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.
“But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words - within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."
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President Obama is to be congratulated for his clear explanation of our motto to his Muslim audience - or maybe we should thank his teleprompter.
