Mistaken views of the past lead to dangerous, delusional expectations for the future.
From Victor Davis Hanson:
In his therapeutic 2009 Cairo speech, Mr. Obama outlined all sorts of Islamic intellectual and technological pedigrees, several of which were undeserved. He exaggerated Muslim contributions to printing and medicine, for example, and was flat-out wrong about the catalysts for the European Renaissance and Enlightenment.
He also thinks history follows some predetermined course, as if things always get better on their own. Mr. Obama often praises those he pronounces to be on the “right side of history.” He also chastises others for being on the “wrong side of history” — as though evil is vanished and the good thrives on autopilot.
When in 2009, millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest the thuggish theocracy, they wanted immediate U.S. support. Instead, Mr. Obama belatedly offered them banalities suggesting that in the end, they would end up “on the right side of history.” Iranian reformers may indeed end up there, but it will not be because of some righteous inanimate force of history, or the prognostications of Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama often parrots Martin Luther King Jr.’s phrase about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice. But King used that metaphor as an incentive to act, not as reassurance that matters will follow an inevitably positive course.
Another of Mr. Obama’s historical refrains is his frequent sermon about behavior that doesn’t belong in the 21st century. At various times, he has lectured that the barbarous aggression of Russian President Vladimir Putin or the Islamic State has no place in our century and will “ultimately fail” — as if we are all now sophisticates of an age that has at last transcended retrograde brutality and savagery.
Read more: Washington Times
