A Letter to President Obama

April 01, 2009

April 1, 2009

Dear President Obama,

Be assured that no one surpasses us here at NDO in appreciating what you”ve done an overcoming of our country’s stinking racist past. And even before you came along, we were among the first to proclaim your spiritual predecessor Martin Luther King as a “conservative thinker” and, above all, as a “conservative Christian theologian.” No one was ahead of our publication in focusing on the hidden dimension of Dr. King, who is mistakenly presented as a man of the Left. Because of special revelations, we have located qualities in this saintly figure, which suggests that he might have already contributed to our magazine in the 1950s, if only he had wanted to reveal his true self to the American public.

Well, here’s the deal. We”ll cut you some slack on your stimulus program if only you support our conservative foreign policy.

Right now the problem is you really don”t want to get tough with the anti-democratic, anti-Semitic Putin and his band of Kremlin thugs. Don”t you realize the purpose of American foreign policy, as our friends at the New York Post have been stating for weeks, is to bring democracy to everyone on this planet, even if”especially if!”they don”t want it? Who the Hell cares what those jerks want! Democracy is good for them, and so are bloodbaths, as our contributor Rich Brookhiser (who, by the way, is a big fan of yours) never tires of telling us, in making countries like us and like those other authorized democracies that we at NR approve of. Look at all the good things that “democratic” violence has done! Depopulating thirteen hick Southern states, which were full of pellagra, in the 1860s, obliterating funny-looking Japanese and Central European cities, all of which could be later rebuilt with Burger-king, Chucky Cheese and other global democratic amenities, and finally bringing democratic reeducation to those who needed it: those were the kinds of activities that, according to conservative deep thinker Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind, show us Americans at our very best. Laying waste to other countries means we”re serious about our values, and not like Nietzschean hippies, who smoke pot and get spaced out on Thus Spake Zarathustra.

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But let’s not lose our train of thought! In the last few weeks you”ve begun to make nice to the Russians while claiming to want to “broker a peace” in the Middle East. That’s not what conservatism is about. We”re about twisting the arms and blowing off the heads of those we don”t consider “democratic.” How do you expect to arrive at world peace unless we bust some chops? Remember “democracies don”t fight each other,” and the way to make sure they don”t, is by going after all those “non-democracies,” first by getting tough and then by teaching values to those few inhabitants who survive our educational efforts.

We”ll send volunteers for the second part of the training program, providing our financial needs are met. But for the first part of this democratic education, with all the bombs going off, you”ll probably need burlier types. May we suggest recruiting in Harlem and along the Mexican border?

There’s also a chance in the next few weeks to work with a real good guy in Israel, who our information sources indicate is going to win the election there. Bibi Netanyahu is simpatico with our sponsors at Commentary, who help him write and distribute books that sound like our stuff. You know what we mean: that the only legitimate governments are those we happen to like, while the others have to be overthrown or blown up by the guys from Harlem who need employment. That’s how you get peace! This crap that you”ve been pushing (pardon our frankness!), like trying to broker agreements, is self-defeating. How can you pretend to find moral equivalence between those we call “democrats” and those we don”t?

You might take as a model of political zeal someone we”ve praised in our publication, Leon Trotsky, who was an intergalactic democrat and, besides, an anti-anti-Semite. As our contributor Steve Schwartz has pointed out, Leon was not a Communist mass-killer, the way paleoconservatives and other fascists depict him, but someone who cared about the prospects for democracy. Like Martin Luther King, he was the genuine article, a conservative, in contrast to those lowlifes we keep at arm’s distance, who discourage democratic military crusades because they”re closet neo-Nazis. Back in 2002 we had our celebrated editor David Frum go after that “unpatriotic Right,” and if you haven”t read his incisive remarks (it’s still hot stuff!), we can FedEx it today. Like Leon, we try to be on top of the fascist threat.

Well, that’s all we have to say, at least in this note. But if you decide to make more dinner parties for genuine conservatives, as opposed to fascists, please keep us informed. We have lots of employees, including our prepubescent editors, who would love to meet you.

Sincerely,
Jonah Goldberg
National Disgrace Online