Chuck Hagel and John Kerry: Four Years of This?

First came the revelation that in 2011, Hagel accused India of aiding Afghanistan as a second front against Pakistan, requiring the Pentagon to release a statement that he will work to strengthen ties with India, while the White House distanced itself from Defense Secretary Hagel's position.

Now Secretary of State John Kerry tells Germans that Americans have a right to be stupid:

In America, you have a right to be stupid if you want to be. And we tolerate it. We somehow make it through that. Now, I think that’s a virtue. I think that’s something worth fighting for.

Barry Rubin writes that looking at that speech reveals What John Kerry Doesn’t Know About Democracy and Also About Islam:

To be fair, Kerry's statement was in the context of defending, albeit not very well, freedom of speech in America. (Kerry was obviously referencing President Barack Obama’s UN speech in his own talking points.) How Kerry defends it is what's scary and dysfunctional.


He was basically saying: Yeah, we know that all these dumb people who don’t agree with us are wrong but we let them talk anyway because it works out okay in the end since nobody listens to them anyway. While he used the words “virtue” and “worth fighting for” those sentiments seem to be clumped onto the end for form’s sake. Kerry certainly doesn't say--or understand--that people have rights and government has limits. Instead, he talks as if the ruling elite tolerates such fools because it's so nice.

That is remarkably different from a more traditional defense of American liberty like: We have seen how in a free market place of ideas the best standpoints generally triumph, people are happier, and prosperity ensues. Or, we believe that people are endowed with rights by their creator and no one can or should take them away.

But in Kerry's America, we have been reduced from defending the free market place of ideas to to defending the right to be stupid -- what American wants to go into battle to defend the right to be stupid?

Rubin notes that apparently Kerry does, stating:

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

Yes, he really said that.



Representing the United States of America, such is the image of the US that Secretary of State John Kerry presents to the world:

In contrast to a proper approach, Kerry makes the American system sound like letting the deranged walk the streets as homeless people, babbling incoherently but doing little harm. Sure, let them cling to their guns and religion while we smart people make all the decisions. He’s merely turning around a traditional left-wing critique of democracy that comes from Herbert Marcuse or Noam Chomsky, of “repressive tolerance.”

If that is how Kerry perceives the US, one shudders to think what kind of view he has of Islam -- and when a German Muslim asked Kerry about his view of Islam, Rubin notes that Kerry's implication that the video was the reason for terrorist attack in Benghazi was just the beginning.

Read the whole thing.

Is this a preview of what to expect for the next 4 years from Hagel and Kerry?

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