It's a big day for videos on this blog, huh?! Here's Pres. Obama's speech reacting to his recent award.
I like his response, I think it takes this award and casts it in the best possible light while attempting to use it to further his particular causes/policies. However, I find something that Obama explicitly acknowledged in his speech uncomforable: "And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes." Obama considers this prize a nudge by the Nobel commission (I don't know why I care what they think anyways, but here goes) towards a certain type of American policies and politics, and I agree with him.
Don't get me wrong, I find some of those policies and causes attractive and I generally think Obama's vision for the world is a positive one. But I can't help being rubbed the wrong way, just a bit by what amounts to a very public intervention in American politics. And if this sort of intervention- an honor no less!-causes me to react this way, I can't help but worry about how people in the developing world feel when we come and tell them to run their governments or live their lives a certain way.
I think this is actually one of the central ironies of American foreign policy- we jealously guard our sovereignty as a "city on a hill" yet insist on preaching our gospel to everybody else (something that Reinhold Nieburh commented on best and far more eloquently in The Irony of American History if you're interested).
In any case, a "teachable" moment for me. I wonder if anyone else reacted this way?
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