Who's on a High Horse?

President Obama has said something remarkably stunning for its arrogance or ignorance, I know not which. At the National Prayer Breakfast in February, speaking of the violence perpetrated by radical Islamists, the President chided Christians for historical indiscretions saying, "And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. " (full text)

As a linguist I am fascinated by the President’s obviously condescending use of the first person pronoun “we.” No one thinks he imagined himself on any horse. This is an example of using inclusive language to surreptitiously exclude oneself from the intended class. The President then slips in a second person reference, more aligned with his true intention, calling his audience to “remember.” This implied “you” points the royal finger squarely where “we” think it belongs. Then, to complete the thought, our erudite leader finishes the sentence with a third person reference to the actual perpetrators of the actions he wishes to condemn.

Peter Wehner wrote an excellent review of Obama’s speech in Commentary. Wehner’s article makes one wonder if the President can truly be as clueless as this makes him sound. If there is a parallel between the Crusades and today’s war on terror, it is the fact that Western civilization is fighting an all-out war against Islamic extremists who want to conquer the world in the name of Allah. Invoking the Crusades serves to reinforce the historical context regarding the battle with Arabs.

The next thing I expect to hear is that Jews killed thousands upon thousands of “Arabs” according to God’s directive in the conquest of the Holy Land. Obama doubtless would suggest we redress those centuries-old grievous misdeeds by compelling modern Israel to return what they stole. For years the left has been has been claiming that what happened in 1948 and again in 1967 was internationally sanctioned terrorism – a land grab by the undeserving of the territory of those unprepared to defend their rights.

The historical sequence goes something like this: God gave Israel the land in perpetuity in the twelfth century BC. After centuries of gaining and losing the Promised Land, they were finally driven out by the Romans in the first century AD. They reclaimed their land in the twentieth century after a curious coalition of religious and secular groups lobbied internationally for over one hundred years. It is probably coincidence that Philistine sounds so much like Palestine, but it is not inaccurate to say that the two people have much in common, not the least of which is a long-standing dispute over a strip of land on the Mediterranean coast.

President Obama and those who support him are not ignorant; they know this history. However, they seem to ignore (the root word of “ignorance”) its implications. This is a holy war if for no other reason than the Islamists say it is. To equate defenders of religious freedom with Islamic terrorists is ludicrous.

The only high horse here is Obama’s, and it appears to be a childish rocking type rather than any sort of mature war horse. That Obama used the National Prayer Breakfast as his platform serves to underline the urgency with which Christians need to start mounting a defense against this kind of nonsense. If we don’t stand up soon, we may not have a leg to stand on, equine or otherwise.