This nifty little picture has been making the email rounds. I’ll admit it looks pretty bad. But I looked into it and it looks worse than it is. The picture is real, but it is not a book about the Muslim takeover of America written by a devout Muslim Jihadist. Keep reading and I’ll explain why.
I’m no fan of Obama and this picture certainly caused the bile to rise to the back of my throat when I first saw it. However I did a little research on it. You can check out what snopes.com has to say here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/postamerican.asp Keep in mind that it doesn’t mean that Obama might not be the Antichrist….that still goes without sayin’.
The short story is that the author, Fareed Zakaria, is of Muslim decent but not a practicing Muslim….a Muslim like many Americans are Christians, but not really. Also the review of the book on the snopes.com is pretty accurate. While I have not read the entire book, I have read this excerpt at http://www.newsweek.com/2008/05/03/the-rise-of-the-rest.html which seems pretty consistent with the review on snopes.com. The excerpt from the book seems to be pretty optimistic. Of course I am not saying that I agree with everything Zakaria says and the things he says about the global economy will certainly be misinterpreted by Obama in a bad way, but it is not a book about the Muslim takeover of the world. This is a short excerpt from the excerpt…..if that makes any sense:
“The post-American world is naturally an unsettling prospect for Americans, but it should not be. This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else. It is the result of a series of positive trends that have been progressing over the last 20 years, trends that have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity.” Zakaria, F. (1996). The post American World. New york: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.
Basically the book makes the point that the global economy has been very good for the world outside of the United States, that many formerly very poor countries are now quite prosperous and that global economic prosperity has also made the last twenty years more prosperous and stable for the United States.
Supporting this view is the fear that other countries feel for their economy because of the abysmal overspending and debt that is destroying our economy. The liberals in America may not believe that our country has made the entire world prosperous, but the rest of the world certainly does believe it. And they do not want to see us fail. Zakaria is not describing a the world after America as in after America is wiped out. He is describing a world in which America is no longer the only prosperous country and economy in the world by a factor of 10. He makes a very strong point that the prosperity that America has blessed the rest of the world with, has made the world a safer place to live in. Many parts of the world that were once in the throes of violent anarchy are now prosperous and safe places to live. In America we complain about Wal-Mart building Wal-Mart stores in China, but when the Chinese are all busy buying and enjoying their iPods and big screen LCD TV’s, sipping lattes at Starbucks and getting fat on McDonald’s happy meals, they probably won’t be much of a threat to us any longer.
Fareed Zakaria is hardly another America hater. He was born in India and is now a naturalized American citizen and certainly to the right politically of most lame stream media news anchors, if not a right wing tea bagger.
Just thought you might be interested.
