Obama's Naivete - Will It Prove Fatal?

Camile Paglia, liberal icon though she may be, seems to have a better understanding of his shortcomings than most of the media elite - or the Republican party, for that matter. Her commentary on Obama's Cairo speech:

It was also puzzling how a major statement about religion could seem so detached from religion. Obama projected himself as a floating spectator of other people's beliefs (as in his memory of hearing the call to prayer in Indonesia). Though he identified himself as a Christian, there was no sign that it goes very deep....

Obama's lack of fervor may be one reason he rejects and perhaps cannot comprehend the religious passions that perennially erupt around the globe and that will never be waved away by mere words. By approaching religion with the cool, neutral voice of the American professional elite, Obama was sometimes simplistic and even inadvertently condescending, as in his gift bag of educational perks like "scholarships," "internships," and "online learning" -- as if any of these could checkmate the seething, hallucinatory obsessions of jihadism.

But before he can sway hearts and minds, the president will need to show that he understands the ultimate divergence and perhaps incompatibility of major creeds. At the finale, his recitation of soft-focus quotes from the Koran, Talmud and Bible came perilously close to a fuzzy New Age syncretism of "all religions are the same" -- which they unequivocally are not. The problem facing international security is that people who believe something will always be stronger and more committed than people who believe nothing -- which unfortunately describes the complacent passivity of most Western intellectuals these days.

And it also explains why nations led by those Western intellectuals that Paglia understands so well are falling back before the ongoing march of radical Islam. These are the same intellectuals who seem to believe that behind every jihadi's face-scarf, there is a liberal looking for public school reform and national health care, and all he needs is to be understood and catered to just a little bit more...

Well, now we have one of those Western intellectuals running the United States. Any suprise, then, that in the aforementioned speech, Obama proclaimed no religion/government/nuclear weapon is better than the other?

Music to the radical's ear....