The Nobel organization once again proves how ignoble it is by giving Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize.

Well, I guess we can say, blessed be the peace makers — because they must be in darn short supply. That’s the only conclusion I can draw when I hear that President Obama — the man who got fawning media treatment for no reason, was elected with a thin resume and exalted without even being a king — has now been given the Noble Peace Prize for, it seems, allegedly having good intentions.

Among those expressing the idea that this was Obama’s sole qualification was the 1984 winner of the prize, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Gregory Katz at Google news quotes him as saying, “In a way, it's an award coming near the beginning of the first term of office of a relatively young president that anticipates an even greater contribution towards making our world a safer place for all. It is an award that speaks to the promise of President Obama's message of hope.” Putting it even more bluntly, Massimo Teodori, billed as a U.S. history expert, said, “For now it's still intentions rather than fully implemented policies, but they are deserving ones.”

Well, I guess it makes sense. I mean, if these statists can read hearts and minds well enough to bring people up on hate-crime charges, reading Obama’s good intentions ought to be a breeze. After all, hatred is much harder to penetrate telepathically than love . . . and sweetness and light . . . and all those hopey-changey feelings. The Amazing Kreskin told me that himself.

While this may seem a bit off-topic at first, this kind of judgment reminds me of a certain medical question: What do you call the condition in which the body is brain dead but yet can still experience intense emotion? 

Answer: liberalism.

Also exhibiting high-powered discernment, ex-Nobel Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei said, “He [Obama] has reached out across divides and made clear that he sees the world as one human family, regardless of religion, race or ethnicity.” Oh, yeah, good point. Obama really does. Well, I mean, except for them bumpkins who cling to their guns, religion and antipathy for people who don’t look like them.

And except for the newborn babies dying in soiled storerooms.

And except for white people, who were impugned in those sermons he never heard while attending the church of his friend, mentor and “uncle,” Reverend Jeremiah Wright, for a mere 20 years, which, as we know, goes by in the blink of an eye.

To be fair, though, something that weighed heavily in Obama’s favor is his desire to reduce nuclear proliferation. And it is going swimmingly. Iran is poised to develop the bomb, Brazil announced that it should develop nuclear weapons, India recently informed the world that it can now create “high-yield” weapons, and Venezuela could be collaborating with Iran to exploit its uranium resources. But we do have to admit that under Obama’s watch we haven’t seen a Dr. Strangelove situation; roaming, irradiated mutants; or ten-foot cockroaches.

Of course, not everyone is enlightened enough to see the wisdom in awarding the Nobel to “the One.” For instance, CNN writes, “. . . Hisham Qasim, Egyptian democracy and human rights activist, said he was ‘shocked’ Obama won. ‘He has achieved nothing. He's stumbling. He hasn't achieved any of his promises and nothing is working. He promised to close Guantanamo and now that's not going to happen, and the Arab-Israeli conflict looks like it's going to get very nasty.’”

Really, though, Obama is in good company. It’s well-known that terrorist Yasser Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. Then there was existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, the man rumored to have been a philosopher. He was offered but turned down a 1964 Nobel Prize in literature for, said the Nobel Foundation, “. . . work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age.” This statement is rich in irony. For one thing, the literature prize is bestowed by members of the Swedish Academy, who, hailing from a country that collectively may be almost as atheistic as Sartre was individually, cannot believe in truth any more than he did. And the rest of the irony pertains to the Frenchman’s “far-reaching influence.”

This was something Sartre certainly had. A devout atheist, he was unlike most of his co-irreligionists in that he at least had enough sense to know his creed. He’s the man who said “Without God all things are permissible” and who concluded that life had no meaning; he also didn’t believe in altruistic love. Of course, I’m not sure spreading the idea that it makes more sense to be a sociopath than a saint is the kind of influence for which one should win prizes.

But maybe I don’t know as much as Cambodian Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who was greatly influenced by the French “philosopher.” And I certainly can’t know as much as Sartre himself, who returned Pot’s admiration, saying in 1975 that the Cambodian affair was the purest of all communist revolutions. After all, I have the benefit of hindsight. Pot couldn’t know that he’d be unceremoniously ousted from power by the Vietnamese in 1979. And Sartre didn’t know that between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge would exterminate up to one-third of the population of Cambodia, just as the Nobel Committee didn’t know that the man to whom they were offering their prize would support a group that would exterminate up to one-third of the population of Cambodia.

But prognostication has never been these Nobel fellows’ forte. In fact, Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor who established the prize, was quaintly naïve himself. You see, he invented dynamite and fancied it so devastating that he predicted the following, “My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.” And a multitude of nuclear bombs later, we’re still a work in progress.

Ah, man’s nature doesn’t change — and neither, it seems, does the judgment of the Nobel Foundation.

 
Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.

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RP said:

In good company Theodore Roosevelt - 1906 - worked hard to get the US involved in a war with Spain - thought it would be a great adventure, volunteered, and relished in the glory of bloodshed. Woodrow Wilson - 1919 - even though the US didn't have a dog in the fight and he promised peace, he worked to get the US into WWI at the cost of many lives, botched the peace (which led to WWII) and tried to establish a world government. George C. Marshall - 1953 - betrayed the Chinese and sent them into communism. Henry Kissinger - 1973 - Vietnam and one world government. Other notables: Desmond Tutu - 1984 UN Peace Keeping Forces - 1988 Mikhail Gorbachev - 1990 Nelson Mandela - 1993 (remember the burning necklaces?) Yasser Arafat - 1994 (terrorist) Kofi Annan - 2001 Jimmy Carter - 2002 Al Gore - 2007 I am really, really surprised that FDR never won!

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October 09, 2009
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DDW said:

	This is further proof If any is needed, that the world is becoming more ignorant, stupid, confused and deluded with each passing day.
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October 09, 2009
Votes: +5

Peter F Boyce said:

God Fearing, Constitutional Loving, Inventor, Poet, Street Fightin Kid from Da Bronx Its just wonderful the Big "O" got the Nobel Peace Prize. Everyone should have to work for what they get and he just hasn't quite earned the Lenin Peace Prize yet. He's diligently working on it though. Maybe now he can create some peace amongst those knit-picking Constitutionalists by trading his Nobel Prize for a Birth Certificate.

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October 09, 2009 | url
Votes: +2

TF said:

	Yeah but..... He speaks so well.
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October 09, 2009
Votes: +1

Kero said:

A little comment Hi. I am a Swede, and I just want to spread alittle nuance to the picture here presented of my fellow countrymen. Firstly, it is the committee of our Norwegian neighbours who are in charge of the Peace Prize. And there is a big different between them and the Swedish committee. While the Peace Prize have turned into a populistic one, the other have kept to its roots (No gender quotas, for instance). Of course the Swedish committe can make mistakes (Sartre), they are after all human. I don't think the JBS always make relevant and good articles, do you? On the naivety of Nobel: How do you know that you would not think like that, if you lived at the same time and place as him? We are all more or less naïve, don't forget that.

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October 10, 2009 | url
Votes: -4

Peter Steele said:

Nobel The Nobel Committee awards its prize to the wrong people cheapening it. Reagan and not Gorbachev should got the Nobel Peace Prize and not Carter, Gore, or Obama. My late father RADM Peter Steele, USN was not a warmonger as he with the help of JBS Council Member F. Gano Chance of Associated Industries of Missouri sold 175, 000 copies of his The Communist Manifesto: Blue Print for World Revolt and as a Goldwater Republican Dad should have gotten a Nobel in Literature or a Nobel Peace Prize because he spoke of Peace where the Communists were not peaceful. Karin Wahlstrom of Stockholm has a copy of the document including Dad's wanting to touch the hand of Gulag Archipelago authior Alexander Isayevich Sohlsenitsyn. Not bad for a man who refused to join the Council on Foreign Relations.

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October 10, 2009
Votes: +4

Pat Henry said:

Who's he leading? I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him.... http://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.pdf We have a Constitutional republic of Law, so those leading elsewhere are of no account to the People, except to be resisted in the power of the authoritative law-giver, who won the victory over Pharaoh.

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October 10, 2009
Votes: +4

Lee Gonzales said:

Alfred Noble in his lab By golly, by jeepers I juz invented somepin dats' gunner end dim der BAD VARS fer all dem times...by the jeepers it dern sure will! No more VARS wit dis here sticks of dynoMITE!!!! Vars wilt be too dern messy. Dem dare armies wilt jes put up dare guns and stop makin' var. Dats how I seez it. Gotta' have me a peez prize, by jeepers fer fellas' and dee ladees who'r werking fer dees whirl o' peez. Give er to dat Arafat fello wit da funny lookin' hat and give it up fer serperters of marx and all dem good peezful fellas' who wilt use my dynomite fer dem peezeful perposes. I wonder if dat professer fello from dat dare 'merican univarsitee who like to use my stuff fer makin' dem dare perlitikal pernouncements went wit Obama to git my peese prize. What is dat dare fellas name? Oh jez Bill Ayers."

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October 10, 2009
Votes: +4

Larry Brown said:

	... Obama should give the Peace cash to reduce the National Debt. "Peace" has different meanings to different people. The Communist definition is "absence of opposition to Communism."
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October 10, 2009 | url
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realtorgal said:

Yes sir, Yasser got his Prize Odd Mr. Noble once invented dynamite then he decided to use his fortune to have a yearly festival to ease his conscience since his invention didn't end war as he had predicted. The Noble Prize have gone to some pretty unpeaceful-like people. Why for the love of good earth hasn't the peace prize been given to the owners of mining operations who use dynamite to blast their way into providing thousands of people with jobs? I never heard of the Prize going to imploders of buildings who also provide jobs for people who use something similar to Noble's invention to kill mortar and brick and not people? There is a sort of peaceful delight in seeing a huge building come down on its own footprint. I think that the Noble Prize folks are missing the point of Noble's invention. When the stuff is used in peaceful job-creating ways, give the people who use it a Prize. Instead the Prize has gone to terrorists like Yasser Arafat who enjoyed ordering his goons to use dynamite to kill innocent bystanders.

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October 10, 2009
Votes: +1

Pat Henry said:

Who is he leading? Peace prize? This is, as was pointed out, just another way to idolize. "I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him...." http://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.pdf We have a Constitutional republic of Law, so those leading elsewhere are of no account to the People, except to be resisted in the power of the authoritative law-giver, who won the victory over Pharaoh.

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October 10, 2009
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RP said:

	... Did you notice John McStain had nothing but congratulations and praise for Obama? The only difference between the two is that McStain is for the war and wants to send more troops, and Obama (or Soetoro or whatever his real name is) is against the war but will probably send more troops anyway.
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October 10, 2009
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CabotAR said:

... The Nobel Peace Prize only confirms the web of world domination by secret groups. After 9 months & 12 vacations, Obama gets this most sacred award for doing what he does best, i.e. nothing but lies. I just read a new underground book just out. It's great & I bought 2 for my friends cause it tells of a small, American town in America that stands up to govt. tyranny & starts the 2nd American Revolution. It's real!! It shows the federal govt.'s attempt to take over the country by martial law. It's been accurate so far & shows what's going to happen next. Power to the People!! www.booksbyoliver.com

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October 10, 2009
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Still Free said:

And yet another "Obama mystery" ... I give up ... how does one deserve a "peace" prize while that person allows "his" nation to wage war? If memory serves, during his campaign this very candidate decried the "Bush" war, promised the withdrawal of American troops and vowed there would be no war under his watch. The crowds roared their approval. Once elected, the candidate-turned-president has NOT withdrawn our troops, but instead has full intentions to engage us in another war, and further has plans to send an additional 40,000 men to the war zone. Now those same crowds are not only silent, they have completely disappeared from the scene ... So I repeat ... in light of the above, how does this man deserve a "peace" prize?

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October 10, 2009
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RP said:

	"how does one deserve a "peace" prize while that person allows "his" nation to wage war?" Kenya is at war? I didn't know that!
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October 11, 2009
Votes: +2

Still Free said:

	Forgive my slip. Good catch, RP! What was I thinking? I guess I could have written "leader of the free world," but that brings up other issues. Like are we really free and is he really a leader? Most everybody knows the Insiders sing one song to get elected, then sing a completely different song afterward. But I am very curious -- where are the war protestors?
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October 11, 2009
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SCHNORCHEL said:

Leftist Connection of the Nobel Peace Prize I went on the Nobel Peace Prize web page at http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/peace/peace.html and found a whole panoply of Socialistic, Internationalist Rogues getting rewarded for their New World order "crimes." The list of these Internationalist, Socialist, sometimes Terrorist rogues is a sickening display of criminals recognized by many members of the John Birch Society over the fifty-year existence of The John Birch Society. It leads one to conclude that the Nobel Peace Prize organization is a cabal of the worst Communist destroyers of mankind that the world has ever seen.

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October 11, 2009
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Steven Hewitt said:

	... What do you expect from the Noble Prize people. What better way to insure that you have some influence on Americas policies overseas than to give Obama an award he doesn't deserve.
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October 13, 2009
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