The Nobel Goodist Prize

Hopeless Continuity: A Goodist in Power

Dick Morris sees Obama's Peace Prize as Europe's second attempt in three hundred years to civilize America. "Europe wants to reverse the American Revolution and re-colonize us and it sees in Obama a kindred spirit willing to do its bidding."

John Bolton sees a leftist Norwegian record of interfering in American politics with the Nobel. He writes, "Their message really is quite straightforward: 'Jimmy Carter in 2002,Al Gore in 2007 and now Barack Obama. Do you Americans get the point yet?'"



Hendrik Hetzberg at The New Yorker is harsh on the Nobel Prize itself ("Obama's Nobel Surprise").

If President Obama really had to get a gift postmarked Scandinavia this month, he would probably, on the whole, have preferred the Olympics. At least at the Olympics the judges wait till after the race to give you the gold medal. They don’t force it on you while you’re still waiting for the bus to take you to the stadium. They don’t give it to you in anticipation of possible future feats of glory, like a signing bonus or an athletic scholarship. They don’t award it as a form of gentle encouragement, like a parent calling “Good job!” to a toddler who’s made it to the top rung of the monkey bars. It’s not a plastic, made-in-China “participation” trophy handed out to everyone in the class as part of a program to boost self-esteem. It’s not a door prize or a goody bag or a bowl of V.I.P. fruit courtesy of the hotel management. It’s not a gold star. It’s a gold medal.

But he is sympathetic to the Nobel's most recent recipient. "Given that his perceived political problem is exaggerated expectations, does he really need a Nobel Peace Prize before he has actually made any peace?"

But the best of the columns that I have read on the Obama Nobel prize come from one who fully supports the award, Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal ("A Perfect Nobel Pick"). Stephens has figured out the Nobel Committee. They are what Oriana Fallaci "Goodists."

They are the people who believe all conflict stems from avoidable misunderstanding. Who think that the world's evils spring from technologies, systems, complexes (as in "military-industrial") and everything else except from the hearts of men, where love abides. Who mistake wishes for possibilities. Who put a higher premium on their own moral intentions than on the efficacy of their actions. Who champion education as the solution, whatever the problem. Above all, the Goodists are the people who like to be seen to be good.

Yes, there is a long history of their influence in the previous century. They gave us the League of Nations. They gave us "peace in our time" back in 1938. They gave us permissive child-rearing in the generation following the war. In the 1960s, they addressed "the root causes" of poverty, and gave us vastly more. At the same time they addressed "the root causes" of crime, and gave us a pandemic outbreak of that too. The last Goodist President made human rights the organizing principle of his foreign policy, but did so in Goodist fashion, so only succeeded in making the world safe for oppression by weakening America.

Now the Nobel Committee has helpfully identified our current President as a thoroughgoing Goodist (for those who were  unable to see it during the election campaign). So when Iran starts firing nuclear missiles, when former residents of Guantanamo Bay blow up densely populated American targets, and when the engine of American prosperity splutters and dies, we'll all know why.