… just for the page title that comes up in your browser.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/16/obama-bowing-to-the-world/
Just for the record, where I come from, bowing can be a sign of respect just as much as a sign of obsequious bootlicking. Bowing to women, for instance, is no humiliation to the bower. And humility is a virtue which adorns any office, and the act of self-effacement freely offered is an act of nobility. The humiliation would be when the American president would have no choice but to go to China and bow – when we would truly be subject to them. And perhaps that day is coming, but it won’t be here for awhile, I think. And so far as I can tell the first rumblings of fixing the broken “free trade” system China operates has come from Obama.
But anyway the above article by my perhaps-distant-relative just seems petty, though this is true: “The very notion of ‘American exceptionalism’ is repugnant to him – as it is to most multicultural progressives.” And, I will add, to conservatives. And educated people. And especially classicists. All the people who take humility as a virtue and know we’re not exempt from the laws of history.
And this all strikes me as relevant:
“When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. 9If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. 10But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. 11For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
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