What does November 9th mean to you? To me, the day The Berlin Wall came crashing down at the hands of a people yearning to be reunited sure means a lot. It means the vindication of democracy over Communism, of human rights over oppression, of the rights of the people over the will of the state.

It also marked the vindication of a certain Ronald Reagan, who was often ridiculed for his public demands to then Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down that horrific physical and symbolic wall that long separated families, and still separates mine. November 9th means so much to me that I have piece of that wall, marking the date the world changed, on my desk.

Apparently, it does not mean nearly as much to President Obama, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning POTUS. He gladly stops by the city of Berlin, Germany to campaign, but not to honor the twentieth anniversary of one of the most singularly defining global events of our lifetime. We should not be terribly surprised.

That is the piercing and well-evidenced argument WSJ Foreign Correspondent Bret Stephens made this past week. Stephens took Obama to task, point by point, on a utterly disheartening record on human rights issues.

One would assume President Obama would be tea buddies with the Dalai Lama. Wrong, the POTUS has refused to meet with the dignified defender of Tibet.

One would assume President Obama would at least attempt to follow his campaign rhetoric in regards to the genocidal government of Sudan of applying pressure. Wrong, Darfurian Rights activists must be asking themselves, “what pressure?”.

One would assume the social-network loving Obama staff would be filled with glee over what happened in Iran this summer. If they were, they sure did an excellent job of hiding it.

One would assume that someone who spoke so forcefully of applying the will of the American people would not forget the will of the Russian and Chinese citizens who are being murdered and tortured at the hands of government thugs. Wrong, the Obama Administration would not want silly things like human dignity get in the way of China bankrolling the farce of an economic recovery and does not think what Russia does with its people and its neighbors is any of our business.

Stephens puts it best when he says,

“It also takes a remarkable degree of cynicism—or perhaps cowardice—to treat human rights as something that “interferes” with America’s purposes in the world, rather than as the very thing that ought to define them.”

For all his rhetoric, Obama continues to act like a Nixonian realist instead of a democratic liberalist.

Stephens and I are not the only ones who have caught on to this. Mona Charen lambastes Obama’s Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, for her comments that human rights issues, “can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis.” “This is moral uplift?” Charen asks her audience. A world of oppressed masses awaits the answer in muzzled silence.

Maybe it’s a good thing President Obama will not tarnish Berlin with a hypocritical visit. Maybe he realizes he doesn’t belong there. Maybe it’s time our party begins to re-earn a place on that consecrated ground.

Last 5 posts by Abel S. Delgado

• Let’s Support the Cantwell-McCain Bill - January 6th, 2010
• Deeds Gets Dirty, Doesn’t Win Anyway - November 2nd, 2009
• The Nobel Prom King - October 11th, 2009
• Bureaucratizing Interrogations a Horrible Idea - August 28th, 2009
• The Public Option on Life Support - August 17th, 2009