Romney's campaign denied that his remark was intended to slight the Palestinians. However, Palestinian leaders were so outraged that some analysts suggested that the comment could come back to haunt Romney if, as President, he seeks to act as a negotiator between the two sides.
But that seemed to be the least of Romney's concerns as he has pandered incessantly to the Israelis in a presumed strategy to drive a wedge between Jewish-American voters and President Barack Obama, who has criticized the Israeli government's policies of expanding Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank.
Moral Superiority
The idea of cultural and even moral superiority as explaining success is a dominant theme in Romney's book, No Apology, for both countries and individuals. The book, which is subtitled "The Case for American Greatness," returns again and again to the theme of U.S. cultural superiority.
For instance, Romney is disdainful of "progressives" who offer more culturally neutral judgments about differing nations and ethnic groups. He wrote:
"During the 1960s, the idea set associated with progressivism gained ascendancy in educational circles. Our classical education tradition had held for decades that we should imbue each generation with the wisdom of the ages and the discoveries of modernity."Progressives, on the other hand, rejected the notion of universal truths, objective judgments, and, ironically, progress itself, embracing neutrality among competing belief sets and rejecting the primacy of Western civilization, the great thinkers of the ages, and the principles espoused by the Founding Parents of the nation. In their view, all cultures are of equal value."
Progressive scholars respond to such criticism by noting that their duty is to present history and cultures objectively, not to indoctrinate students with propaganda that ignores the wrongdoing and hypocrisies of any group, including the fact that some of America's white Founders professed liberty for all while owning slaves.
There is also the inconvenient truth that the U.S. government engaged in genocide against Native Americans, stole large tracts of Western land from Mexico, and insisted on placing U.S. military bases all over the world.
A key point of No Apology is to disparage President Obama for supposedly "apologizing" for America, though Romney is short of specifics as to exactly what Obama has said that would constitute an apology, rather than just the occasional recognition that the U.S. government hasn't always been perfect. Oddly, Romney makes the same point in the book, writing:
"That doesn't mean, of course, that America is a perfect country. We have made mistakes and committed grave offenses over the centuries. Too often we have failed to live up to our ideals. But to say that is to say that we live in this fallen world rather than a perfect one, a world composed not of angels but of flawed and imperfect beings."And, crucially, our past faults and errors have long been acknowledged and do not deserve the repetition that suggests either that we have been reluctant to remedy them or that we are inclined to repeat them. What we should say and repeat is this: No nation has shed more blood for more noble causes than the United States. Its beneficence and benevolence are unmatched by any nation on earth, and by any nation in history."
Romney insisted that he actually wrote his own book, although he acknowledged assistance and advice from many of America's leading neoconservatives, including Robert and Frederick Kagan, and from a variety of right-wing think tanks.
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