Here comes the latest right-wing freakout:
Uh Ho: Obama Says Vietnamese Dictator Inspired by Founding FathersThat's from FoxNews.com. The freakout extends to PJ Media, The Blaze, Drudge, Gateway Pundit, etc., etc.
"...we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson."
-- President Obama talking to reporters alongside Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang.
It may come as some unwelcome news to the families of the nearly 60,000 Americans who died in the Vietnam War that the whole thing was just a misunderstanding.
That was the impression President Obama gave on Thursday when he spoke to the press after his meeting with Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang. Sang brought Obama a copy of a letter sent to President Harry Truman from Ho Chi Minh in which the communist dictator spoke hopefully of cooperation with the United States.
Obama, striking a wistful tone, observed that it may have taken 67 years, but the United States and Vietnam were finally enjoying the relationship that Ho once wrote of. After all, Obama said, Ho had been "inspired by the words of Thomas Jefferson." ...
But where did Obama get this notion from?
Um ... I assume he got it from Ho Chi Minh's own Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, written in 1945, which begins as follows:
"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."So the fact Obama made reference to is, in fact, a fact.
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.
The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights."
Those are undeniable truths....
Also: we normalization relations with Vietnam eighteen years ago this month. The trade embargo ended a year earlier, in part through the efforts of former prisoner of the Vietcong John McCain, working in concert with John Kerry. If the right had a problem with the fact that the U.S. has normal relations with Vietnam, it had an eight-year Republican presidency to raise those objections.
I heard nothing. I've heard nothing even from the current crop of right-wing loons in the House.
So shut the hell up, right-wing media.
