Posted by
Always To The Right on Sunday, November 15, 2009 3:48:24 PM
It didn’t take too long for the Left to defend Barack Obama’s bow to Emperor Akihito yesterday by claiming that the President was merely showing cultural sensitivity
to the Japanese emperor by deeply bowing. There’s a couple of problems
with that argument. First, American Presidents do not bow to monarchs,
or at least they didn’t through the first 43 Presidents and the 220
years they served as the US head of state. Perhaps a few of them might
have done so out of cultural sensitivity when traveling to
foreign nations as private citizens, either before or after their terms
in office, but not when they represented the United States of America. Even the New York Times knew better than that in 1994.
For those arguing that such a policy merely propagates American
arrogance and that Obama wants to “change perceptions,” this video by
the UConn College Republicans points out the second problem. Heads of state do not bow and show obeisance to one another,
regardless of whether either one is an American President. The UConn
group reviews 47 different greetings to Emperor Akihito and various
heads of state, including a few from fellow Pacific Rim countries with
similar cultural sensitivities, and doesn’t find a bow among them