Brussels Is The Seat Of The Free World?

Yes, according to our, um, "esteemed" Vice President Biden. Oh, people, you know I am not making this up. Just one more of the crazy things that have come out of his mouth. But did you even hear about it? You had to be paying close attention if you did. It isn't like the MSM played the clip over and over, cackling with derision at such an inane statement, especially a statement from the second in command of the country that is generally seen as the seat of the Free World.

Remember when VP Dan Quayle misspelled "potato"? I bet most of us know nothing else about the man except that he misspelled one word one time. Honestly, I had to look him up to see what his qualifications were, and how he even came to BE Vice President. Did you know he served in the Army National Guard for 6 years, earned his Juris Doctor while serving, won re-election by the widest margin ever in that part of Indiana, and was the youngest person to win a US Senate seat from Indiana? Yeah, I didn't either. All I knew was he was a Republican and he misspelled "potato." Turns out he had some other accomplishments. Who knew?

But here's the thing - how is it that this man, this Vice President, was forever tarnished and castigated for ONE mistake, yet Biden routinely makes gaffes, and his are just laughed off? For that matter, how did Biden ever even get the VP nod? That's what I'd like to know. Someone who routinely sticks his foot in his mouth is not exactly the most reassuring person to have in the Number 2 position. Especially when he continually says stupid things.

But this time was different, as Jonah Goldberg points out in this piece, "Joe Biden's Brussles Spout"; Brussels doesn’t stand for freedom, it sits for its own self-aggrandizement, social engineering, the tyranny of legalisms, and diplomatic argy-bargy.:

‘Joe Biden.” With the exception of “broken teleprompter,” these are the scariest two words in the White House communications shop.

One advantage Biden has over Obama is he can always claim he was “just being Joe” whenever he says something controversial. In this way, Biden reminds me a bit of the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who would say “nice” things in English and evil things in Arabic. The press would largely ignore the Arabic and take him at his word in English.

Biden gets away with a similar technique, only it’s all in English. It’s just that when he’s “just being Joe,” he gets a pass.

It would be one thing if all Biden did was offer the occasional Washington gaffe (i.e., accidentally telling the truth), or if he merely talked as if he learned history from Monty Python skits, as when he claimed that FDR went on TV to reassure Americans after the 1929 stock market crash. (FDR wasn’t president. No one had TV). But that’s not how he rolls.

Earlier this month, Biden spoke to the European Parliament in Brussels. “As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, D.C., as the ‘capital of the free world.’ But it seems to me that this great city, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title.”

Now, as Biden said after the passage of Obamacare, this is a big (expletive deleted) deal. Sure, you can downgrade it to mere diplo-flattery, but that’s just the geopolitical equivalent of giving Biden the same free pass he always gets.

Still, I’d give him a pass, too, if this was crazy Joe talking. We’d all just roll our eyes if he came in there reciting Irish limericks in Klingon and claiming that we can switch from fossil fuels to Grape Nuts cereal.

But this wasn’t Joe just being Joe. How do we know? Because these were prepared remarks, and they fit perfectly with the White House’s approach to foreign policy.

And that is the big difference right there. This was not one of Biden's usual "open mouth, insert foot" moments. These remarks were written for him to say. And that is problematic:

In speeches around the world, Obama has offered apologies, confessions, and indictments of his own country. Save for the Afghanistan surge, Obama’s foreign policy has pointed toward the idea that America needs to downgrade its sense of exceptionalism. What better way to do that than to concede the title of leader of the free world, without a fight, to a Belgian backwater known for its absurd European regulations, urinating statues, and excellent beer?

In 2003, Don Rumsfeld’s talk of “old Europe” ignited an international firestorm. But when Biden suggests that the lamplight of liberty shines most brightly from Brussels, the collective response is either quiet nodding from the Left or “there he goes again” from the Right.

Again, that is if Biden's remarks in May even made it onto the airwaves or into the newspaper. Assuming they did, Goldberg suggests this:

How about we take Biden seriously instead?

Let’s look at Biden’s case for Brussels as Freedom Command Alpha. It’s 1,000 years old! Okay. But for most (all) of that time, Brussels was hardly synonymous with “freedom.” Beijing is twice as old as Brussels, Cairo older still. Does that burnish their liberty-loving street cred?

Aha, but Biden adds that Brussels is the capital of Belgium! While I’m sure that’s a huge matter of pride in high-school ping-pong competitions against Antwerp, does anyone else care?

It’s true that Brussels is the headquarters for NATO, but NATO takes its orders from a different capital — Washington, D.C.

Then there’s the fact that the EU has set up shop in Brussels. Surely this was really Biden’s only point. He was telling the unaccountable Lilliputians of the Eurocracy that Gulliver sees them as equals now.

We’ve gone through the looking glass. Brussels has no love for freedom as we define it in the American sense, and it has little to no power to promote it in any sense. The pencil pushers in Brussels have almost as much contempt for democratic sovereignty and free enterprise as they do for common sense. Indeed, in the endless quest to ratify the EU’s constitution, the leaders of the effort insisted that the voters’ opinion didn’t matter.

Brussels doesn’t stand for freedom, it sits for its own self-aggrandizement, social engineering, the tyranny of legalisms, and diplomatic argy-bargy.

It’s not just offensive that Biden thinks Brussels might deserve the title over Washington, it’s terrifying that he might actually think Brussels is in the freedom business at all.

— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. © 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Uh, yeah. Someone tell me again how it is that Obama, the so-called and self-named Transformational President picked Biden? Biden couldn't win a Primary himself, so why him? The NY Times would have us believe it was to shore up Obama's inexperience (lack of qualifications, that is), but there were FAR more good choices than Biden (who supported the Iraq invasion, btw), like Russ Feingold, for example. So why Biden?

I'm at a loss. To echo Obama's "Apologies for America"? To make Obama look good by comparison? I'm not sure, but I do know he is flat out wrong about where the Seat of the Free World is. It sure ain't Brussels. THAT I know for sure.