In 2009, Bachmann Agreed That Obama Is ‘Not a Big Fan of American Sovereignty’

By Guest Blogger on Jul 9, 2011 at 9:00 am

Our guest blogger is Elon Green, a freelance writer living in Brooklyn.

In April 2009, current GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was interviewed by Pamela Geller — a right-wing driving force behind the Cordoba House protests and anti-Islamic bus ads, and a failed author of anti-Sharia literature. The interview largely consisted of Geller and Bachmann trading outlandish ideas. For example:

GELLER: I mean, don’t you see it — I see a war on American sovereignty –

BACHMANN: Oh, yes.

GELLER: — in money, in hegemony, um, in foreign policy, abdicating our soversignty to what I consider to be a malevolent body, in the UN — whose objectives are frankly more along the lines of the Organization of Islamic Conference [sic] than it is for free men. Um, and this is all, it seems to me, tied — I’m not suggesting a conspiracy. Um, there is conspiracy theory and there is conspiracy fact, too. But I’m not going down that line, but there are very definite things happening. And again, he is not a big fan of American sovereignty; he believes in transnationalism; and wouldn’t sort of weakening our dollar, weakening out monetary value system play right into — we’d be forced to — subjugate ourselves to some extent?

BACHMANN: Yes, I think you’re correct in that assessment. And I think also by scuttling adherence to the Constitution, we are scuttling political freedom as well. Because economic freedom is inextricably entwined in political freedom. We can’t have one without the other. The genius of United States has been freedom.  That is the genius. It is not the natural state of man. We look through history, and if we look through current geopolitical structure, freedom is not the norm. That is why the United States is an exceptional nation, in time and history. And we are gambling with some very risky dice right now by not continuing to operate under a constitutional form of government.

Shifting from a discussion of the weakening American dollar, Bachmann and Geller had an exchange that suggested Obama is sending the message of weakness to our enemies:

GELLER: I mean, listen, I think that he has basically surrendered. That’s how the enemy sees it. It was a couple of Syrian leaders who said, “It wasn’t Obama who changed the world, it was the jihad who changed the world, it was resistance that changed the world.” So the perception of his not calling it a war on terror, not wanting to insult — respect, respect, respect this barbaric, uh, enemy in many ways, I think is going to let us in for a world of pain.

BACHMANN: I agree.

Given Obama’s subsequent killing of Osama bin Laden, ramping-up of the war in Afghanistan, and militarily supporting the rebellion in Libya, Bachmann and Geller’s fears about Obama seem mordantly humorous in retrospect.