Is Obama Flexing His Jeffersonian Muscle?

I disagree with calling Barack Obama (or Jimmy Carter) a Jeffersonian.

In spite of the outcome looking perhaps similar to what is happening in Obama's foreign affairs, Thomas Jefferson thought — he knew, I should say; he never lost sight of the fact — that America was/is "the world's best hope" (later alluded to, more famously, by Abraham Lincoln, as "the last best hope on Earth") — not because TJ held, mindlessly, that the "tribe" to which he belonged was/is better (as Obama put it derogatorily, declaring that the Brits and the Greeks probably think they are special too), but because a republic — any republic — is always better than any other (i.e., any lesser) government.

Obama's worldview is closer to the left's simplistic world view, that fairy tale where if we all simply come together and discuss our differences, everything will turn out alright… The only problem with that, of course, is that it is as much a fairy tale now as it was in the late 1970s or at Munich or any time in the intervening time or before that…