‘In the Eyes of God the Child on the Other Side of the Border Deserves No Less Love and Compassion’
In July of 2008, month before he would become president, then-Senator Barack Obama traveled to Germany where he was met by tens of thousands of cheering and adoring fans attending his internationally-televised speech. The Guardian described him as “the man who has brought rock-star charisma to electoral politics,” and “the world’s most popular serving politician.” Of his address to the German people, the paper reported that “the loudest applause came when Obama, however subtly, offered himself as the coming antidote to all that Germans, Europeans, indeed most non-Americans, have disliked about the Bush era.”
After listing a series of global problems, from genocide in Darfur to loose nukes, he declared: “No one nation, no matter how large or how powerful, can defeat such challenges alone.” It was a promise to end the unilateralism of the early Bush years, and the crowd could not contain their delight.Â
There was no less warmth when Obama explained his belief in “allies who will listen to each other, who will learn from each other who will, above all, trust each other”.
On Thursday, nearly nine years later, a still exceptionally popular but now former President Barack Obama again traveled to Germany, and in a different forum, sat with their Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and talked to tens of thousands of cheering and adoring fans yet again.
The now rarely-public ex-president had a few things he wanted to say.
“In this new world we live in, we can’t isolate ourselves — we can’t hide behind a wall,†Obama told the 70,000 people, according to USA Today, who came to Berlin’s famous Brandenburg Gate to hear him speak.
“In the eyes of God the child on the other side of the border deserves no less love and compassion than my own,” said Obama, clearly taking a subtle swing at President Donald Trump’s efforts to isolate America and build a wall on the nation’s southern border with Mexico.Â
“We can’t distinguish between them, in terms of their worth and their inherent dignity,” he added, to cheers and applause. “And that they’re deserving of shelter, and love, and education, and opportunity.”
Obama reminded the audience that “we are also the heads of nation states with responsibilities to citizens, and people within our borders,” and noted that as such, thy have “finite resources.”
Hours later, Chancellor Merkel traveled to the NATO meeting and, as Mother Jones reports, had a much different exchange with Obama’s successor.Â
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