Obama dithered as long as he could before publicly supporting the people of Iran, but his reaction was near instantaneous when the Honduran military acted to defend the Honduran constitution by booting a president who was angling to be president-for-life. Which has some people, or at least Roger Simon, wondering if Obama is objectively pro-fascist.

If you like you can go read Eugene Volokh and George Orwell explaining what's wrong with claims that "X is objectively Y". During WWII Orwell claimed that pacifists were objectively pro-fascist because their actions tended to hamper the Allied war effort and so helped the Axis war effort. After the war Orwell concisely explained why this rhetorical move was suspect. But I have an entirely different problem with the claim that Obama is objectively pro-fascist.

We never know for sure what the motives of other people are, and at best we have only a sketchy idea as to what our own motives are. But if we are trying to figure out the motives of other people we have two guides: what they do, and what they say. Sometimes these two sources of evidence match up pretty well, and sometimes they don't. When they don't match up we may justly wonder whether the people in question are being honest about their motives.

That is usually what is going on when people trot out the "X is objectively Y" line. The pacifists said they were opposed to fascism, but their actions tended to promote fascism more than peace, and that caused some to wonder what their true motives were. The situation with Obama is different. He hasn't done anything much to affect the outcomes in Iran or Honduras. The problem is with what he has said, but then even his statements can't be called pro-fascist because he certainly hasn't endorsed either the Mullahs or Zelaya.

If there is a criticism to be made of Obama it is just that, in these two cases, he is keeping bad company.