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Thursday, October 28, 2004
Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
Gerard Baker in the The Times of London gives us a reasonable perspective on the imminent Political Superbowl in Look at Bush's enemies: they are the reason why he deserves re-election. After listing off a bunch of Bush's foibles and faults, he then swings into the following;
If you think for a moment about those who would really be upset by a second Bush term, it becomes a lot easier to stomach.The hordes of the bien-pensant Left in the universities and the media, the sort of liberals who tolerate everything except those who disagree with them. Secularist elites who disdain religiosity except when it comes from Muslim fanatics. Europhile Brits who drip contempt for everything their country has ever done and long for its disappearance into a Greater Europe. Absurd, isolationist conservatives in America and Britain who think the struggles for freedom are always someone else’s fight. Hollywood sybarites and narcissists, self-appointed arbiters of a nation’s morals.
Soft-headed Europeans who think engagement and dialogue with mass murderers is the way to achieve lasting peace. French intellectuals for whom nothing has gone right in the world since 1789.
The United Nations, which, if it had its multilateral way, would still be faithfully minding a world in which half the population lived under or in fear of Soviet aggression. Most of Belgium.
Above all, of course, Middle Eastern militants. If your bitterest enemies are the sort of people who hack the heads off unarmed, innocent civilians, then I would say you are probably doing something right.
This may sound petty. It is not. This constellation of individuals, parties and institutions has very little in common other than the fact that it has contrived to be wrong on just about every important issue of my adult lifetime.
That last paragraph rings particularly true to me, especially when I consider all the lefty crap I supported--I painfully admit--as a young man.
Posted by Kevin Steel on October 28, 2004 in International Politics | Permalink
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Tracked on 2004-10-30 8:55:23 PM
Comments
Is it just me...?
On Sept 10, 2001, I didn't know the difference between The National Review and The New Republic. I went on the web looking for information, "solidarity", whathaveyou, and discovered folks like Christopher Hitchens, Jeff Jarvis, Ken Layne, Andrew Sullivan...
All of whom have now declared themselves for Kerry. Even Glenn Reynolds has been wobbly. I don't know why I say "even"; as Blogger Andrea Harris has pointed out, much of this wobbliness seems generational. God love him: Jarvis has literally walked through Manhattan covered in human ashes, but at the end of the day, he's a Boomer. And he and his liberal cohort are convinced Bush is gonna make anal sex illegal or something, so Kerry it is.
Is this really a generational thing? A liberal/libertarian thing ("If we don't get to listen to Howard Stern swear or see Janet Jackson's boob, the Taliban have won!")?
Being an punk should have taught me not to look to "grown ups"...
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle | 2004-10-28 12:37:05 PM
PS Kevin, that was a great find, one of the best things I've read in while. They really aren't paying you enough :-)
Seriously.
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle | 2004-10-28 1:02:50 PM
Well, I was much more "leftist" as a younger man, too. Something I once heard while studying Economics/PoliSci in university comes to mind here:
"If you aren't a socialist when you're twenty, there's something wrong with your heart -- but if you aren't a capitalist by the time you're forty, there's something wrong with your head."
Posted by: Garth Wood | 2004-10-28 3:36:11 PM
Canadians' Civilized Grovel
The Canadian attitude toward President George Bush is perverse, bordering on the absurd and tending toward the lunatic carelessness that envelops those who take some satisfaction from inviting alligators into the living room. The delusional effect of Canadians, united in holding that the United States is more dangerous than Islamist terrorists, is like a farce played seriously. That was the way it was with Soviet sympathizers in the days of Stalin and the predicted coming of the world-wide Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Western civilization is deemed too powerful, too successful, too invasive of the precincts of rankly medieval brutes. It offends them. But this terrorism finds a greasy rope of symbiosis linking the homicidal proselytizers of Osama Bin Laden with the envious and conceited cognoscenti of this country. It is perversely indicative of Malcolm Muggeridge's Great Liberal Death Wish, this magnetic attraction of the comfortable and the benign to those who would annihilate the greatest Western nation in a foul gust of venomous hatred.
Apparently it is better that Americans should elect John Kerry as president because he will give up, in a thoroughly civilized manner, any pretence of actually punishing and destroying the thugs who attacked the United State on September 11, 2001. Of course, if Kerry wins the presidency, he will have to line up behind Canada in the beatific procession now dutifully and piously in search of someone brutal enough to whom Western civilization can be surrendered.
My take on the local situation.
Barry Stagg
Posted by: Barry Stagg | 2004-10-28 5:08:36 PM
Kathy has a point - I've been reading all these people for three years now, watching them reluctantly and then enthustastically get behind Pres. Bush, while shaking their heads at the inept response of the Democratic party and the people and institutions they once supported.
And then ...?
I don't get it. My own political journey has been swift and fraught these past few years, alienating friends and family as I've come to question everything I once believed, and finding that what where I was once confused, I now saw logic and consistency.
I would never call George W. Bush the greatest president ever, or say that he has dealt with Iraq (or certain economic issues) with perfect wisdom, but he's so patently working in the right direction compared to Kerry and the Dems that I fail to see why people like Hitchens, Jarvis, etc., seem to be holding out for perfection in the face of catastrophe.
I don't see my political choices as vindication, or expressions of idealism, and I'm amazed these people, whom I've come to admire, so obviously do.
Is it generational, ideological - what?
Up till now, I've managed to be philosophical about this year's political contests, but now I'm starting to get anxious.
Posted by: rick mcginnis | 2004-10-28 5:58:36 PM
"Apparently it is better that Americans should elect John Kerry as president because he will give up, in a thoroughly civilized manner, any pretence of actually punishing and destroying the thugs who attacked the United State on September 11, 2001."
What exactly is the proof that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with Sept 11th? When you find out --Please call George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld with your answer. They are really looking hard for such information!
Posted by: Red Ensigns Fly for Ernie Zundel | 2004-10-28 6:00:35 PM
President Bush on Osama Bin Laden
"I truly am not that concerned about him." -- March 13, 2002 - Press Conferrence,
http://health.china.news.designerz.com/bush-kerry-trade-shots-on-bin-laden-economy-health-care.html
Posted by: Red Ensigns Flying for Ernie Zundel | 2004-10-28 6:05:56 PM
Can something be done about this "Ernst Zundel" troll? The sight of that "man's" name on my computer screen is giving me a rash.
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle | 2004-10-29 7:17:17 AM
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