 |
What They've Thought
|
||||
|
|
||||
What They Thought July 30, 2006 Alan
Caruba Click here for columnist bios |
|||||
In times of war, the last person you want in the foxhole with you is a liberal. They are always desperately looking for a white flag to wave. They are always trying to “understand” the enemy and excuse his bad behavior. In late July, Eugene Robinson, a columnist for the Washington Post, penned a column that is quintessential liberalism. Normally I just dismiss such twaddle, but it occurred to me that it serves as a good study guide to liberalism. He expressed himself on the subject of Lebanon and Israel. Let us dissect it. The first two paragraphs were devoted to making fun of President Bush as too dimwitted to understand the world. By the third paragraph, Eugene was already at full throttle. “Bush and his folks haven’t just blundered around and created this dangerous mess. They’ve done it on purpose. And they intend to make it worse.” September 11, 2001. President Bush did not create the destruction of the Twin Towers, nor did he create Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, or Hamas. The attacks on the United States by Jihadists had been going on for decades before he was elected. In 1983, Hezbollah killed 243 U.S. Marines in Beirut to cite just one instance. In 1979, Iran took U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days. To Eugene and his fellow liberals, everything began with and can be blamed upon President Bush. This convenient loss of memory is a common liberal trait. Another liberal trait is to regard any military response to an attack on the United States or one of its allies as wrong. Still ruminating about Lebanon, Eugene describes Israel’s response as “utterly disproportionate” as if victory over those raining rockets down on its cities, filled with civilians, is not the object of war. Eugene deemed Israel’s response to be “seemingly indiscriminate carnage” which he called “counterproductive.” War is about killing people and breaking things. Now we get to the most liberal notion of all. “The Israeli campaign is so intense and widespread that it is creating more terrorists than it kills.” This is pretty much the same argument made for U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a liberal article of faith that if only the Israelis or Americans would just stop existing, there would not be a problem with Islamic terrorism. No. The misnamed “War on Terror” is, in fact, a war against Islamic fundamentalism and the silent consent of more than a billion Muslims who believe that Islam must rule the world and that the five billion Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and other faiths have no right to exist except as Muslims. The problem is not Israel and is not the United States. The problem is a new world war that must be fought to protect all the freedoms; the scientific and artistic advances of Western civilization. For Eugene, however, the problem is that “Hezbollah’s stature in the Arab world is growing, and its patrons in Damascus and Tehran must be smugly satisfied.” Tell that to the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and even Saudi Arabia! They all condemned Hezbollah’s kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and its subsequent rocketing of Israeli cities and towns. “The role of any American president and secretary of state should have been to move quickly to bring hostilities to an end,” said Eugene. How do they accomplish this when Hezbollah is not a nation to whom diplomats can be dispatched, but rather an army funded and supplied by two nations, Iran and Syria, with whom we have virtually no diplomatic relations? Isn’t this a job for the United Nations? Wasn’t it created to avert and contain wars, large and small? Eugene makes no mention of it. Perhaps because of the outstanding role it played in containing Saddam Hussein after he waged war on Iran and Kuwait, or the “interim” peacekeeping forces it has had in Lebanon for years? And who can forget its remarkable humanitarian efforts with its “Oil for Food” program? Liberals can and do forget anything that does not fit into their view that dictatorships are a necessary evil and that they need to be understood, not condemned. Instead, Eugene angrily upbraids the President and Secretary of State who “have staked their Mideast policy on a single incontrovertible idea—that terrorism is bad—and it has led them to the mistaken notion that Israel can achieve long-term security by creating a kind of scorched-earth buffer zone in southern Lebanon.” Well, Eugene, terrorism is bad. Perhaps you have forgotten—there’s that liberal memory lapse again—about the recent attacks in London, in Madrid, in Russia, and in India? Or the continuing carnage in Baghdad where Islamists are determined that 25 million Iraqis cannot have a democratic government? A foreign policy based on destroying the Islamist movements that threaten Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the entire Middle East, Africa, Europe, Russia, and the Pacific Basin nations seems to many people to be a perfectly reasonable and rational policy. Except for Eugene who opined that “It’s hard to imagine a more unpromising course of action.” Finally, for purposes of this examination of liberal idiocy, Eugene concludes that, “Bush, Rice et al. refuse to see that their crusade against terrorism can never be won by military action alone, because a victory in the war of arms can also be a defeat in the war of ideas.” It is this fascination with “ideas” versus the ugly facts on the ground that fogs the minds of liberals like Eugene Robinson. Islam will not be defeated by a war of “ideas.” It has been around since the seventh century and has laid ruin to every land in which it dominates. It glorifies death in a “holy war” against “the Crusaders and Zionists.” Hindus, too, get a special measure of hatred. When not destroying the mosques of competing factions within Islam, it destroys the churches, temples, and the artifacts of all other faiths. It beheads people. “Americans are bogged down in a long-term occupation. This is winning a war on terrorism?” asks Eugene. Short memory again. We waged a Cold War against Soviet Communism, with time out for a couple of hot wars in between, and won that struggle by staying in Europe since 1945 and showing up with guns blazing in Korea and Vietnam. Ironically, we even funded and armed the Islamists in their struggle to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. During all this time, since 1948, Israel has fought its own wars against the Islamists and no amount of concessions—the return of land won in wars against them—has caused their enemies and ours to cease their crusade or changed their mind. Eugene Robinson
needs to Google some of the views of the current President of Iran,
read a book about Osama bin Laden, and take a longer look at Islam before
he whines about Israel’s response to the latest outrages against
its people or America’s removal of a homicidal maniac named Saddam
Hussein. |
|||||
I’ve watched for years as many of the other parents in the mid-east have been interviewed. Most of them are pretty darn consistent in what they have to say. “I’m going to have more children and raise them up to kill Jews.” Until we shut off the cash valve some of them were getting money from Saddam for sending their kids over to Israel to blow themselves up. I guess if I had parents like that I’d be inclined to blow myself up too. But I’d be more inclined to do it next to them not someone I’ve never met before. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The hatred in the region towards Jews is as boundless as Ted Kennedy’s and Bill Clinton’s ability to screw up an anvil with a rubber hammer. Right now the Shiite group Hezbollah has managed to capture the love of the Sunni Moslems because of what they’re doing to Israel now. This is amazing to me because the two don’t see eye to eye on anything. In Iraq they are seeing eye to eye at the moment but there is a bit of a problem. The moment they are eye to eye one of them pulls the trigger first and the slow one dies. (Darwin at work) At least those people know how to live the proper mid-eastern life style. Not all of the Moslems care for Hezbollah however. I doubt those who are being detained by Hezbollah, as human shields to aid in Al-Jazeera’s PR work are too pleased with them. The Shiites in Iraq are being supplied by Syria and Iran just like Hezbollah. Oh I just remembered someone else. I left out the Russians and the Chinese. It’s not very nice of me to leave them out of anything. But I do believe it’s time to grow up and accept a few facts about Iran, Syria, Russia and China. There is one thing they should be left out of and that’s the peace negotiations. Darn it I just remembered one other group that should be left out of any discussion regarding the mid-east and any potential peace process. That would be the Democrats. When we went into Iraq and stopped Saddam from sending all of the blood money to Palestinian parents, the liberals said we should be going after Iran because they wanted nukes and were supporting Hezbollah. Now that we’ve done what we can in Iraq and they continue to sell out internally to the highest bidder, (A grand old tradition in the mid-east and I salute their ignorance because I’m a traditionalist.) the liberals think we are being rushed to war again. Never mind it’s the war they said we should be fighting. But back to that double standard that I’ve noticed, I got to read a number of rants about the Israeli children writing on the bombs heading for the Hezbollah. It was of course the Nazi left who once again had their panties in a bunch so I wasn’t too surprised. But for years I’ve watched the mid-eastern parents saying all of those stupid things and never a word out of the left. That shouldn’t surprise me however. It’s nothing more than expected behavior. The Democrats never talk about Chappaquiddick because it’s expected behavior for a Kennedy, one of the champions of women’s rights. Then there is the other champion of women’s rights. Yes none other than the cigar wielding Bubba or the dope from Hope. This bizarre Darwinian Democrat tradition is yet another of the leftist hallmarks. (Hypocrisy rocks!) I’ve often heard people ask out loud what we would do as a generation in the same environment as they grew up in. They are of course asking about how we would handle a World War. The Democrats and some of the RINOs are showing us an amazing ability to deal with nothing directly. Hillary wants to talk about health care again and that pretty much sums up the leftist view. They think we should stay home and pay five bucks per gallon for gas. That’s of course so we’ll just use less of it. Gore thought that was a pretty cool idea. He probably still doesn’t understand that an idea like that coupled with raising your taxes do not a good campaign make. But the point regarding the leftists is, they are talking about lunch and we’re talking about shoveling out a stall littered with years of political hay and dung they generated through their inaction. I don’t like all of the new programs we’ve started in this country recently (Yes I mean Bush’s medical plan etc.) but I’m also not one for rolling over and accepting a fate that is to be dealt to us by people who can’t even get along with each other. IN short we’re at war and first things first. The only time the left and the mid-eastern peoples can get along with themselves is when they’re busy hating someone else and blaming them for their own shortcomings. R.A. Hawkins Web Site Contact Back to Top |
|||||
A couple of months ago, I wore a fake Hitler mustache under my nose at a large social gathering. I learned two things that afternoon. One, that I actually look pretty good in a Hitler mustache. And two, that most people find Hitler refreshingly funny… but those who don’t tend to dampen the mood. For 30 minutes, I walked around, Sieg Heil-ing perfect strangers without incident. But the moment I ran into someone who failed to see the humor, the joke was over. Rather than spouting off, this guy just decided to guilt me. He gave me the look that said everything he was thinking: “Hitler killed millions. You find that amusing?” I wasn’t endorsing Hitler, his beliefs, or his crimes in any capacity. I wasn’t making fun of Holocaust victims. I wasn’t even making a statement. I was just wearing a fake Hitler mustache. But the way he looked at me, you wouldn’t’ve known the difference. It was impossible to keep the joke going at that point. You would’ve thought he was looking at the Fuhrer himself. I think most people would agree what I did at that large social gathering was harmless. On the other hand, most people would also agree Adolf Hitler wasn’t a very good person. Under his guidance, Nazi Germany invaded sovereign countries, started the bloodiest war ever, and committed horrific acts of genocide. For this reason, the man isn’t simply despised in this day and age. He has come to embody the very concept of evil. This is why people often refer to someone they don’t like as “the Hitler of [insert whatever they’re the Hitler of]”—such as Mel Gibson, who is the Hitler of Hollywood actors who deliver anti-Jew speeches when they get pulled over for drunk driving. It’s also why the name “Adolf” is no longer popular. But while it’s easy to see why no one wants to be Hitler, it amazes me how some people react to Hitler humor. I’m not saying people should laugh at him as a matter of principle. My argument isn’t: “Hitler was awful. Therefore, let’s reduce him with humor.” Nor is it: “Hitler used censorship. Therefore, let’s speak freely.” My point is that Hitler’s bad deeds and disagreeable personality should have nothing to do with whether we find him amusing. I mean, just look at him. Look how intense he was. Look how seriously he took himself. Anyone who makes faces like that is a comedy goldmine. If you shared a cubicle wall with this guy, every day would be an adventure in funny. He wouldn’t be able to pick up the phone or fill his coffee mug without inspiring snickers and not-so-playful impersonations. I know because I have a long and colorful history of ruthlessly making fun of coworkers. Deep down, I think most people recognize Hitler’s unintentionally funny nature. And deep down, I think most people want to appreciate it. Some people just refuse to admit it, though, because they feel like they’re betraying the millions he murdered—or, worse, endorsing the fact that he murdered them. I learned this the hard way—or maybe it was actually the easy way—when I wore a Hitler mustache to a large social gathering. England’s Prince Harry learned it when he wore a swastika armband to a costume party last year. I was reminded of both of these incidents when I discovered a website called catsthatlooklikehitler.com recently. You wouldn’t think there’s much to hate about felines with black patches of fur below their noses. Yet stroll through the site’s gallery of so-called Kitlers and you’ll soon learn some people do hate the concept. There’s even a page called “We Hate Kitlers”—which, fittingly, features letters from people who hate the website. Some are so poorly written that it’s hard to believe they’re authentic. But even if we said for the sake of argument that they aren’t, I still wouldn’t doubt there are people who, as one letter writer put it, think the site is just “trying to make hitler and natzism look cute.” Even if that were true, what difference would it make? I understand those who ignore history are supposedly doomed to repeat it. But historically speaking, lampooning Hitler didn’t cause Hitler. Hitler caused Hitler. Ignorance, hatred, and a poor German economy caused Hitler. But making fun of the Fuhrer had nothing to do with it. Hitler humor in no way, shape, or form caused the Holocaust. You don’t have to find Hitler funny if you don’t want to. I’m not the kind of guy who thinks we need to laugh at evil in order to overcome it. Nor am I the kind of guy who thinks all the world needs is a little more love and a little more laughter. I find that entire concept dumb. But the Nazis happened 70 years ago already. Maybe it isn’t time to “get over” them, but… well, it’s time to get over them. History happens. Then it keeps moving. Being solemn about it decades later only makes us look like we take ourselves as seriously as Hitler did. You can disagree with me if you want to. That’s fine. It’s your right. To me, that just makes you the Hitler of comedy, though. And take it from me: You don’t want to be Hitler. Jonathan David Morris Web Site Contact Back to Top |
|||||
Five years ago, I wrote about threats made by the Internal Revenue Service against conservative churches for supposedly engaging in politicking. Today, the IRS is again attempting to chill free speech, sending notices to more than 15,000 non-profit organizations—including churches—regarding its new crackdown on political activity. But what exactly constitutes political activity? What if a member of the clergy urges his congregation to work toward creating a pro-life culture, when an upcoming election features a pro-life candidate? What if a minister admonishes churchgoers that homosexuality is sinful, when an initiative banning gay marriage is on an upcoming ballot? Where exactly do we draw the line, and when does the IRS begin to violate the First amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion? I agree with my colleague Walter Jones of North Carolina that the political views of any particular church or its members are none of the government’s business. Congressman Jones introduced legislation that addresses this very serious issue of IRS harassment of churches engaging in conservative political activity. This bill is badly needed to end the IRS practice of threatening certain politically disfavored faiths with loss of their tax-exempt status, while ignoring the very open and public political activities of other churches. While some well-known leftist preachers routinely advocate socialism from the pulpit, many conservative Christian and Jewish congregations cannot present their political beliefs without risking scrutiny from the tax collector. The supposed motivation behind the ban on political participation by churches is the need to maintain a rigid separation between church and state. However, the First amendment simply prohibits the federal government from passing laws that establish religion or prohibit the free exercise of religion. There certainly is no mention of any "separation of church and state," yet lawmakers and judges continually assert this mythical doctrine. The result is court rulings and laws that separate citizens from their religious beliefs in all public settings, in clear violation of the free exercise clause. Our Founders never envisioned a rigidly secular public society, where people must nonsensically disregard their deeply held beliefs in all matters of government and politics. They certainly never imagined that the federal government would actively work to chill the political activities of some churches. Speech is speech, regardless of the setting. There is no legal distinction between religious expression and political expression; both are equally protected by the First amendment. Religious believers do not drop their political opinions at the door of their place of worship, nor do they disregard their faith at the ballot box. Religious morality will always inform the voting choices of Americans of all faiths. The political left, however, seeks to impose the viewpoint that public life must be secular, and that government cannot reflect morality derived from faith. Many Democrats, not all, are threatened by strong religious institutions because they want an ever-growing federal government to serve as the unchallenged authority in our society. So the real motivation behind the insistence on a separation of church and state is not based on respect for the First amendment, but rather on a desire to diminish the influence of religious conservatives at the ballot box. The Constitution's guarantee of religious freedom must not depend on the whims of IRS bureaucrats. Religious institutions cannot freely preach their beliefs if they must fear that the government will accuse them of "politics." We cannot allow churches to be silenced any more than we can allow political dissent in general to be silenced. Free societies always have strong, independent institutions that are not afraid to challenge and criticize the government. Rep. Ron Paul Web Site Back to Top |
|||||
|
No column this week. Nancy
Salvato
Web Site Contact
Back to Top
|
|||||
©2004-2006 by their respective authors. Reprinted by permission. |
|||||
|
news | constitution | bill of rights | our view | your view | their view awards to win | awards we've won | resources | goodie shoppe our mission | about us | contact us | privacy policy | site map | home This page last updated on Saturday, August 5, 2006 8:58 AM Optimized for Microsoft Internet Explorer |
|||||
|
site content ©2002-2006 site design by |
|||||
