[N]o nation in history has ever worked harder to correct a fault than the U.S. has to end racial prejudice. We've earned the right to expect everyone who fits a security profile to grin and bear it. . .Pedro at The Quietist does the math:
[T]he fact remains that profiling is logical in loads of circumstances, from deciding who should get flu shots to choosing whom to chat with when you don't know anyone at a party. Profiling means making smart choices when you have nothing but externals to go by.
Good citizenship — remember that phrase? — requires that we cooperate with the authorities as they work to head off the next terror attack. John F. Kennedy, a Democrat and the nation's first neoconservative president, put it well: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
Gelernter sneakily points out what is embarrassingly obvious but universally, you know, sort of ignored -- that is, JFK, with his tax cuts, his Peace Corps, his anticommunism, and his belief in the humanitarian uses of American power (as well as the post-WWII moral responsibility of a great power to not turn a blind eye to oppression and atrocity in the world) would today be scorned as a "neocon."I agree completely. When I became a neo-con, I initially thought I had changed. Not so:
Back in JFK's day, the anti-Communist left represented the best of America. No more. . . Similarly gone is a time when liberals tried understanding and assisting the less fortunate of other nations. . .America's two parties swapped sides:
[W]hy assume Iraqis are less anxious for liberty than Americans? JFK and Truman knew better. . .
In short, . . . the left's reflexive cheerleading for America's enemies bypasses JFK and Truman and short-circuits any logic. Until they return to the reasoning of heroes past, today's left will, and should, be confined to the political wilderness.
Just in my lifetime, the left and right have exchanged roles. Democrats now distrust democracy, preferring judicially imposed group rights to the ballot box. Once committed to human rights internationalism, they've been enervated by iron-poor blood to the point that they offer nothing more profound than "no."Pedro spotted it too:
Today's Democrats gave up on democracy, without rationale or evidence. Whether a gift of god, or a product of "natural rights," Freedom is every man's right--and the world's best hope.
Nowadays, cynicism is mistaken for sophistication and intelligence, and the resulting assumption that the US can never have a legitimate motive for action has made the same teenaged boomers who swooned at JFK's idealism the angry, ugly, and leisured demagogues who churn out form letters and online petitions for leftist PACs in Berkeley and Washington.Conclusion: Liberals excel at petitions and puppetry, stripping and singing. But that's not enough:
Neither marches nor nudity freed Afghani and Iraqi women. Law review articles and international bureaucracies contributed nothing. Liberation was won when soldiers, guns and tanks battled evil. Words and intentions do matter. But when words fail, power prevails. Sometimes justice requires force.JFK knew; today's liberals have forgotten.
In the second week of April, 2003, Martha Burk and about 50 supporters fought for a women's right to be a snob. That same week, halfway across the world, US and British forces toppled Hussein's dictatorship, freeing Iraq--and millions of Iraqi women. Liberals "opposed;" Bush acted. Which prompts a question: Comparing the chatter of liberals like Burk with the achievements of the United States Marines, which did more for women?
Update:
In the comments, a liberal troll is enraged; my link-filled response.
3 comments:
I think more properly the word would be "progressive" rather than liberal. But you are right. This is a very strange inversion of goals between parties.
JFK and Truman didn't send our armed forces trapsing the world toppling governments, did they? Neither did Nixon, Eisenhower, Reagan or Bush. They understood the limits of American power and the strength of nationalism in other countries. They also understand how an invasion of a country that just happens to have the second largest oil reserves in the world would appear to people who aren't as deluded as you. They were realistic; you are hallucinating. Example:
Neither marches nor nudity freed Afghani and Iraqi women. Law review articles and international bureaucracies contributed nothing. Liberation was won when soldiers, guns and tanks battled evil. Words and intentions do matter. But when words fail, power prevails.
I don't imagine you've been to Iraq or Afghanistan lately, but their women aren't exactly "free." In fact, in parts of Iraq where religious authorities have replaced the previous secular ones, women are, in fact, living under far more restrictive rules.
Your moral righteousness, while deeply self-satisfying I'm sure, cannot change reality for the millions of people who currently live in the war zone that is Iraq.
M_O_M & Pedro:
You raise a good point. Much of the problem stems from the MSM's demonizing of "right-wing," "conservative," "Christian" and similar terms while either omitting the word "liberal" or labeling all lefties "moderates." Should we just say "Moonbats?"
E_L:
At least you admit you're a liberal. And it's apparent, given your weak command of facts and poor logic.
JFK and Truman did, of course, send troops abroad (Vietnam, Greece) to prevent armed outsiders attempting coups -- exactly the current situation in Iraq. The invasion wasn't premised on oil -- it was called "Operation Iraqi Freedom" for a reason, as Bush repeatedly articulated. "If Bush had wanted oil, invasion would be the last thing on his list; all he needed was to drop sanctions."
Regarding Iraqi and Afghani women, three questions:
1) Are Iraqis and Afghanis, in general, better off now or under Saddam and the Taliban? Answer: unquestionably better now, as even Molly Ivins admits.
2) Are Iraqi and Afghani women better off now or under Saddam and the Taliban? Answer: yes, and with the formerly absent possibility of further improvement through the democratic process.
3) What, exactly, was your plan to make Iraqi and Afghani women better off now than they were under Saddam and the Taliban? Answer: you neither had nor have one. Anti-Bush armchair liberals never do.
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