Do they hate America?

I recently was taken to task by a "liberal" acquaintance of mine for saying that the Left hates America.  I use the quotes around the word "liberal" because words mean things, and the word "liberal" no more describes the beliefs of the modern American Left than "skinny" accurately describes Michael Moore.  In any event, this acquaintance was indignant that I accused him of "hating America".

Instead of apologizing, I simply replied that perhaps he doesn't "hate" America, but his positions on issues would be the same if he did.  For example, ask any leftist about the problems that are facing this planet.  Poverty in Africa, caused by Western colonialism and exacerbated by American neo-colonialism.  Yep, the left blames the United States for the fact that socialist and Islamofascist warlords keep a continent in a perpetual state of upheaval and hunger.

Then of course there is the issue of global warming.  According to leftists, the United States government, in concert with evil corporations and ignorant consumers almost single handedly are responsible for a decrease in ozone and an increase in global temperature.  These leftists embrace a Kyoto Treaty which even they admit punishes and limits the United States to a greater extent than any other nation.

Islamoterrorism is even our fault, according to these people.  If we would change our pro-Israel policies and stop "exploiting" the oil of the Middle East, then these people would no longer hate us and would give up any desire to kill us.  Of course, I have to wonder, if we stopped purchasing the oil from that region, which has little else to offer the world, wouldn't they hate us because their economy was wrecked and their people were starving?  As far as Israel is concerned, we have done more than any nation on the planet to try to bring peace to that region.  Yet, according to the American Left, it is still our fault.

Leftists have this ingrained belief that the world would be a peaceful global community if only the big bad United States would unilaterally disarm and stop allowing its businesses to exploit the poor huddled masses of the Third World.  In fact, no less a figure than Nobel Laureate, Jimmy Carter has called on this nation to do just that.

It's the same attitude that the Left had during the Cold War.  They did not believe that we were morally superior to the Soviet Union and therefore our actions had to be viewed as no better, or actually, even worse than those of the Soviets.

The Left decries American consumerism.  They consider it an outrage that this nation consumes 25% of the world's resources.  They somehow believe that the planet would be a better place if we Americans had fewer cell phones, fewer laptops, fewer televisions and fewer automobiles.  Never mind that much of the rest of the world wants to copy our lifestyle, according to our own leftists, we are bad and harmful.

The American Left may not "hate" America, but they sure don't like it very much.  They consider our military power to be a destabilizing force in an otherwise peaceful world (snicker snicker).  They consider our economic expansion to be exploitive of Third World nations, even though, everywhere our businesses go, the standard of living considerably improves.  They consider our foreign policy to be imperialistic and immoral, even though no nation in the history of the world has used its power less and accomplished more good than we have.  They consider our consumer driven lifestyle to be destructive to the planet, despite the fact that our industry has been the impetus to pioneer cleaner and better ways to do business and still meet the demands of our people.

The Left looks at the traditions and institutions of the United States and sees much to criticize.  I look at those same traditions and institutions and see much to praise.  Additionally, I am not ashamed to say that I have an emotional attachment to this nation.  The Left seems to have gotten past this emotional attachment. 

Perhaps "liberals" don't hate America.  However, they certainly have lost the capacity to love and admire it.  They don't know what they're missing.

 

Lies, Mischaracterizations and Preemption

Al Gore has officially joined the insane kooks that dominate leftist thought in this country.  In a recent speech he accused the Bush administration of lying about the relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda.  He accused "browshirts" of carrying Bush's message "mentioning Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in the same breath in a cynical mantra designed to fuse them together as one in the public's mind...." 

The current mantra of the insane left is that Bush subliminally convinced the American people that Saddam worked with Al Qaeda to cause the attacks of September 11.  Of course, that neglects the talking points of the pacifist nuts prior to the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Remember?  Back then, the talk was of how immoral the doctrine of preemption was.

Yes, the main justification for going to war with Iraq was preemption in the post 9/11 world.  We KNEW Saddam had not complied with disarmament resolutions.  We KNEW he had been supporting and courting terrorists for years.  We KNEW he hated the United States.  Therefore, we determined it was in our national interest to take him out BEFORE he became an imminent threat.  Yes, I said "BEFORE".  Therefore, if the Bush haters and leftist idiots want to have an HONEST debate, which they probably don't, the discussion should be on the doctrine of preemption.

A free and open society is at a distinct disadvantage in its attempts to combat terrorism. The easiest way for a nation to combat terror is to close its doors and restrict liberty in oppressive amounts. I am not a fan of the Patriot Act, yet, as of now, no essential liberties have been taken away. As a nation, though, we should not continue down the road of granting more and more domestic powers to the government in the interest of security.

How can a free society fight terrorism, without sacrificing essential liberty? Appeasement and concessions? That has never worked. Look at the example of Israel and the Palestinians. After the greatest offer of concession to the Palestinians by Ehud Barak, at the urging of the Clinton administration, violence by the Palestinians increased to horrifying levels. The fact of the matter is that no concession is ever enough to a terrorist.

Anyone who would engage in terror as a political activity is a true believer anyway. A true believer is almost invariably an absolutist. Concessions are treated by absolutists as a sign of weakness in their opponent and as one more step to their ultimate goal. All that matters is the ultimate goal. Compromise and living peacefully with your enemy are not terms that in the vocabulary of an absolutist true believer. Terrorists are not interested in compromise. No matter what our State Department thinks.

If concessions do not work, then what will? Sadly, it requires a complete revision of our thinking as a people. We can no longer wait to allow them to hit us first. We cannot allow ourselves to be at the mercy of shadowy groups that are in one place one minute and another place another minute. After Pearl Harbor, Japan did not activate a Romulan cloaking device, for you Star Trek fans, to hide after hitting us.

Al Qaeda and its brother organizations are not as concrete and stationary as Japan was in 1941. Thus, when we find them, we must hit them hard and with a force that provides an example to the world. When we get information that the government of a nation is providing ANY terror organization with assistance, they become subject to our harshest response. 

Am I talking about preemption? You may call it that, yet if the government of a nation is supporting terrorist activities IN ANY WAY, then how can punishing that nation be considered to be preemptive? You may call it preemption. I call it justice and preservation of our nation state.

Saddam and Al Qaeda had a relationship.  The Clinton Administration even acknowledged as much when it bombed the pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan.  After 9/11, waiting to see the growth and culmination of such a relationship could be disastrous.  Anyone who is honest knows this.

This war was about preemption and prevention.  More importantly, this war was right. 

Is consensus that important

John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, by the way, has attempted to walk a tightrope on the issue of the Iraq war.  He won't say that his vote for the war was a mistake, even though nearly everyone who wants to see Bush defeated this November opposes the war, often passionately.  Nor does he have the gonads to tell his party that the vote was right and that the war was right.  He saw what happened to Joe Lieberman.

Rather than taking the pro or con position, Kerry, who served in Vietnam, if you didn't know, has, instead, criticized President Bush for not obtaining a consensus in the United Nations before going to war against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.  He brags about how he is prepared to mend fences with the "family of nations", whatever the hell that is, and how he will go to the United Nations.

Kerry, who served in Vietnam, believes as much of the American Left does, that achieving consensus is more important than doing the right thing.  American sovereignty and independence is problematic to some of the nations in Old Europe, and thus we need to avoid rubbing France, Belgium and Germany the wrong way.

No one on the left ever considers the possibility that France et al have their own reasons for opposing the United States.  The motives of these nations are never questioned.  Never mind that France has been trying to assert its power separate from the United States and NATO ever since the early 1960s.  We are to ignore that Germany would love to recapture a little of its lost glory as well.  We are also supposed to forget that the majority of the United Nations is made up of corrupt authoritarian regimes that vote against the United States most of the time anyway.

All of this is unimportant to John Kerry.  Did I mention that he served in Vietnam?  He and his leftist comrades are uncomfortable with a world where the United States is the lone superpower.  Madeline Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State, admitted this a couple of years ago.  Jimmy Carter, the smartest man to ever be a total failure as President, stated that if the United States wanted other nations to comply with disarmament proposals, then the United States should disarm.

The Left's idea of consensus is that if we agree with our enemies and fickle allies that we are the problem, and then engage in self loathing and penance, then all our enemies will stop hating us, and the terrorists will go away.  You see, consensus, according to the Left, can only be achieved when WE, the United States change our position.

It all goes back to the fact that the American Left has a difficult time conceiving of the United States as right, honorable and just.  They can't see us behaving better than most of those around us.  The Left looks at America and sees a Scarlet Letter on our forehead.  They see an America that needs to be knocked down a peg or two. 

That is what the Left means when they use the word "consensus".  Personally, I prefer that we do what is right, whether anyone agrees with us or not.

The Definitive Word?

The Left in this country rejects the idea of a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam's Iraq almost as much as it rejects the idea of American citizens being better able to spend their hard earned money rather than the government.  They accept the lack of a connection as an article of faith so strong that it would make the faith of a Pentecostal minister pale by comparison.  Underlying this faith on their part is the notion that Osama Bin Laden would NEVER work with a secular infidel like Saddam Hussein.

The Bush administration has only spoken of a connection in vague generalities until the past few days.  However, this week, both President Bush and Vice President Cheney have trumpeted evidences of a connection between Saddam and Islamist terrorism.  Then what happens?  STAFFERS on the Bipartisan Commission to Blame Bush and Elect Kerry release a preliminary report that, according to the headlines of the mainstream press, is the definitive word that completely rejects any connection.

Actually, though, the report doesn't say what the media and the gleeful leftists and Bush haters want us to believe it does.  First, it acknowledges that in the 1990s Osama Bin Laden made overtures to Saddam Hussein to secure support.  Read it again.  Osama Bin Laden, the hater of all things secular made overtures to the secular dictator of Iraq for support.  Yep, the entire basis for the Left's faith in the absence of a connection was definitively refuted by the report they are trying to embrace.  Osama was willing to work with Saddam.  The report then goes on to say that meetings take place but the Commission had not turned up evidence of a "collaborative relationship" in attacks against the United States. 

The Commission claims they have "no credible evidence" of collaborations.  They reject completely the evidence that Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague.  The Czech government stands by their original assessment that the meeting took place, but the Commission claims to know better.  The Commission ignored the testimony of Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen, who acknowledged that it was Al Qaeda's connection with Iraq that was the justification for that administration's attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory.

However, even if no proof exists of Saddam's hand in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks, which the Bush administration has never alleged anyway, the evidence that Saddam supported and assisted Islamic terrorism is overwhelming and provides all the justification necessary, given the fact that this is a GLOBAL war on Islamic terrorism.

Abu Nidal was a notorious terrorist who was responsible for the 1985 hijacking of a Pan Am airliner in Karachi.  Saddam provided him with sanctuary and support.  Ramzi Yousef, one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, has long been suspected of having ties to Iraqi intelligence.  The terrorist training camp of Salman Pak is real.  The fact that Dan Rather ignores its existence doesn't change that.  Al Zaqarwi couldn't have operated in Iraq without Saddam's approval and sanction. 

Additionally, Saddam gave money to the families of Palestinian pizza parlor bombers and the Egyptian cousin of Al Qaeda.  Of course, all of this only makes sense.  Saddam and the Islamic terrorists had common enemies, the United States and Israel.  Yes, folks, whether the leftists like it or not, we are tied to Israel in this struggle against Islamofascism.  To say that Saddam had no connection to terrorism is akin to saying that Charles Manson had no connection to Sharon Tate's murder. 

The Left can click their heels three times and chant "No Connection" to their heart's content.  It won't change the facts.  Saddam ran a terrorist state.  Even St. Billy from Hope had Saddam's Iraq on its list of state sponsors of terrorism.  There is nothing definitive in the report from the Commission.  They simply try to prove a negative by the absence of a smoking gun.  If the rest of their report is just as "definitive", the Commission was a failure.

Negativity nothing new

"Never has American prestige in Europe been lower. People never tire of telling you of the ignorance and rowdy-ism of American troops, of our misunderstanding of ... conditions.... They blame us for the corruption and disorganization.... They tell us that our ... policy ... is producing results opposite to those we planned. “Have you no statesmen in America?” they ask." The preceding statements were taken from a national magazine article.  Just one more criticism of the situation in Iraq and the Bush administration.  Right?  Wrong.  The above came from the "LIFE" magazine of January 7, 1946.  The article was titled "Americans Are Losing The Victory In Europe".

I used that quote just to point out that nothing ever really changes.  Sideline criticisms and Monday morning quarterbacking are older than "sidelines" and "quarterbacks".  Students of history will recall that as late as 1864, newspapers throughout the North were calling for Abraham Lincoln's head on a platter.  George McClellan, a general relieved of command earlier in the Civil War by Lincoln mounted a serious challenge to defeat the President, before finally being defeated badly.

This year, the Democrats and the mainstream media are basing their entire campaign against George W. Bush on disillusioned hindsight.  The Left wants to attach blame for the September 11 attacks, not on the Islamists, but on the Bush administration.  They want to blame him and his team for not connecting dots, when it was the Democrats who had worked hard since the 1970s to build walls to keep the intelligence gathered by the CIA from ever connecting with investigations by the FBI.

They want to make the false assertion that Bush lied in order to justify the war in Iraq.  Of course, they hope you will forget that everyone, including France, believed that Saddam had WMDs, and evidence is coming out showing that he had not complied with disarmament resolutions. 

We've already come in contact with artillery shells with Sarin and other nerve agents.  Don't let the Bush haters tell you that it's only a few shells.  Saddam was not supposed to have a single one.  A recent UN report that must have been sent to the American media in invisible ink states that Saddam transported his banned weapons systems out of the country immediately before and during Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Addtionally, information keeps popping up about contacts between Saddam's operatives and Al Qaeda operatives.  Of course, you don't get information like that trumpeted on page one of most papers or proclaimed by Peter Jennings.  Yet, we are supposed to believe the mainstream media doesn't have an agenda.

If you listened to the Democrats and their media supporters, you would believe that the abuses at Abu Ghraib are the worst things that have happened since the Bataan Death March.  Nick Berg's beheading and the mutilated bodies of Americans hanging in Iraq pale by comparison.  In 1946, the atrocity du jour was the rape of German women by American soldiers. 

Additionally, the media wants to see how many times they can use the word "quagmire" when talking about Iraq.  Of course, "Halliburton" runs a close second in number of uses by the media "without an agenda".  The moves toward a successful transition of power to the Iraqi people get downplayed.  A new UN Security Council resolution dealing with Iraq, once thought impossible, gets only limited mention.

The way all of this is reported is with an eye to diminish the accomplishments of George W. Bush.  Things aren't perfect, but the successes definitely outweigh the failures.  Yet the Democrats and the media don't want you to know that.  Why?  Look at John Kerry. 

There is no way they can elevate John Kerry, except by repeating the mantra that he is a war hero, over and over again.  He is incapable of inspiring passion.  He is incapable of projecting himself in a positive way.  Therefore, his only shot is to make W look as bad as possible. 

So far, it seems to be working.  Bush's poll numbers are dropping.  However, Kerry's aren't exactly going through the roof.  Even Michael Dukakis had a big lead in July of 1988.  But that's a discussion for another day.

Is political discourse on the internet a good thing?

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What are they really saying?

We on the right have heard it for decades.  Ronald Reagan was stupid or senile or both when he was President.  The intelligentsia lampooned him unmercifully as a "dumb cowboy actor".  The leftist elites STILL don't want to give him credit for anything good.  They want to credit end of the Cold War on Gorbachev.  They believe that Europe had a more educated and enlightened view of the world than he did.  They want to credit tax increases for every economic improvement that occurred after 1980.  According to these folks on the left, Reagan simply smiled for the camera and his handlers fooled the American people.

In effect, the snobby pseudo-intellectuals of the leftist persuasion said that the American people were stupid.  How else could you explain Reagan's astounding landslide victories and his continued popularity? 

Of course, though, we shouldn't be surprised.  Leftists have always thought that the American people were stupid.  That belief is the basis for modern leftism.  The American worker is too stupid and too oppressed to plan for his or her retirement.  Therefore, a benevolent paternalistic government needs to create Social Security.  The American people are too stupid to work for and obtain the skills necessary to get a good paying job, therefore we need minimum wage legislation.  The list goes on and on.

Why are cigarette ads against the law?  Because you, the American consumers, are too stupid to know that cigarette smoking is bad for you.  Modern leftism is nothing more than the modern version of noblesse oblige.  The elites should run the government and take care of the poor dumb masses.

Ronald Reagan rejected this notion in its entirety.  First, he believed that the individual American citizen made this nation great, not the Federal government.  Secondly, he trusted the people to deal with their own economic issues, rather than have wages and prices dictated from the Great White Father in Washington.

Oh, the Left will never admit their condescension toward us.  They will talk about dangerous corporate oligarchs and giving the common man an equal chance.  But underlying all that is the belief that the common people cannot make it in life without THEM.  Reagan rejected THEM and their entire mindset, and thus, they called him stupid.

Therefore, we who voted for him, in record numbers, must have been stupid also.  They can't accept the fact that Reagan was right and WE THE PEOPLE knew it.  It must eat at them, at a time BEFORE Rush Limbaugh and FoxNews, that Reagan bypassed the elitist academics and elitist media and went to the American people.  Therefore, they have to justify it in their minds.  He was stupid, therefore WE THE PEOPLE must have been stupid.

We need to remember, especially now, that the leftist elites don't respect us.  They don't like us and they consider themselves better than us.  Go back and read the things they said about Ronald Reagan when he was alive.  Realize that they think those same things about US, the American people.

Now, do you want to vote for someone that doesn't respect you?  Do you want to vote for someone that believes that you're too dumb to take care of yourself?  Do you want to vote for someone who considers Europe to have a more enlightened view than you do?  The choice is clear this election year.  You can either vote for someone that the elites call a "dumb cowboy" or vote for one of THEM.  You can either vote for respect or a caretaker.  Which will it be?

Goodbye Mr. President

An American treasure passed from the scene yesterday. Ronald Reagan was more than the 40th President of the United States. He was the embodiment of the American spirit and faith. He believed in the United States of America and its people in a way that made Americans believe in themselves and their nation.

Reagan came to political prominence at a time when this nation was suffering from an inspirational decline. Vietnam, Watergate and the Iran hostage crisis were body blows that had all contributed to a national feeling of self doubt. Ronald Reagan entertained no such self doubt.

He didn’t doubt the American people either. In his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in 1980, he said, “I ask you not simply to "Trust me," but to trust your values -- our values -- and to hold me responsible for living up to them. I ask you to trust that American spirit which knows no ethnic, religious, social, political, regional or economic boundaries; the spirit that burned with zeal in the hearts of millions of immigrants from every corner of the earth who came here in search of freedom.”

He didn’t believe that the land of opportunity was a just a hokey slogan. He lived it. He had achieved success from humble beginnings through hard work, perseverance and faith. Reagan didn’t consider himself to be special, merely an example of the opportunities that could be had for all in this nation.

Not only did Reagan view this nation as a land of hope for its own people. He saw this land as “the last best hope for mankind”. He knew that a strong free United States was necessary to defeat tyranny and to lead the world to a more free tomorrow.

His critics called him confrontational. The cowering fear mongers were convinced that he was going to lead us into a nuclear war. President Reagan, however, understood something that many do not. Reagan understood that projections of strength do not invite attack but projections of weakness do. As a result he was single minded in his desire to seek a strong United States that was unafraid to confront the enemies of liberty. Despite protests from his own staff, Ronald Reagan uttered one of his most famous lines using the hated Berlin Wall as a back drop.

With a force and power that could not be denied, President Reagan demanded, “ Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall”. The world was shocked. His political opponents were aghast. But the Gipper wasn’t. He knew it was right and he believed it could happen. To the surprise of the rest of the world, in a little more than two years, the Wall fell.

Ronald Reagan was no policy wonk. He didn’t absorb himself with the minutia of details. However, if you read his writings from the 1960s forward, you see the heart and mind of a philosopher poet who knew what he believed and could communicate that belief to the world. You see his faith, his courage and his clarity of vision. He used these tools to change America and to change the world.

This nation is better for having known Ronald Reagan. The world is better for having known Ronald Reagan. Goodbye Mr. President.

Which one is it?

There is no question about it.  The American Left has cornered the market on aluminum foil beanies.  With each passing day, the accusations they make about President Bush and the administration get nuttier and shriller.  What is even more amazing is that if you point out the obvious inconsistencies in their zany conspiracy theories, the leftists simply use that as proof that you have been brainwashed too.

 

Of course, they are convinced that they are immune from this mind control, probably due to their lack of a mind, but for whatever reason, they believe that only they can see the truth.  Of course, if you look at their “truth” you can easily see how silly most of these theories are.

 

Take, for instance, the Left’s belief that Vice President Dick Cheney is the Puppet master of this entire administration, and that everything he does is for the benefit of his former company, Halliburton, and other energy companies like Enron.  In order to believe this, AND BE CONSISTENT, you would have to believe that the Clinton Administration was part of this conspiracy because they awarded Halliburton no bid contracts in the Balkans.  The Aluminum Foil Beanie Deflector crowd ignores that bit of information.

 

Additionally, they want us to believe that the Vice President would happily destroy the country to make a profit.  Now, if Cheney is the evil genius that the leftists believe him to be, that isn’t out of the realm of possibility, but to go about it in the manner supposed is quite a stretch.  For example the Left wants to claim that Cheney and his “secret” energy meetings were designed to give Enron the ability to gouge prices in California.  Now, unless Cheney and the neocons have perfected the science of time travel, that would have been quite impossible.

 

You see, a fact that the kooky Left ignores is that California’s energy crisis began in 2000.  Further, the Bush administration was responsible for imposing the caps on prices that took effect in June, 2001 and ended the crisis.  The major price gouging took place between the summer of 2000 and March of 2001.  However, if you put on your Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie, these facts will magically disappear.

 

Additionally, if Cheney was the evil Svengali mastermind, he would certainly want to keep himself out of jail.  However, according to the kook fringe of the Left, or is that now the mainstream of the Left, Cheney’s crimes are so obvious that a person would have to be comatose not to see them.  Of course, the Bush haters claim that the media and the entire Republican Party is in on the conspiracy, thus protecting the evildoers from being brought to justice.

 

The conspiracies run the gamut from simple theft to imposition of a mendacious fascist theocracy to a larger plan for world domination.  The screwy thing is that the kooks don’t just believe one of the theories, they believe all of them.  Don’t even try to bother them with the fact that the various conspiracies tend to be mutually exclusive.

 

If this administration is all about theft for Halliburton and the oil companies; then the thieves would have to accomplish it stealthily to avoid prosecution and reelection would not be a major concern.  Yet the nuts are convinced they have open obvious proof of theft.  However, if imposition of a fascist theocracy is the motive, then they would know that they couldn’t accomplish that in the first term and would need to win in 2004, and wouldn’t want to risk that by engaging in petty, on the grand scale of things, larceny.  Additionally, if world domination was the object, then they would know that they need to first create a genuine sea change in the American public in order to give them control of the government for decades.

 

I would really like to ask the leftist nuts “which is it?” but I suspect they would simply say “yes”.  It’s Cheney, it’s the neocons, it’s PNAC, it’s Israel, it’s the Carlyle Group, it’s the Skull and Bones, it’s the Religious Right, it’s the Saudis.  They probably believe that it is all simply evidence of how deceitful this administration is.  After all, they “get it”.