If Left Wingers Could Time Travel

I have always been fascinated by the idea of time travel.  I recently began thinking about what would happen if today's Cindy Sheehan, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore, John Kerry crowd went back in time to some important points in our history and were able to influence events.

For example, what if our modern peace loving leftists were the leaders of the colonies prior to the American Revolution?  Without question, fighting the Revolutionary War would be seen as a "war of choice"(one of their favorite terms).  It was nothing more than some rich white businessmen whining because King George and Parliament raised taxes to pay for the French and Indian War.  Your average subsistence farmer or indentured servant certainly was not going to benefit from a war for independence from England.  The same rich white people would run things just as before.  Why should the poor masses have to suffer, bleed and die just to help a bunch of white aristocrats who are going to keep them oppressed anyway?

If by some miracle, we were able to keep Cindy and Mikey's time machine from stopping the Revolutionary War, what would have happened if they had landed in 1861?  You might say, "oh these lovers of social justice would have been on the side of the abolitionists, demanding war with the South."  You would be wrong.  Remember how Cindy, Nancy, Mike, John and the rest feel about the United States.  In their eyes, war requires the moral authority to wage a "just" war.  The United States would never pass the test.  In Northern factories, the Irish and other ethnic minorities were treated little better than the slaves were in the South.  The factory owners in the North profitted from the cotton produced by the slaveowners.  What right would someone from Ohio have to force his views of right and wrong on someone from Alabama?  To paraphrase John Kerry's immortal testimony before Congress in 1971, "we can't fight slavery all over the world."

Fast forward to the World War II era.  Right off the bat, our modern enlightened leftist would have had a problem with us preventing Japan from importing petroleum, in response to its invasion of China.  First, what gives the United States the right to hold all the power over such a vital resource.  Second, Chiang Kai Shek was a right wing dictator, so we would be wrong to side with him.

Well, the use of our Navy to stop Japan from receiving oil led to its attack on Pearl Harbor.  Yes, that's right.  We brought it on ourselves with our selfish, arrogant foreign policy.  Japan responded as would any European power of the day.  Michael Moore could even use the same slogan.  "No blood for oil."  If our modern pacifist leftists had their way, we wouldn't have been able to respond to the attack, and we know they would have never permitted President Truman, in 1945, to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Do you think Hanoi and John and company would have behaved differently toward Hitler?  First, thanks to Lend Lease, Great Britain had made it almost impossible for Hitler to begin an invasion of the British Isles.  Mussolini had so botched up North Africa that any thought of expansion there by the Axis powers was a long shot at best.  What am I saying?  You've got it, good people.  Hitler was CONTAINED.  Russia was a buffer on the Eastern Front.  Invasion of England was only a fantasy, and there was little chance of moving from North Africa.

We were protected by two oceans from a madman who was in a box anyway.  It was Europe's war.  It wasn't our war.  Further, invading Fortress Europe would result in nearly 450,000 casualties on both sides, just to take Normandy.  Do you really think Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry would think that removing a contained dictator in someone else's war was worth that much bloodshed?  You know better.

There wouldn't be a United States today if the shrill modern Left had existed and had power back at the points in our history where survival depended upon the correct choice.  Why should we even consider listening to them today?  They haven't changed and our survival is still at stake.