The Axis Of Arrogance
By Patrick Rooney (03/24/04)
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a nation votes for its president, and the result is breathtakingly close. There is a question about a high number of “invalid” ballots. The loser -- from a wealthy family -- rages, and demands a recount. The winner urges unity. The winner’s campaign promoted a stand for freedom. The loser’s campaign promoted appeasement to dictators. I’m talking about Taiwan 2004, not America 2000. But the example also tends to destroy an old boyhood myth I once believed, that the world was vast and diverse. No, in many ways, it’s actually small and redundant.
This lesson was also driven home to me when the Spanish people, after terrorists viciously attacked them just before their elections, capitulated and elected weak, arrogant leadership.
History repeats itself all over the world. Because despite their language and cultural differences, people are essentially the same everywhere. They have the capacity for good or evil, for heroism or cowardice. The color of their skin, the language they speak, or the history they repeat doesn’t change that.
The Taiwan and Spanish elections are instructive in many ways, including the demonstration of just how split the world is today. I have long observed the separation of “the sheep and the goats” in America. But it’s now clearer than ever that it’s a worldwide phenomenon. Everywhere we see “nation against nation,” “brother against brother.”
But the real separation point is a quality we see in the loser of the Taiwan election, Nationalist Party leader Lien Chan. The winner, President Chen Shu-bian, had been shot a day before the election. Was the loser sympathetic? Hardly. Chan was in a rage, whining of the shooting’s impact on the election, “The doubts surrounding it give us one common impression -- this is an unfair election.”
Mariano Rajoy, the losing candidate in Spain, has much more to complain about than Chan in Taiwan. After all, Rajoy was comfortably ahead before terrorists wreaked death and injury in the country, scaring the citizenry who threw the election to the Socialists. Yet I’ve heard no call for a recount from Rajoy.
People need to understand that conservatives and socialists are different animals. The true conservative is characterized by his humility, while the classic liberal/socialist is marked by a rage against authority. The rage gives him a false sense of superiority -- arrogance, actually. You see that in Taiwan’s loser Chan. He rages after the election result, and demands a recount, because in his mind he’s superior and therefore has the “divine right of kings” to rule. Al Gore was no different after the Florida debacle in 2000, even after they recounted every conceivable way but still could not produce a victory for him.
The socialist’s arrogance, masquerading as confidence, was clearly evident in Bill Clinton. People would marvel at Clinton’s ability to triumph after he should have been knocked out. The reason for the “triumph” was a profound lack of shame, and the arrogance that his “brilliance” gave him the right to rule.
The arrogance of socialists manifests in dangerous ways, for they will sell out even their own country’s survival to subvert its leadership. Liberal socialists have thus undermined America’s and the world’s war on terror because they want power. But what they fail to understand is there are only two sides -- the side of the decent citizens (good), and the side of the terrorists (evil). There is no third way.
Liberal/socialists are the allies of terrorists, as proven by their constant capitulation and undermining of positive leadership worldwide. The antidote to arrogance is humility; the quality that tells us our “brilliance” is subservient to our character. This God must give us, not man. Unfortunately, in this world true humility is all too rare, even in America. This must change, lest we too find ourselves ruled by tyrants.
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