On September 11, I Choose Stupid
By Erik Rush (09/11/06)
As the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approached, there were some things I began to take note of which I believe merit serious study - but only by those Americans who actually care about the survival of free societies over the next thousand years or so.
At the risk of waxing prophetic (and alienating more agnostic-leaning conservatives and swing voter types), even prominent non-religious pundits are beginning to declare without equivocation that we are at a critical juncture in world history. This is something for which one would have no problem obtaining agreement from the devout Christian, Jew, or even a Muslim.
In my last column, "Does God love the Democrat?" I posed the question of whether the sincerely spiritual individual could be party to actualizing the far Left's vision for America with a clear conscience presuming that 1) the far Left has indeed taken over leadership of the Democrat Party, and 2) the far Left is atheistic by character (if not by definition).
To answer this, one has to have an unambiguous view of what the far Left's vision is for America. Clearly, this is a difficult enough point upon which to find consensus. My estimation is that most Democrats and swing voters see gravitation back toward Democrat control of our governmental branches as something akin to the Clinton years - and they weren't really so bad, were they?
Such people fail to see the Clinton years for what they were, that being a natural progression (or inheritance) of the Carter years, and what we've been seeing offered by the party since the late 'Sixties: elitist autocracy, weak foreign policy, expanded federal bureaucracy and social entitlements, increasing taxation, stultifying regulation, and fiscal irresponsibility. These phenomena appear to advance exponentially (though they may lay dormant for years) in terms of malignance and potential
for promoting cultural malaise between Democrat administrations, only to be unleashed upon us on the next occasion we become frustrated or deceived enough to put another one in the White House. These folks also overlook that the Clinton cabinet was more of a regime or white-collar Cosa Nostra than an administration.
Granted, the Bush administration has spent a lot of money one might argue is far too much, or that which could have been better spent. One could also contend, as many have, that the administration has made all sorts of missteps with regard to the War on Terror (which the aforementioned prominent non-religious pundits have begun to refer to as "World War III" with the eeriest of overtones).
If one is to give those arguments serious consideration, one ought to be aware of the flip side of the coin - One, that spending need always be examined in context, considering the economy, temporal factors and circumstance (like, wars, for example). Two: That many of the above lines of reasoning have their genesis in the far Left, which was uniquely instrumental in growing the federal bureaucracy to cyclopean proportions (which the current administration or any other would have trouble
managing) in the first place. They were also the architects of our weak foreign policy; between their immature intellectualism and irrational, hypothetical worldview, they essentially set America up as the target we became long before September 11, 2001.
A gentleman wrote to me recently "we are left with the evil party [presumably, the Democrats] and the stupid party [presumably, the Republicans], and it is our mission to figure out which is which. This leaves religious people between a sharp pointed rock and a hard place when it comes to making a decision." This obviously reiterates my overview of the religious Democrat voter's plight from my last column.
Intelligent independents (and swing voters) are frustrated, and they have as much of a right to be as conservatives. Leaving aside the perspective of the far Left relative to what America, the Republicans and the Bush administration represent, we as a nation have given far more to the world that we've taken. We are not an imperialist nation. Unrestrained, we possess the real capability of placing the world at our feet within hours. All nations act in their own interest, but I am beginning to
hear too many independent conservatives and swing voters buy into the ever-present mantra of the far Left: Radical Islam doesn't really want to wipe us out, and if they did, it's only because we deserve it. That, and "we're not any safer that we were on September 10, 2001 due to the actions of the Bush administration - perhaps less safe." This is madness.
There is a growing number of Arab and Muslim commentators and authors (interestingly, many are women) who are trying to drive home the point using our media that none of this (our war with radical Islam) is about U.S. foreign policy; it is about no less than a radical movement rooted in primitive, paternal totalitarianism seeking to take over the world. The evil and darkness of this vision, they offer (from experience, mind) is beyond the ability of most Westerners to even conceptualize.
People such as these have survived life in these societies, much as anti-Castro Cubans in America once experienced communism firsthand - yet we'd sooner consider the opinions of pampered Hollywood dull-normals than Iranian or Cuban exiles. These are the people we need to listen to - not Western intellectuals making learned hypotheses which (if one examines history) promise to be abysmal failures in practice.
These days, when I witness American politicians and U.N. diplomats standing before bouquets of media microphones, I see a surreal vision. I am reminded of near-future apocalyptic films; you know, the ones in which society is hurtling headlong toward absolute destruction but only the audience can see it.
If Republicans are the "stupid" party, it is because their leadership (ironically, like the Democrat Party) is operating out of self-interest and fear. In the case of the GOP (which, for the record, I continue to support), it is personal fear of recrimination and the volatility and unpredictability of public opinion given the gravity of the action they know they should take.
The Democrats, as history bears out (and as their rhetoric indicates), will choose to take no action against radical Islam. They simply fear not getting that for which they strive: The next (post Clinton) phase completed. All three branches of our government back in their hands. Total power. Again, in the hands not of Jack Kennedys, Zell Millers or even Joe Liebermans, but rabid far Left international socialists.
The problem is that we can't survive politicians who operate based on personal self-interest, Republican or Democrat. The final observation I've made of late is that more moderate Democrats are beginning to admit what conservatives have known for a long time: Radical Islam really does want to wipe us out, we don't deserve it, and the leadership of both parties would be well advised to remove their heads from their nether regions and do something about it while we still have a nation to fight
over. This is a good thing, since the more of them wake up to these stark, horrifying truths, the more widespread support the current administration will realize.
Which is why I pick the stupid party over the evil one. If the Bush administration has license to act decisively - the support of the American people - they likely will. As it stands now, a Democrat party that gains preeminence in America will simply try to buy off our enemies. It won't work, but they'll tax and regulate people and businesses into economic oblivion in the process. In the meantime, those on the far Left (who truly hate this nation) within the government and those who have
influence over it will throw open America's doors to our enemies, our culture to further moral degradation and class warfare. In the name of our "safety," our "best interests" and their grossly perverted construal of the Constitution, they will throw our constitutional freedoms to the wind.
One would be well-advised to familiarize themselves with what those actually are, so one will know when one sees it occurring.
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