rss 2.0Category: Political Commentary - Conservative
Posted Wed Mar 09,2005 1:24 AM Last Edited:
Conservatives have known it for years and for as many years as we’ve known it liberals have been denying it: The apologetic “who are we to judge/can’t we all just get along” worldview of the leftists of is naïve, foolhardy and dangerous and, if allowed to proliferate, will end in the demise of the United States of America first as the world’s only superpower and, following this by no more than 50 years, will result in the end of the United States of America as we all know and love it today.
This type of superapologist mentality has been the hallmark of the last two Democratic presidential administrations and as such, has left me and other conservatives eternally grateful that we had strong Republican presidents who came along right on the heels of these disastrous administrations to clean up the mess the leftists made and to save face in the wake of widespread ridicule and disrespect for the greatest, freest and most powerful nation to inhabit the earth.
The Iranian hostage crisis was only the most prominent example of the bumbling peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia’s foreign policy blunders. Other lesser known ones would be the giveaway of the Panama Canal to a Chinese-owned conglomerate. We all would have been far better off if he would have skipped his forgettable four years as president and went right into house-building and election “monitoring” where he could have done no harm to our foreign policy.
Then of course we have the Clinton years. We have more of a frame of reference for the foreign policy disaster that was the Clinton Administration because our current president is still in the process of cleaning up the messes Clinton created – a task that will take longer than GW has (go Condi 2008!).
The Clinton era began with the milquetoast Warren Christopher (quite obviously Dr. Suess’s model for Yertle the Turtle) ended with that bumbling fool Madeline Alldumb and gave us such wonderful foreign policy triumphs as North Korean nukes and Chinese missiles, the expansion of global terror with no discernable, organized strategy for dealing with it and of course, the lack of what was supposed to be Monica’s boyfriend’s legacy: Middle East peace.
Yes, it was a mess to be sure – a mess that conservatives will be cleaning up for years to come. But that doesn’t mean the leftists have seen the error of their ways – to the contrary, they are pushing the same old apologist themes, the “who are we to judge” and the appeasement. And one of them has written a book about it endorsed by some heavy-hitting leftists
Comes now Nancy Soderberg, no lightweight herself having been a big shot in the circle jerk that was the Clinton Foreign policy apparatus for Clinton’s entire two terms and serving from 1997 to 2001 as ambassador to that respected group of tin pans crooks and molesters at the United Nations. Seems she wrote a book: The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might, that echoes everything that is wrong about leftist American foreign policy. And she appeared on the Daily Show the other night to hawk he book and inadvertently prove my thesis: Liberal theories on our role in the world and our relations with other lesser countries (all countries) are shallow, shortsighted, weak and empty. So much so that it took Daily Show host Jon Stewart (a leftist himself) about fifteen minutes to completely debunk the leftist worldview and get Soderberg to agree that Bush’s foreign policy works.
James Taranto of opinionjournal.com provides this partial transcript of Stewart’s interview with Soderberg thanks to a transcription from his TiVo. It has so many examples of the fallacy of the liberal worldview that I couldn’t help making some snide editorial commentary. The interview starts with Soderberg summing up the leftist worldview in a paragraph:
Stewart: This book--it talks about the superpower myth of the United States. There is this idea, the United States is the sole superpower, and I guess the premise of the book is we cannot misuse that power--have to use it wisely, and not just punitively. Is that--
Soderberg: That's right. What I argue is that the Bush administration fell hostage to the superpower myth, believing that because we're the most powerful nation on earth, we were all-powerful, could bend the world to our will and not have to worry about the rest of the world. I think what they're finding in the second term is, it's a little bit harder than that, and reality has an annoying way of intruding.
“Bend the world to our will”. Hate to break it to Soderberg, but this is what’s called standing up for freedom and democracy and we’re not “bending” anything. Standing up for freedom and democracy is what caused the fall of the Berlin Wall, the resulting demise of the Soviet Union, the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War. It’s what is causing the seeds of democracy to be sown all over the Middle East at this very moment and all of this has been brought about by Republican conservative presidents. The true superpower myth is the liberal worldview that we should somehow be apologetic for our status as a superpower and be ashamed of our freedom and the military strength that makes it possible.This is coupled, of course, with that leftist attitude that “who are we to impose our philosophy of government on others?" To the leftists, wanting others around the world to be able to experience democracy is “bending the world to our will."
And in this next exchange, both Stewart and Soderberg prove what a bunch of jibbering, incoherent, conflicted leftist idiots they are even as Stewart coaxes Soderberg (wittingly or unwittingly on his part) in the direction of admitting the Bush foreign policy doctrine is working:
Stewart: But what do you make of--here's my dilemma, if you will. I don't care for the way these guys conduct themselves--and this is just you and I talking, no cameras here [audience laughter]. But boy, when you see the Lebanese take to the streets and all that, and you go, "Oh my God, this is working," and I begin to wonder, is it--is the way that they handled it really--it's sort of like, "Uh, OK, my daddy hits me, but look how tough I'm getting." You know what I mean? Like, you don't like the method, but maybe--wrong analogy, is that, uh--?
Soderberg: Well, I think, you know, as a Democrat, you don't want anything nice to happen to the Republicans, and you don't want them to have progress. But as an American, you hope good things would happen. I think the way to look at it is, they can't credit for every good thing that happens, but they need to be able to manage it. I think what's happening in Lebanon is great, but it's not necessarily directly related to the fact that we went into Iraq militarily.
So to sum up here, Stewart hates Republicans but likes the fact that freedom seems to breaking out all over the Middle East and, is willing to grudgingly concede that Bush is at least partly responsible for it. And Soderberg prefers partisanship here over freedom in the Middle East if it means success for Republicans and thinks that the U.S. show of might in the region has nothing at all to do with the stirrings of self-determination shown in Lebanon.
Stewart does a good job of exposing Soderberg’s partisan vitriol, but is exposing his own leftist idiocy in the process, for example: “my daddy hits me but look how tough I’m getting” – what idiotic crap. Sort of a Bill Maher lite with a twist. I knew I didn’t waste my time on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart for some reason and this type of idiocy is the reason.
This next exchange is just incredible not only because you have two leftist hacks sitting around admitting that a strategy that they don’t approve of from an administration that they hate is working and working so well that it’s scary to them, but also because they admit that they’d rather not see it work: The status quo is better than the Republicans coaxing the unprecedented spread of democracy in the Middle East and apparently, at this early stage, succeeding:
Stewart: This could be unbelievable!
Soderberg:---series of Nobel Peace Prizes here, which--it may well work. I think that, um, it's--
Stewart: [buries head in hands] Oh my God! [audience laughter] He's got, you know, here's--
Soderberg: It's scary for Democrats, I have to say.
Stewart: He's gonna be a great--pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, "Reagan was nothing compared to this guy." Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.
Soderberg: Well, there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget. There's hope for the rest of us.
Stewart: [crossing fingers] Iran and North Korea, that's true, that is true [audience laughter]. No, it's--it is--I absolutely agree with you, this is--this is the most difficult thing for me to--because, I think, I don't care for the tactics, I don't care for this, the weird arrogance, the setting up. But I gotta say, I haven't seen results like this ever in that region.
Soderberg: Well wait. It hasn't actually gotten very far. I mean, we've had--
Stewart: Oh, I'm shallow! I'm very shallow!
Soderberg: There's always hope that this might not work. No, but I think, um, it's--you know, you have changes going on in Egypt; Saudi Arabia finally had a few votes, although women couldn't participate. What's going on here in--you know, Syria's been living in the 1960s since the 1960s--it's, part of this is—
There’s always hope that Democracy in the Middle East “won’t work”. Now there’s a fine positive sentiment.
Stewart: You mean free love and that kind of stuff? [audience laughter] Like, free love, drugs?
Soderberg: If you're a terrorist, yeah.
Stewart: They are Baathists, are they--it looks like, I gotta say, it's almost like we're not going to have to invade Iran and Syria. They're gonna invade themselves at a certain point, no? Or is that completely naive?
Soderberg: I think it's moving in the right direction. I'll have to give them credit for that. We'll see.
So by the end of the interview here we have Stewart getting a radical “can’t we all just get along” leftist to admit that a strategy for Middle Eastern democracy that is the polar opposite of the strategy she embraced as a Clintonite and recommends in her book – the very strategy her book cautions against – works and works so well it is scary to her from her perspective as a stark raving socialist-apologist pig. A foreign policy event the likes of which we haven’t seen since the fall communism in Eastern Europe – something that was completely unfathomable in the leftist administration in which she served – completely undermines the thesis of her brand new 400+ page book and the reason why it succeeds flies right over her head even as it smacks her in the face!
If this were just a couple of conflicted and confused leftist chimps yacking on a TV set in front of an audience, it would be no more than a joke. If this woman could be dismissed as just another deluded leftist and her book nothing more than the typical delusional leftist pap that would be great. But this utter confusion, indecision, apologism, groveling and appeasement is the state of the socialist/leftist – read institutional Democratic Party – foreign policy theory in this country.
Soderberg was a Clintonite – an active and fairly high profile participant in the colossal mess that was Clinton’s foreign policy machine. Her book and presumably, the opinions contained therein, are openly endorsed by William Jefferson Clinton who wrote the forward for it. And the woman who helped make the Clinton foreign policy the joke that is was, Madeline Alldumb, wrote the afterward for this book.
It’s obvious that the first-best loser the Democrats had to offer – John F’in Kerry – endorses this superpower-as-evil-villain view of American foreign policy as well. Conflicted leftist geopolitical ideology was a hallmark of his campaign. He supported the troops but not the war but didn’t actually support the troops because he voted for funding them before he voted against funding them. He believed in using the Clinton North Korea template in dealing with possible nuclear proliferation in Iran – give them the building blocks for a nuclear program on the promise that they won’t develop one and then stand by in stunned amazement wringing your hands when they do. More of the Clinton idiocy in what would have been just another failed leftist foreign policy.
The second-best loser for the Democrats – their current socialist DNC chair Screamin’ Howie Dean – has been heard to say that it’s cool with him if someday we aren’t the world’s only superpower. In fact he said we’ll eventually have to accept the fact that we may not be a superpower some time in the future.
The rest of the Democratic field ranged from mirroring the Clinton/Kerry/Soderberg/Dean foreign policy apologism to the extreme leftist position of Dennis Kucinich which practically advocated sticking daisies in the gun barrels and marching into Baghdad to apologize to Saddam and plant a big smooch on his butt.
Soderberg may just be a tired leftist hack trying to hawk her lousy book. But she and her book and the amusing little anecdote about how Jon Stewart talked her into debunking in the space of ten minutes a theory she spent 400+ pages detailing are just a sidelight in the real story. The real story here is that the movers and shakers of Democratic Party – the ones who will be vying for their party's nomination in 2008, including Hillary Clinton – subscribe to this ridiculously naïve, apologetic, easily debunkable socialist world view in which they care more about how the rest of the world perceives us than they do about preserving our freedom and spreading democracy. Remaining the strongest country on the planet and the world’s only superpower is absolutely essential to maintaining our freedom and prosperity as we know it. President Bush realizes this and the results of his proactive, freedom-loving and democracy-nurturing foreign policy are taking hold all over the Middle East. The leftist worldview as detailed by Nancy Soderberg in her book needs to stay right where it is – thankfully as no more than a laughable theory debunked on a lousy talk show on Comedy Central. If it ever makes it back into the White House, there’s a good chance it’ll get us all killed.
Steve Bowers has been a staunch conservative since his first vote for Ronald Reagan at the age of 19. He's the founder and president of the one man think-tank Conservatism is Reality Inc. and a regular contributor to Pardon My English, a Conservative Topics Blog. He lives with his loving, blended family smack dab in the heart of flyover country.