Buchanan Asks, "What Do We Offer the World?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 19, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern

"So, how do we advance the cause of female emancipation in the Muslim world?" asks Richard Perle in "An End to Evil." He replies, "We need to remind the women of Islam ceaselessly: Our enemies are the same as theirs; our victory will be theirs as well."

Well, the neoconservative cause "of female emancipation in the Muslim world" was probably set back a bit by the photo shoot of Pfc. Lynndie England and the "Girls Gone Wild" of Abu Ghraib prison.

Indeed, the filmed orgies among U.S. military police outside the cells of Iraqi prisoners, the S&M humiliation of Muslim men, the sexual torment of their women raise a question. Exactly what are the "values" the West has to teach the Islamic world?

"This war ... is about – deeply about – sex," declaims neocon Charles Krauthammer. Militant Islam is "threatened by the West because of our twin doctrines of equality and sexual liberation."

But whose "twin doctrines" is Krauthammer talking about? The sexual liberation he calls our doctrine belongs to a '60s revolution that devout Christians, Jews and Muslims have been resisting for years.

What does Krauthammer mean by sexual liberation? The right of "tweeners" and teenage girls to dress and behave like Britney Spears? Their right to condoms in junior high? Their right to abortion without parental consent?

If conservatives reject the "equality" preached by Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, NARAL and the National Organization for Women, why seek to impose it on the Islamic world? Why not stand beside Islam, and against Hollywood and Hillary?

In June 2002 at West Point, President Bush said, "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time and in every place."

But even John Kerry does not agree with George Bush on the morality of homosexual unions and stem-cell research. On such issues, conservative Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than with liberal Democrats.

The president notwithstanding, Americans no longer agree on what is moral truth. For as someone said a few years back, there is a cultural war going on in this country – a religious war. It is about who we are, what we believe and what we stand for as a people.

What some of us view as the moral descent of a great and Godly republic into imperial decadence, neocons see as their big chance to rule the world.

In Georgia, recently, the president declared to great applause: "I can't tell you how proud I am of our commitment to values. ... That commitment to values is going to be an integral part of our foreign policy as we move forward. These aren't American values, these are universal values. Values that speak universal truths."

But what universal values is he talking about? If he intends to impose the values of MTV America on the Muslim world in the name of a "world democratic revolution," he will provoke and incite a war of civilizations America cannot win because Americans do not want to fight it. This may be the neocons' war. It is not our war.

When Bush speaks of freedom as God's gift to humanity, does he mean the First Amendment freedom of Larry Flynt to produce pornography and of Salman Rushdie to publish "The Satanic Verses" – a book considered blasphemous to the Islamic faith? If the Islamic world rejects this notion of freedom, why is it our duty to change their thinking? Why are they wrong?

When the president speaks of freedom, does he mean the First Amendment prohibition against our children reading the Bible and being taught the Ten Commandments in school?

If the president wishes to fight a moral crusade, he should know the enemy is inside the gates. The great moral and cultural threats to our civilization come not from outside America, but from within. We have met the enemy, and he is us. The war for the soul of America is not going to be lost or won in Fallujah.

Unfortunately, Pagan America of 2004 has far less to offer the world in cultural fare than did Christian America of 1954. Many of the movies, books, magazines, TV shows, videos and much of the music we export to the world are as poisonous as the narcotics the Royal Navy forced on the Chinese people in the Opium Wars.

A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's "emancipation," that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be seeking out a confessional – better yet, an exorcist – rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of "American values."

As much as this little rant by Buchanan has enraged me, the responses by some "conservative" FReepers has enraged mem more.

I don't like Hollywood's Leftist idiots much. Neither do I like the political bent of such places as Massachussaetts or NYC, for that matter.

However, that is a FAR CRY from saying that I'd stand, for ONE SECOND, for the wholesale slaughter of the people that live in those places, as Buchanan and some posters here apparently want.

Those people, warts and all, are still AMERICANS, dammitt, and whether they know it or not, they, as well as US, are ALL terrorist targets in this war. While I do wish for their defeat politically, I most certainly DO NOT wish for them to die, along with many others, in some terrorist attack.

Those who died at the WTC, and in Washington and Pennsylvania, and overseas, probably counted some Liberals among their members. That DOES NOT make them somehow more worthy of slaughter in that manner than the "good" people involved.

It used to be, that whenever an AMERICAN was killed or abused, that we ALL came together to fight that evil, regardless of whatever political views they may have had. When one of us was attacked, it was understood that it was an attack on ALL of us. Apparently this aspect of the past is one which some find worth jettisoning.

If someone thinks that this country is SOOOOoooo "evil" that it deserved the slaughter of its citizens, that it is SOOOOoooo "morally corrupt" that it shouldn't stand against terror and tyranny, and that we must make ourselves into some facsimile of the Taliban before we can honorably oppose such brutal opression, then it is THEY who should, along with the Leftists who now are their soulmates, pack their bags and go fight for the side you believe in, because it isn't ours.

Watch the videos of the attacks again. Watch Danny Pearl being murdered. Watch Nick Berg being tortured to death. If the idea that some Americans enjoy sex and prefer to wear revealing clothing, or listen to music you don't personally care for, or otherwise excercise LIBERTY as they see fit still seems more "evil" than that, then by all means, LEAVE. Just go.

LIBERTY. There's that word again...not "freedom" but LIBERTY. THAT is what this country was founded on, what was the engine of its growth to a world power, and what saw us through our darkest days - the ability of every American to chart his or her own course, to make their own descisions, and to succeed or fail therefore. With it comes the so-called "decay" that some seem to think is worth standing with our enemies. Sorry, but as bad a singer as Britney Spears is, she is NOT "evil" by any stretch of sanity. She, like many other Americans, is simply living her life as she CHOOSES. Some here would obviously remove that choice, and thus that of all others, unless that choice comported with their own. That is tyrrany as sure as that of the terrorists.

Do we have some problems? Sure. But they will NOT be solved by pointing a figurative (or literal) gun at other Americans when it is ALL of us who are threatened. They will NOT be solved by some imposition of the moral views of ONE group, be they Right OR Left. How far gone are we when that even is considered at a time like this?

Don't like Britney? Fine, don't buy her albums. Rap? Ditto. Have some fear and loathing of sex? Feel free to abstain. Don't like Hollywood? Don't go to the movies. Just remember, though, that the LIBERTY of other Americans to do so is not only one of the multitude of things besides exposed midriffs that the enemy hates, but it is one of the things, again warts and all, that made us the great nation we are, and continue to be.

You take the good with the bad. If you like your freedom to worship God in your own way, then respect the freedom of others to do the same, or to NOT worship at all. If you like freedom of speech, then respect the fact that it sometimes means that speech will occur that you don't care for. THAT's what I was always taught about this country, and it USED to be the rule, rather than the exception. We as conservatives have always stood FOR these things, not their destruction in favor of some mythical "true path". That's what the ENEMY does, or have some forgotten?

Have they forgotten that when the terrs attack, they don't check voter registration cards or church membership? That they would gladly accept help from such "luminaries"as Buchanan whilst secretly planning his own demise as soon as practicable?

Culture war my foot! There's only some disagreement as to where we're going and how to get there. We've been down that path for 230 years, with no letup. The "end" has been handwrung about since Plymouth, and guess what? we've always pulled through. We've endured decadent times as well as virtuous times, and still come out swingin', TOGETHER. As Americans, with our ingrained rebellious spirit and half-mad ways somehow contributing to a great WHOLE which is more than the sum of its parts. We'll get through these times as well, but not if we tear at each other, or begin justifying our enemies' hatred of us in the way Patsy does here, in the SAME manner as the extreme Left does.

Change some of the nouns, and some of the resposes and the article itself could have been posted on DU.

So you might think abortion is wrong. Okay, but is it as wrong as honor killings? Homicide bombings? Brutal, total opression of the human spirit? And finally, is it not FIXABLE within the same system in which it was legalized? Or, based on that ONE issue that so many seem to think outweighs EVERYTHING good and decent about our nation, should we thus fall to tyranny and terror? For the disapproval of pornography, should our small towns be incinerated? Our churches destroyed, our population and all its accomplishments and ideals trampled into dust? That is what some here are arguing.

Well, I say THE HELL WITH THAT! We can fix our problems without either destroying the foundations of our country OR making common cause with the Islamists who wish us to ALL, saint or sinner, to die.

I'm getting a good idea of the Amerika that the patsies want here, and it is one I would oppose with all the fiber of my being, as it does nothing more than mirror the WORST sort of tyrrany, that of the human spirit, and seeks to lionize a myth, JUST LIKE THE TERRORISTS.

I'll take my country as is, with all its (fixable) faults, before ANY dictatorship of the kind being advocated by Pat and his pitchfork-waving marks. "Stand with Islam"? For what, exactly? The "freedom" to be enslaved by a theocratic dictatorship, bound forever to the religious interpretations of some old men with serious issues of hate? Or to be ruled over by some American version of a caliphate, slaving for the enrichment of potentates? That is exactly what Islam means to me.

Pat Buchanan, and his marks, have chosen their side. However, I'm sure that they won't be climbing onboard a boat to go to Afghanistan or Iraq to put their loathsome ideas into practice any time soon. That would take something that they DO NOT have in abundance. I think they know what it is...the same quality whose lack stops their brethren on the Left from doing the same.

Yeah, "Go Pat Go!" they shout, not realizing the true level of hucksterism they've fallen for in that treasonous bastard. Pat, all of whose political attempts have done NOTHING but feed his own ego and enable Leftist victories, and who proved that he'd lie down with the Devil himself in his self-aggrandizement. All this tripe is is more of the same. He is a DISGRACE to us, and to America. His opinions mirror Michael Moore's perfectly in their hatred of his own nation. His so-called "conservatism" is one which hates Liberty, instead of advancing its cause. It is one which questions even the fighting of the Second World War. It is one which would, in full ignorance of the modern world, attempt to build some impenetrable wall about America, as much to keep "undesirables" out as to imprison the spirit and vitality of its citizens.

He can keep it. And SHOVE IT!

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