Posted on 10/24/2004 2:50:52 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Maybe I'm getting old. I've been covering politics for 53 years, and that's just since John Kerry's convention speech. I'm sick of this election, even before the Democratic Party's chad-diviners have managed to extend it to mid-December. These are serious times and the senator is not a serious man. And so we have a campaign that has a sharper position on Mary Cheney's lesbianism and the deficiencies of Laura Bush's curriculum vitae than on the central question of the age.
There are legitimate differences of opinion about the war, but they don't include Kerry's silly debater's points. On the one hand, the Tora borer drones that Bush "outsourced" the search for Osama bin Laden to the Afghans, though at the time he supported it ("It is the best way to protect our troops," he said in December 2001. "I think we have been doing this pretty effectively."). But, on the other, he claims he's going to outsource Iraq to the French and the Germans, though neither of them wants anything to do with it.
As for this Bush-failed-to-get-bin-Laden business, 2-1/2 years ago I declared that Osama was dead and he's never written to complain. There's no more evidence for his present existence than there is for the Loch Ness monster, which at least does us the courtesy of showing up as a indistinct gray blur on a photograph every now and again. Osama is lying low because he's in no condition to get up.
But, even if he weren't, that's a frivolous reductive way of looking at this war. He's not a general or head of state; he can't sign an instrument of surrender, and make all the unpleasantness go away. The enemy is an ideology that appeals to various loose groupings from the Balkans to Indonesia, as well as to entrepreneurial free-lancers like the shooter who killed two people at LAX on July 4, 2002. If Kerry's oft-repeated "outsourcing Osama" crack is genuinely felt, it shows he doesn't get this war. And, if it's just cheapo point scoring, it's pathetic.
Almost everything falls into that category. Iraq's messy. So? What isn't? America has no Colonial Office, no political administrators with decades of experience in far-flung climes; its occupation of Iraq was learnt on the fly, because there was no other way. But the ludicrous defeatism over what's at worst a partial success is unbecoming to a great nation. If the present Democratic-media complex had been around earlier, America would never have mustered the will to win World War II or, come to that, the Revolutionary War. There would be no America. You'd be part of a Greater Canada, with Queen Elizabeth on your coins and government health care.
Speaking of which, if there's four words I never want to hear again, it's "prescription drugs from Canada." I'm Canadian, so I know a thing or two about prescription drugs from Canada. Specifically speaking, I know they're American; the only thing Canadian about them is the label in French and English. How can politicians from both parties think that Americans can get cheaper drugs simply by outsourcing (as John Kerry would say) their distribution through a Canadian mailing address? U.S. pharmaceutical companies put up with Ottawa's price controls because it's a peripheral market. But, if you attempt to extend the price controls from the peripheral market of 30 million people to the primary market of 300 million people, all that's going to happen is that after approximately a week and a half there aren't going to be any drugs in Canada, cheap or otherwise -- just as the Clinton administration's intervention into the flu-shot market resulted in American companies getting out of the vaccine business entirely.
The war against the Islamists and the flu-shot business are really opposite sides of the same coin. I want Bush to win on Election Day because he's committed to this war and, as the novelist and Internet maestro Roger L. Simon says, "the more committed we are to it, the shorter it will be.'' The longer it gets, the harder it will be, because it's a race against time, against lengthening demographic, economic and geopolitical odds. By "demographic," I mean the Muslim world's high birth rate, which by mid-century will give tiny Yemen a higher population than vast empty Russia. By "economic," I mean the perfect storm the Europeans will face within this decade, because their lavish welfare states are unsustainable on their shriveled post-Christian birth rates. By "geopolitical," I mean that, if you think the United Nations and other international organizations are antipathetic to America now, wait a few years and see what kind of support you get from a semi-Islamified Europe.
So this is no time to vote for Europhile delusions. The Continental health and welfare systems John Kerry so admires are, in fact, part of the reason those societies are dying. As for Canada, yes, under socialized health care, prescription drugs are cheaper, medical treatment's cheaper, life is cheaper. After much stonewalling, the Province of Quebec's Health Department announced this week that in the last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile, a bacterium acquired in hospital. In other words, if, say, Bill Clinton had gone for his heart bypass to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he would have had the surgery, woken up the next day swimming in diarrhea and then died. It's a bacterium caused by inattention to hygiene -- by unionized, unsackable cleaners who don't clean properly; by harassed overstretched hospital staff who don't bother washing their hands as often as they should. So 600 people have been killed by the filthy squalor of disease-ridden government hospitals. That's the official number. Unofficially, if you're over 65, the hospitals will save face and attribute your death at their hands to "old age" or some such and then "lose" the relevant medical records. Quebec's health system is a lot less healthy than, for example, Iraq's.
One thousand Americans are killed in 18 months in Iraq, and it's a quagmire. One thousand Quebecers are killed by insufficient hand-washing in their filthy, decrepit health care system, and kindly progressive Americans can't wait to bring it south of the border. If one has to die for a cause, bringing liberty to the Middle East is a nobler venture and a better bet than government health care.
bttt
as the novelist and Internet maestro Roger L. Simon says, "the more committed we are to it, the shorter it will be."
If Steyn says this about someone, I had better go look him up.
Yep, Kerry doesn't get it. Mark Steyn is right on target as usual.
I think you and Teresa are on the right track. I've been doing that for ages. When I get a prescription for painkillers after having a dental procedure or some other thing, I always ask if I can have a martini instead. Most often, the answer is yes, and it's cheaper and more fun.
A broken leg was a 2 martini event, but still..... :-)
BTTT.
Wow! I knew Steyn's column got around, but they have it in Hell, too?
Too bad all the idiots who want Kerry and his "free health care" won't ever read this.
BTTT
One thousand Americans are killed in 18 months in Iraq, and it's a quagmire. One thousand Quebecers are killed by insufficient hand-washing in their filthy, decrepit health care system, and kindly progressive Americans can't wait to bring it south of the border. If one has to die for a cause, bringing liberty to the Middle East is a nobler venture and a better bet than government health care.
These are serious times and the senator is not a serious man.
succinct
***..."After Watergate, many politicians discovered that investigations were something that got you headlines," she said. "What John Kerry did was aimed solely at getting attention. He has no record as a legislator or a leader, and his investigations were consistent with his record as a left-wing follower."
Mr. Kerry came to the Senate by way of the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office, Massachusetts' largest, where his nonstop media appearances as a prosecutor earned him the moniker "live-shot Kerry." And while he has used his Senate seat to bring attention to a number of headline-popping issues, including the Iran-Contra scandal, drug trafficking by then-Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and the illegal financial dealings of BCCI, there was little legislative follow-up....***
Kerry's a show horse not a work horse.
Bump!
As an ex-Canadian, I can give a simple answer to your question: Queen Elizabeth is The Queen Of Canada. When Canada became a country in 1867, it chose to retain its links to the Mother Country by the expedient of retaining the monarchy. The Fathers Of The Confederation originally wanted to name the new nation The Kingdom Of Canada, but the British government was afraid of offending the United States, so it insisted they choose something else. They picked the term Dominion and it fit the country like paper to a wall. The Governor-General is the representative of the Queen when The Sovereign is not in Canada.
Canadians tend to be polite and submissive to authority. It explains both their loyalty to the monarchy and their left-wing politics. When you live in a country where you instinctively trust authority, you're not going to find much wrong with government and there's greater acceptance of a role for the state in social affairs. That's why Americans are different from Canadians and why Americans are wary of too much government intrusion into their personal affairs.
Canada is a constitutional monarchy. The Queen can act only on the advice of Her Ministers. And the Royal Veto was declared by the first Prime Minister, John Alexander MacDonald, to be obsolete and has never been exercised. Everything The Queen does can be done only with the consent of and in the name of the Canadian People, through their Parliament.
Wow! I knew Steyn's column got around, but they have it in Hell, too?
"I'm very sorry. Mr. bin Laden died and left no forwarding address."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.