Democrats outshout their voice of reason

Atlanta Jounal-Constitution ^ | November 20, 2005 | Jim Wooten - associate editorial page editor

[Cincinatus' Wife]

On Sunday evening last, sharing a birthday celebration at a Vietnamese restaurant on Buford Highway, I am struck anew with a profound sense of guilt.

It has started before, while strolling through the Vietnamese bakery next door, looking at the friendly faces of diners. Many who look my way are old enough to have experienced the war.

My impulse, resisted, is to go to them and ask: Do you still feel our betrayal?

Next door, a young woman, 30 or 35, thoroughly Americanized in manner, shape and dress, walks past with a child, a girl of 8 or 10, so wholly and completely American that she could never find comfort or peace in the land of her grandparents' birth.

Just as I am anguished by the betrayal that brought her here, I am abidingly grateful to live in a nation that received them with the promise that they could in every sense become one of us, equally entitled to ascend to the reaches of their labors and abilities.

To have betrayed them is one crime. To have held them to a caste system, as France is revealed to have done to immigrants from former colonies, would have been an injustice so indecent as to bring shame to those who share the ideals of our Founding Fathers.

Once this nation makes a commitment, as it has done in promising an opportunity for freedom to the people of Iraq, those who accept our word as moral contract are no longer abstractions. They are flesh-and-blood people who look into our eyes and into our national character, assessing our will and our values.

Ultimately, they look into our hearts to determine whether having taken that step into danger that we cajoled, we are there to cover their back.

For us, it is the moment that defines the worth of our Constitution, that defines this generation's relationship with the dead and those who fought and sacrificed for the liberties we profess.

Last week was a defining moment as well in our national discussion about Iraq. It started promisingly enough with a thoughtful speech by U.S. Sen. Joe

Lieberman (D-Conn.), during a debate over the defense authorization bill. But it grew ugly, and dangerous.

That's because the national Democratic Party has retreated to its core — and on national security matters, that is the embittered anti-war left.

As now configured, this is a party that cannot be trusted when the nation is at risk. Its blindness to evil will get people hurt. It will, by its fixation on poll numbers, say to the people of Iraq who have trusted our word, that it is a pledge written on insufficient funds. It will, as was the case with the 200,000 rebellious Shiites that Saddam Hussein slaughtered in the aftermath of Desert Storm, leave Iraq exposed to the vengeful brutality of unchecked evil.

This party rushes to hide its pacifism and its relativism in single file behind imagery — first the "peace mom" radical Cindy Sheehan and, when she was spent, behind the valor of U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a Vietnam veteran who last week provided cover to his anti-war colleagues by declaring, "It's time to bring the troops home."

It is left, then, to Lieberman, Al Gore's vice presidential candidate in 2000, to spark any ray of hope that the party of FDR and Harry Truman has not become a backward-looking party that can't be trusted with liberty's franchise.

"The questions raised about prewar intelligence are not irrelevant . . . but they are nowhere as important and relevant as how we successfully complete our mission in Iraq and protect the 150,000 men and women in uniform who are fighting for us there," Lieberman said.

"The danger is that by spending so much time on the past here, we contribute to a drop in public support. Terrorists know that they cannot defeat us in Iraq, but they also know they can defeat us in America by breaking the will and steadfast support of the American people for this cause."

That is the voice of the Democratic Party America once embraced. It is the voice of the Democratic Party that held the South. It is the voice of a party America can trust when our people are threatened.

But it is not the voice that now dominates — and defines — today's national Democratic Party. That voice will get defenders hurt and trusting souls betrayed.

— Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[230FMJ]

The "Democrat" party of today would be totaly unrecognizable to my family who voted "en-masse" for JFK in Novemver of 1960.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The Democratic Party would feel more at home in the U.N.

[wingman1]

The writer makes a good point by comparing the vietnamese refugees and boat people who have done extremely well in the US and the "caste system" in which the all knowing French have established.

One other point: I don't consider the left in this country as "anti-war. Instead I place them in the same category as Jane Fonda - they want America to lose.

[kitkat]

The Democrats/Socialists are the same people who drivel on and on and on about the U.S. not giving enough to other people of the world, and then refuse to give enough to our troops to save the people of Iraq.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

One other point: I don't consider the left in this country as "anti-war. Instead I place them in the same category as Jane Fonda - they want America to lose.

Excellent point and one that David Horowitz also makes in the LINKED article in Post #1.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The Democrat/Socialist want the people of the world to be equal and equally miserable.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Socialism also basically says that human beings are too stupid and helpless to be able to make it without the government holding their hand from the womb to the tomb... and if you're smart and manage to do well for yourself without their help, they will punish and destroy you without mercy. (For those ignurnt (sic) Socialists who may be reading this... reference what you've done to Black Americans and what happens when they try to leave the Democrat party - it's the same thing).

[wingman1]

Thanks. I am a fan of Horowitz and believe that I have read the article you provde after reading one of your posts a couple of months ago.

The amazing thing about David Horowitz is that he was a very active "New Left" protestor in Berkeley during the Vietnam War days. One of the first if memory serves me well.

[Paladin2]

I still want to know why there are no "Stop Jihad Now!" signs at their rallys.

[Malesherbes]

What's conservative at the AJC is simply relative to the rest of the editorial page.

[chgomac]

Funny how they are always nagging Bush to "Admit he has made mistakes" but are completely unwilling to face their OWN errors.....

Liberals say they support the WOT, just not the battle for Iraqi Freedom. They kinda sorta support us fighting, but only if our troops are at a distinct disadvantage, like in Afghanistan. They want us to fight only in the most inhospitable country---one that has no infrastructure.

The liberals conveniently ignore the battles and attacks that have taken place in Spain, Bali, England, Indonesia, Jordon, Saudi Arabia, and yes, even the little skirmishes in France.

[Caipirabob]

So very said said! I'm going to use this to verbally bludgeon a lefty tomorrow early AM.

[freedom4me]

"Jim Wooten is a conservative."

Is this the same Jim Wooten that once worked for ABC?

If yes, I'll never forget his reporting from Rwanda during the genocide of the 90s. He was so overwhelmed with the death and destruction he honestly said, "I wish I never would have come here."

[Zacs Mom]

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious.

But it cannot survive treason from within.



An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known, and he carries his banners openly.

But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely,
his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys,
heard in the very hall of government itself.

For the traitor appears no traitor.

He speaks in the accents familiar to his victims,
and he wears their face and their garments,
and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in hearts of men.



He rots the soul of a nation.

He works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city.

He infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.

A Murderer Is Less To Be Feared."

Cicero, 42 B.C.

[MNJohnnie]

America Wake UP: Iraq DID contain TERRORISTS and WMDs.

Exactly right. Read Masters of Chaos a reporter was allowed to write the story of the SOF during the Iraq liberation in 2003. Read about the Al Qeda base camp they over ran east of Mosul. If Al Qeda was NOT set up in Iraq prior to the Liberation, they were in the process of GETTING set up. Anyone who says any different is either a fool or a liar.

[Libloather]

That's because the national Democratic Party has retreated to its core — and on national security matters, that is the embittered anti-war left.

RATS have to. Their constituents are plenty rich enough to fund reelection campaigns despite being lunatics, whackos and complete nutjobs.

[LegendHasIt]

Excellent! and eloquent!!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

You are correct and the reason he knows them so well.

[Recon Dad]

Both of these posts are just great. Wooten and Horowitz really get to the heart of the matter. Thank you.