Posted on 03/04/2003 10:44:18 AM PST by Coyote
Those on the left insist they have the A.N.S.W.E.R. for all of us. But the veneer of their thought process has worn extremely thin, along with the patience of most rational minds.
It's not an exaggeration to say that anti-Americanism has been the main marching tune of the modern left for decades. Almost uniformly, they insist that America, her competitive private corporations, and the capital system are evil.
But the left has conveniently exempted the nationalized corporations of socialist states and third world dictators — the true monopolies of the world. Pretending to honor the cause, even vicious men with million-man armies and obscene secret bank accounts are excusable, no matter how many hundreds of millions they've murdered in the name of the 'progressive' ideology. You know, “the only good monopoly is a state monopoly,” even if their offspring are gulags, laogais, human meat hooks, and slow acid bath executions, to change the hearts and minds of the non-believer.
In the waning memory of 9-11, the egalitarian fantasies of the communo-cultists have soared beyond the realm of mere neurosis, to sheer, irrational delusion. Their attachment to the repeatedly failed Stalinist utopian pipedream has become the political equivalent of the garage physicist's myopic obsession with creating a perpetual motion machine.
And at the recent forefront, for the entire world to view, are the Hollywood media elites. Today they're mostly mouthy, ultra-vain individuals that often get paid by the day five times or more than the average American family earns in an entire year. They've convinced themselves that if they can play a Ph.D., they can think like a Ph.D.
Gone are yesterday's patriotic celebrities. Men like Clarke Gable, who walked from the wealth and safety of stardom to earn the pay of an Army Air Corps photographer during WWII, or Jimmy Stewart, who put his career on hold to fly combat bomber missions where the risk of death was among the highest of the war. And they did this in order that Hollywood's unpleasant children of today can actually have the undisputed right to speak as they please. And speak they do.
Consider Harry Belafonte, whose main claim to fame was being one of the first black persons to sing Calypso on American radio. He seems to think that makes him superior not only to the rest of us, but to the highly educated National Security Advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of State Colin Powell, two individuals who have achieved some of the highest and most demanding positions in black history. Belafonte would rather hobnob with Fidel Castro than be associated with the America that gave him his break. When he visits Cuba, Castro welcomes his rant against America. But does Belafonte seriously expect us to believe that Castro would allow him down there to speak openly against corruption in the Cuban government? Now he's telling us it's U.S. leaders who are, "filled with evil." Should we laugh at this guy or weep?
Then there's Hollywood hunk, George Clooney, who claims “we can't beat anybody anymore.” May we suggest he speak for himself on that one? Especially the next time he visits a public bar without his bodyguards. Fat chance, of course.
And there's West-Wing Martin. You know, Ramon-Estavez Sheen? He's that icon of liberal activism, and the 'real' American President — since George W. Bush is considered an illegitimate heir who's usurped the throne. And he's become the self-appointed spokesperson for the anti-American peace movement of the 21st Century. From the Mid-East to Europe, from South America to Singapore, from the Korean Peninsula to the Philippines, the world is choosing up sides against American inspired liberty and democracy in a way not seen since the late 1930's. And Sheen wants us to become sitting “Duck Soup” pacifists. May we be forgiven if this seems as astonishingly irrational as a woman offering to turn the other 'cheek' (as it were) after the attack of a violent rapist?
Now Sheen's activism is clearly genuine, if not perhaps misguided, so we can charitably assume he sincerely means well. And he did have the chutzpah to publicly call George W. Bush “a moron.” But in his own words, Sheen allowed that he personally doesn't “have the kind of intelligence or the makeup to be a president.”
Which brings us to our point.
Incredibly, in a 2001 BBC interview, Martin Sheen insisted that the only original things of importance that the U.S. has ever exported to the rest of the world were “Alcoholics Anonymous and Jazz Music.”
Oh, really.
Well, just to set the record straight, let's examine that last anti-American statement in at least a little depth before we follow this guy and his fellow glitterati all the way to the “Virtual White House,” and possibly into a complete new global dark age of neo-feudal totalitarianism. Let's take a look at just a few of the things officially recognized as America invention exported to the rest of mankind.
Besides the modern constitutional representative form of government given to the world by the Founding Fathers, the one the entire world now calls 'democracy', here's a selected few of the 'Oscar' quality achievements bequeathed to the world by Americans.
In the category of Health and Medicine:
- 1842 Crawford Long: ether anesthetized surgery
- 1905 Albert Einhorn: Novocain
- 1913 William D. Coolidge (for GE): the X-ray tube
- 1933 John Lundy: intravenous anesthesia, using sodium pentathol
- 1935 Robert R. Williams: isolated and synthesized vitamins
- 1940 Vladimir Zworykin & James Hillier: the electron microscope
- 1943 Selmen A. Waksman: streptomycin (curing tuberculosis)
- 1945 (circa) Alfred Free: glucose detection for diabetes
- 1954 Jonas Salk: polio vacine
- 1960 Frank B. Colton: for (G.D. Searle and Company): the oral contraceptive
- 1978 Raymond V. Damadian: the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) device
In the category of Food and Agriculture
- 1794 Eli Whitney: the cotton gin
- 1794 Thomas Jefferson: the American "moldboard" wooden plow (he refused to patent it and encouraged free public use)
- 1834 Cyrus Hall McCormick: the mechanical combine reaper
- 1838 John Deere: the American cast steel plow
- 1842 Joseph Dart: the modern grain elevator
- 1856 Gail Borden: condensed milk
- 1886 Clarence Birdseye: frozen food
- 1927 Otto Frederick Rohwedder: sliced bread
- 1954 Gerry Thomas: the frozen dinner
- 1972 Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen: genetic engineering
In the category of Labor and Industry
- 1797 Eli Whitney: parts standardization, credited with inventing mass production
- 1805 Oliver Evans: the refrigeration machine
- 1847 Richard M. Hoe: the rotary printing press
- 1851 Richard Dudgeon: the Hydraulic Jack
- 1855 William Kelly: pneumatically refined ("Bessemer,” or mass produced) steel
- 1868 Alvin J. Fellows: the tape measure
- 1868 George Westinghouse: air brakes
- 1871 Simon Ingersol: the pneumatic drill
- 1873 Christopher Sholes: the typewriter
- 1886 Frederick E. Ives: the halftone printing process
- 1952 Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver: the bar code
In the category of Lifestyles and Fashion
- 1787 Levi Hutchins: the alarm clock
- 1838 Chauncey Jerome: an affordable clock (thereby giving rise to the expression, "Yankee Ingenuity")
- 1849 Walter Hunt: the safety pin
- 1850 Levi Strauss: the blue jean
- 1874 William Blackstone: the home washing machine
- 1878 Thomas Alva Edison: the first practical electric light bulb
- 1882 Henry W. Seely: the electric clothes iron
- 1886 Josephine Cochran: the dishwasher
- 1893 Whitcomb Judson: the zipper
- 1911 Willis Haviland Carrier: the air conditioner
- 1927 Warren Marrison: the quartz clock
- 1930 Richard G. Drew (for 3M): Scotch Tape
- 1945 Percy Lebaron Spencer (for Raytheon): the HEM (Microwave Oven)
- 1955 George de Mestral: VELCRO®
In the category of Science and Technology
- 1839 Charles Goodyear: vulcanized rubber
- 1844 Samuel F. B. Morse: the telegraph
- 1876 Alexander Graham Bell: the telephone
- 1877 Thomas Alva Edison: the phonograph
- 1885 William Seward Burroughs: the calculating machine
- 1895 Nikola Tesla: the wireless radio
- 1896 Elmer Ambrose Sperry: the gyroscopic compass
- 1903 Wilbur and Orville Wright: the airplane
- 1906 Lee De Forest: the vacuum tube
- 1907 Leo Hendrik Baekeland: plastic
- 1918 Edwin Howard Armstrong: the super-heterodyne radio receiver
- 1930 Ernest Orlando Lawrence: the cyclotron
- 1931 Igor I. Sikorsky: the helicopter
- 1932 Julius Nieuwland (for Du Pont): synthetic rubber (neoprene)
- 1933 Edwin Howard Armstrong: frequency modulated (FM) radio
- 1935 Wallace Hume Caruthers (for Du Pont): nylon
- 1938 Roy J. Plunkett (for Du Pont): teflon
- 1938 Chester F. Carlson: the xerographic photocopier
- 1939 George R. Stibitz: the digital computer
- 1940 (circa) Jay W. Forrester: RAM memory
- 1942 Donald Fletcher Holmes (for Du Pont): polyurethane (foam rubber)
- 1948 William B. Shockley (for Bell Laboratories): the transistor
- 1950 John Backus (for IBM): FORTRAN, the first high-level computer programming language
- 1959 Gordon Gould: the laser
- 1959 Jack S. Kilby: the integrated circuit
- 1961 David Paul Gregg: the laser disc
- 1964 J. C. R. Licklider (for the Pentagon): the Internet (sorry Al!)
- 1970 Donald B. Keck (for Corning): the telecommunications optical fiber
- 1970 James Fergason (for Westinghouse): the LCD (Liquid Crystal Display)
- 1971 Marcian E. Hoff (for Intel): the microprocessor
- 1972 William Hewlett and David Packard: the HP-3 pocket calculator, replacing the slide rule
- 1973 Dr Martin Cooper: (for Motorola) the cell phone
- 1977 Steve Wozniak: the personal computer
And finally, In the Category of Hollywood's Special Elite
- 1870 John W. Hyatt: celluloid
- 1876 Alexander Graham Bell: the microphone
- 1881 Frederick E. Ives: color photography
- 1884 George Eastman: flexible photographic film
- 1887 Thomas Alva Edison, the motion picture camera
- 1904 Ernst F. W. Alexanderson (for GE): the radio frequency oscillator (making modern radio and television transmission possible)
- 1906 Thomas Alva Edison: the "cameraphone" (sync motion picture sound)
- 1914 Max Faktor (Max Factor): grease paint for actors
- 1929 Vladimir Kosma Zworykin (for RCA): the cathode ray tube
- 1929 Philo T. Farnsworth: the television
- 1956 Charles P. Ginsburg (for Ampex): the video tape recorder
- 1958 Robert Gottschalk: the Panavision anamorphic camera lens
And the winner is … without exageration, nearly the entire planet's population.
Of course there are some that probably insist that most if not all of these things were actually invented in the former Soviet Union for the good of all mankind (in Solzhenitzyn's “First Circle” perhaps?), and secretly suppressed by American corporate interests until they could make a profit from them.
But the fact is that they have all undeniably improved the standard of living for nearly every human being on this earth, and despite the revisionists, they're still officially recognized as American in origin. And they're just a very few of the many.
Now it would seem that any additional comment on this list would be superfluous.
But we can't resist. Let's take them by category.
In Health and Medicine, Is there anyone out there that would really like to trade surgical anesthetization or Novocain during dentistry for a little Jazz? Come on, Martin. Let's trade.
And in Food and Agriculture, the poorest people on the planet often wear cotton. Prior to Eli Whitney, no one but the aristocracy of the world could afford cotton. Everyone else wore coarse, itchy, burlap clothing. Anyone want to trade in your rainbow tie-died protest tee-shirt, for a nasty medieval hair shirt? Aw, c'mon!
Let's see. Labor and Industry? I suppose the global print media could trade the halftone process, the lines at consumer checkout stations could grow longer by trading the bar code, and planetary railroad and trucking could make the world a bit more unsafe by trading airbrakes … for the 12 step method of dealing with drunks?
What about Lifestyles and Fashion? It's possible to imagine giving up Velcro, the washing machine, and the electric light. But it's very difficult to imagine Martin's peace marching left getting by without their blue jeans. And what would “United for Peace & Justice” do without the easy-tap money of foundations like Levi Strause to support their anti-Americanism?
In Science and Technology we can envision the peaceniks of the world finding something besides foam rubber on which to park their posteriors. There could be a world without plastic, or the photocopier, or even the airplane. But give up their Steve Wozniak credited personal computer and the Internet? Now, that's doubtful.
And finally, in the Category of Hollywood's Special Elite, is there any sane person left in the world who can imagine Martin Sheen or any of his Hollywood, lock-step “free thinkers,” failing to comprehend that America has given many of these 'stars' the ability to make a million dollars per week or more? From the celluloid for film, to the microphones that they use to project their opinions, to the motion picture camera, to the television and the video tape recorder, all these American inventions provides not only them, but the entire world, with the media we call “The Movies.”
And all American ever gave the world was Alcoholics Anonymous and Jazz?
So was Sheen just being cynically abusive toward the country that gave not only the world all the things we've iterated, but gave him personally the very ability to become a wealthy Point Dume spokesperson for the rest of us? Or was he just kidding? Or is he just naturally that myopic?
And if Sheen is such an unreliable witness, if he can be that far off the mark, how can any of the sane among us believe he's correct or fair about anything else he wants us to believe? Can his judgment be trusted? Is he really capable of determining foreign policy? Do we assume he has private encrypted contacts with the world's heads of state, that he has access to top-secret National Security intelligence, or that he has any intelligence at all?
What if Sheen is wrong? What if America stands on a summit like a dominant stag in the woods surrounded by hungry, rabid wolves? What if Martin Sheen, and the rest of the like-minded Hollywood elite, and the entire anachronistic Stalinist cult of those Lenin called “useful idiots,” are wrong? What if we basically have to fight now &151; or perish as a nation? From the behavior of the radical left, isn't it almost logical to conclude it at least appears that's what they want? If this isn't spiteful, arrogant, madness, what is?
And what about all the billions of hopeful individuals either already under, or rapidly falling under, the ugly spell of the totalitarian impulse? What will they do without the hope they owe to America? What will we all do if Hollywood and sympathizers of the repeatedly failed Stalinist left are as wrong as history suggests? What conditions would the poor, the hopeful, and the lost of the world really do without the continued American contribution and protection?
Now a defiant Hollywood is smugly warning us against the possibility of blacklisting. But if the spokespersons for the Hollywood Stalinists want the Box Office support of the American people, they would do well to listen a little more and talk a little less.
Did we, or didn't we, innovate some of the most effectively improvements to the standard of living of the entire human race by rewarding individuals for their efforts and ideas? Regardless of whether the innovators personally profited or not, didn't every benefactor of those changes find themselves living just a bit better with, say, electric lighting, rather than kerosene lamps?
Did we, or didn't we, sacrifice the lives of 500,000 men and women, 2,000,000 casualties, and several trillion in today's dollars toward the Marshal Plan, to rebuild both our allies and our enemies alike after World War II? Does anyone really imagine a brutal Middle East dictator or Communist despot EVER doing the same for us?
Really.
We need to see your Coyote racing across a few more threads around here.
L
"Gone are yesterday's patriotic celebrities. Men like Clarke Gable, who walked from the wealth and safety of stardom to earn the pay of an Army Air Corps photographer during WWII, or Jimmy Stewart, who put his career on hold to fly combat bomber missions where the risk of death was among the highest of the war. And they did this in order that Hollywood's unpleasant children of today can actually have the undisputed right to speak as they please. And speak they do."
Will there ever be another Jimmy Stweart?
Will there ever be another America like he went to war for?
Will Whoreleywood ever cease their drain on our social, moral, ethical, spiritual, and national fiber?
L
I sometimes envision those who voted for Clinton and his ilk as cheap Dr. Frankenstein wanna-bes, obsessed with bringing their monstrous Utopian visions to life, pulling the voting handle and crying out, "It's ALIIIIVE!"
And, like the good Doctor in Shelly's tale, they never reckoned that the monster that they've brought ot life just might have its own agenda. As history tells us, the monsters always do.
I made my living as a Process Photographer. This man's invention supported my family, and many others, at a great wage for generations.
Well, save those Reduced by the "failsafe" birth control thing.
If America has changed somewhat and some of us can't be quite patriotic as we should, perhaps it has something to do with the leadership's bent the past couple generations ... such as George H. Bush's "Earth Resources and Population" GOP Task Force and their 1970 Report to Congress.
As a result of reduced death rates, there are more people in their non-productive years than ever before. More children and more elderly people unable to participate in the world's work force increase the burden on the productive age group. [...] The National Academy of Sciences has said:
Either the birth rate must go back down or the death rate must go back up.
Probably the trouble with American ingenuity ... we're the girl with the curl and we got an answer for everything, for better or worse.
You're sure a sight for sore eyes. I know I'm splitting hairs but I do think this is the actual mentality underwriting our "humanitarian" efforts worldwide.
I trust all is well with you and yours.
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