TWO MEN WANT TO BE PRESIDENT. ONLY ONE KNOWS WHY
One of the earliest truisms in Rick Warren's runaway Christian bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life is that "It's not about you." The purpose of your life has nothing to do with you, except to the extent that it requires your cooperation to fulfill it. God has given everyone a unique set of talents and experiences and abilities, and He knows exactly what He has in mind for your destiny.
It occurred to me recently that one of the things that distinguishes the two candidates for president this year is a sense of purpose. Even before he was president, George W. Bush knew there was some reason God wanted him to be in that position. After September 11, he was virtually certain that he had been called, as many evangelists put it, "for such a time as this." His role was to bring the nation through an almost unimaginable tragedy, to steer us through the night, a steady guiding hand. He was our protector, our guard, our dependable leader for many months afterward. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, he found himself--though the moment was short lived--fulfilling his pledge to be "a uniter, not a divider."
In this run for a second term, he has not changed his conviction. He understands that he has been granted the honor of being a steward of the people and resources of the United States of America. It humbles him. It drives him to excellence. It haunts his waking dreams. George W. Bush, the man who has been so central to life in the United States for the past four years, both to those who love and to those who hate him, awaits the call of God to see what the next four years may bring.
I don't mean that he's not "political." To the contrary, God has given him a true gift for politics, especially relational, grass-roots politics. And I don't mean that he's planning to glide into office on some divine instrument, without policies or explanation or a solid case on which to make him president. He has all those things, and more. But at his core, where it really counts, George W. Bush is a man of faith, following a walk of faith, certain sometimes only that the God who put him where he is will take him where he is to go. Like Abraham (the patriarch, not Lincoln), the President acts on conviction, even when the end (or, as it is so popular to say these days, the "exit strategy") is not in sight.
Talking to Bill O'Reilly this week, the president expressed puzzlement at the idea that there are some in the nation who are disturbed by the way he shows his faith in office. He said he doesn't see how a man can separate his faith from his life, and his life happens to be the presidency. That is exactly the right answer. His current job in life, granted him by God, is to be president of the United States. Whether God retains him there is not in George's hands, but in those of God and the people. What happens next is not about him; it's about God's plan and the future of America. That's why, as commentators so often say, the president is "comfortable in his own skin." It's because he knows he doesn't even own the skin.
Faith is not a blind leap into the unknown. And it's not a privileging of emotion over reason. Faith is knowing Who is leading you, and trusting that He knows what He's doing. Faith means taking risks that might seem foolish, and sticking with the plan when things seem unclear. George W. Bush lives every day in that faith.
John Kerry, on the other hand, seems the very opposite. Of all the things we know about him, the one thing we do not know is why he wants to be president.
Because he won't tell us, both right and left are free to make up the answer that satisfies them. For the left, he wants to be president so he can wake up every day trying to make the lives of average Americans better. He wants to be president to rescue all those imperiled American soldiers being held against their will by the current president in Iraq. He wants to be president to "give back" to the nation that has been so good to him. Whatever. But none of the motivations the left imputes to the Senator have ever been stated by him.
On the other side, the right looks at Kerry and says, "Aha! He wants to be president so he can pursue the left wing agenda of his wife's foundations!" Or, perhaps he wants to be president to escape being the junior Senator from Massachusetts (it seems clear that the Senior one isn't leaving any time soon). Could he want to be president so that someday, after being president, he might have a marketable skill and an income of his own? We don't know. And he won't say.
While President Bush is driven by his faith, Kerry seems utterly disdainful of his. He claims convictions that he acts in opposition to. He chafes at the authority of the faith community he has chosen to be a part of. He denigrates those who do claim to be motivated by their faith to advance political positions. Evidently it does not motivate him.
Those who are not motivated by moral conviction often act out of economic self-interest. Yet Kerry is running for a position that pays less than a grant from his wife's foundation and entails an enormous amount of work. Though he seems to have little passion for the position, he shows no more evidence of wanting the job just for the money. After all, it's barely a step above his existing salary as a Senator.
Does he want the job because his party wants him to have it? Because the people have begged him to do it? It seems unlikely, given that the majority of Kerry-leaning voters don't like him, but dislike Bush. The race is so close now, it is impossible that he could have believed before he started that "America" wanted him--such a perception would border on the megalomaniacal.
So what is his purpose for being president? We do not know.
What is his purpose for being? That, too, we neither know nor have a sense that he does. He has ambition, yes--but it seems merely a drive to run, without a reason to win. His promise of "leadership" consists only of doing "everything" differently than the way Bush has done it--which is a silly thing to say, since there's no way he could possibly know how Bush has done "everything." No one person except President Bush knows "everything" he has done, because he has done so many things in so many different areas of effort. Of course, the Senator would have a better chance of knowing more of what the President has done if he had been present for the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings and meetings that he missed while running for President. Oh, well.
He might know a little more about Iraq had he gone there. He might have a reasonable critique if he had attended Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's speech before the Joint Session of Congress that Kerry was too busy barnstorming the battleground states to attend. He might have a better chance to be president if he spent more time examining incoming information and less time excoriating the people who are providing it and acting on it.
So, for now, John Kerry remains a man without a purpose. His mission, as he sees it, is to unseat the president.
But why?
The world may never know.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
NEW VOTERS, OLD MEDIA
THE SIGNS ARE ALL THERE FOR A NOVEMBER 2 EARTHQUAKE
The mainstream media is missing a huge story, mostly because it doesn't like the topic. But in a month they're going to find out just why there are so many new voters this year.
I can tell you that the ground forces of the right are activated and ready. The word has gone out and is going out all over this nation, and voter registrars are reporting more than the usual number of new voters. The media thinks this is all a result of the closeness of the 2000 election--that's because the media is mostly liberal, so the Democrat explanations for everything resonate with them.
But they're wrong.
There's a campaign out there--actually, probably thousands of them--among pro-family voters to register new voters and get them to the polls. And the issue isn't Bush. It isn't Iraq. It isn't to prevent the closeness of the 2000 election, though that reminder provides strong motivation to take this one more seriously.
The issue is gay marriage.
Hundreds of independent Christian groups across the country, some usually political, others not, are emailing and snail-mailing alerts to their members. Pastors everywhere are preaching on the subject. Megachurches are mobilizing to hand out voter guides, informing their people as to where the candidates stand on the issue
Even in traditionally Democratic churches, pro-family voters are putting aside their concerns about the war and the economy. They are not forgiving on these issues, but those things are transitory and temporal. The question of marriage, we believe, touches on eternal truths that we simply will not compromise.
The nation may be at war in Iraq, but we moral traditionalists believe it is time to face down the enemy in a cultural and spiritual war that must be won.
As in perhaps no other election in our history, this choice of presidents has deep spiritual meaning. Whoever is president will likely get to appoint an indeterminate number of Supreme Court justices, considered a necessity before the Court decides to declare homosexual marriage a constitutional right. The President appoints federal judges, and it's time to hold the Senate's feet to the fire for their intransigence at confirming judges that will interpret the law, not make it.
The President barely mentions this issue, though the GOP platform is crystal clear, and we know without doubt where he stands. Senator Kerry has given pro-family voters no hope, particularly when the Democratic platform's section on "family" values is all about health care and the economy.
That's not what we want to hear. Already, the evangelical community is beginning to feel stirrings of guilt for having put worldly things ahead of godly things. Watching the culture dissolve around us has only intensified that guilt. The Bible says, "If MY people, who are called by MY name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin, and heal their land." (2 Chron. 7:14, emphasis mine.) The burden is on the church to change the culture, not the culture to change itself.
In the 1980 election, a force arose in the electorate that the media didn't know was coming. It was the force of moral anguish, and it was triggered primarily by abortion and the nascent gay rights movement. In that year, Ronald Reagan ascended from obscurity, and the evangelicals began their move into the center of the political world. This year, as in that, we, people of faith who have grown complacent with a fat and happy culture, are acting on our convictions and our guilt.
We didn't fight when Hollywood slid further and further toward the abyss, celebrating illicit sex, drugs, homosexuality, lesbianism, witchcraft, prostitution, gambling, and all manner of immorality. We slightly stirred when advertisers targeted our children with barely dressed models in incomprehensible ads for clothing. We slept on while public schools normalized gay sex and adoption.
But we are awake now.
We are looking around us and seeing degeneracy. We see Janet Jackson and the many sins of CBS. We see Michael Moore and the anti-war movement that, whatever one thinks of the war itself, reaches new lows in the unpatriotic and the crass. We see the media's rejection of The Passion of the Christ and clearly see the contempt the cultural gatekeepers have for people of faith.
We see, most of all, Gavin Newsom marrying men to men and women to women in illegal San Francisco ceremonies. We see the Massachusetts Court declaring it unconstitutional to restrict marriage to one man and one woman. We see the Supreme Court authorizing homosexual sodomy as a constitutional right. We see the society around us falling to pieces, and the culture aiming its poisonous relativism at OUR families, our communities, OUR nation.
And we are getting ready for the battle. Prayer groups have been mobilized across the country to specifically intercede on this issue, for this election. Visions and prophecies are zipping around cyberspace with dizzying speed. Email boxes are filling up with information as to which companies are pushing the homosexual agenda, the addresses of their CEOs, and their websites. Petitions come out every day on issues of concern to morality-based voters.
When November 3 dawns, the powers that be would do well to comb through the augurs of the exit polls, seeking to know what happened.
Because if the culture doesn't change, it's going to happen again.
The mainstream media is missing a huge story, mostly because it doesn't like the topic. But in a month they're going to find out just why there are so many new voters this year.
I can tell you that the ground forces of the right are activated and ready. The word has gone out and is going out all over this nation, and voter registrars are reporting more than the usual number of new voters. The media thinks this is all a result of the closeness of the 2000 election--that's because the media is mostly liberal, so the Democrat explanations for everything resonate with them.
But they're wrong.
There's a campaign out there--actually, probably thousands of them--among pro-family voters to register new voters and get them to the polls. And the issue isn't Bush. It isn't Iraq. It isn't to prevent the closeness of the 2000 election, though that reminder provides strong motivation to take this one more seriously.
The issue is gay marriage.
Hundreds of independent Christian groups across the country, some usually political, others not, are emailing and snail-mailing alerts to their members. Pastors everywhere are preaching on the subject. Megachurches are mobilizing to hand out voter guides, informing their people as to where the candidates stand on the issue
Even in traditionally Democratic churches, pro-family voters are putting aside their concerns about the war and the economy. They are not forgiving on these issues, but those things are transitory and temporal. The question of marriage, we believe, touches on eternal truths that we simply will not compromise.
The nation may be at war in Iraq, but we moral traditionalists believe it is time to face down the enemy in a cultural and spiritual war that must be won.
As in perhaps no other election in our history, this choice of presidents has deep spiritual meaning. Whoever is president will likely get to appoint an indeterminate number of Supreme Court justices, considered a necessity before the Court decides to declare homosexual marriage a constitutional right. The President appoints federal judges, and it's time to hold the Senate's feet to the fire for their intransigence at confirming judges that will interpret the law, not make it.
The President barely mentions this issue, though the GOP platform is crystal clear, and we know without doubt where he stands. Senator Kerry has given pro-family voters no hope, particularly when the Democratic platform's section on "family" values is all about health care and the economy.
That's not what we want to hear. Already, the evangelical community is beginning to feel stirrings of guilt for having put worldly things ahead of godly things. Watching the culture dissolve around us has only intensified that guilt. The Bible says, "If MY people, who are called by MY name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin, and heal their land." (2 Chron. 7:14, emphasis mine.) The burden is on the church to change the culture, not the culture to change itself.
In the 1980 election, a force arose in the electorate that the media didn't know was coming. It was the force of moral anguish, and it was triggered primarily by abortion and the nascent gay rights movement. In that year, Ronald Reagan ascended from obscurity, and the evangelicals began their move into the center of the political world. This year, as in that, we, people of faith who have grown complacent with a fat and happy culture, are acting on our convictions and our guilt.
We didn't fight when Hollywood slid further and further toward the abyss, celebrating illicit sex, drugs, homosexuality, lesbianism, witchcraft, prostitution, gambling, and all manner of immorality. We slightly stirred when advertisers targeted our children with barely dressed models in incomprehensible ads for clothing. We slept on while public schools normalized gay sex and adoption.
But we are awake now.
We are looking around us and seeing degeneracy. We see Janet Jackson and the many sins of CBS. We see Michael Moore and the anti-war movement that, whatever one thinks of the war itself, reaches new lows in the unpatriotic and the crass. We see the media's rejection of The Passion of the Christ and clearly see the contempt the cultural gatekeepers have for people of faith.
We see, most of all, Gavin Newsom marrying men to men and women to women in illegal San Francisco ceremonies. We see the Massachusetts Court declaring it unconstitutional to restrict marriage to one man and one woman. We see the Supreme Court authorizing homosexual sodomy as a constitutional right. We see the society around us falling to pieces, and the culture aiming its poisonous relativism at OUR families, our communities, OUR nation.
And we are getting ready for the battle. Prayer groups have been mobilized across the country to specifically intercede on this issue, for this election. Visions and prophecies are zipping around cyberspace with dizzying speed. Email boxes are filling up with information as to which companies are pushing the homosexual agenda, the addresses of their CEOs, and their websites. Petitions come out every day on issues of concern to morality-based voters.
When November 3 dawns, the powers that be would do well to comb through the augurs of the exit polls, seeking to know what happened.
Because if the culture doesn't change, it's going to happen again.
CBS DOES IT AGAIN
WHIPPING UP A FRENZY AGAINST AN IMAGINARY DRAFT
I rarely, if ever, watch mainstream network news. But, as it happens, I was erroneously told that our gubernatorial debate was going to be on the local CBS station last night immediately after the news (it was actually on the PBS station.) So I happened to catch the tail-end of the CBS Evening News (Currently) with Dan Rather last night.
The "What Does It Mean to You" segment featured a woman and her children ("and they are not alone," according to Richard Schlesinger) who are so stupid that they are basing their vote on the rumor that Bush might re-instate the draft if re-elected. Actually, that's my interpretation. CBS seemed to consider them alert, rather than stupid, but what do you expect from a network that can't tell the difference between a 2004 Word document and a 1971 memo?
This is another low blow from the network that's becoming synonymous with political dirty trickery. It is irresponsible, as CBS made no effort to disabuse this deluded woman and her kids of the notion that Bush has a secret plan. No one told her that the bills to re-instate the draft in Congress are not only going nowhere, but every one of them is sponsored by a Democrat. No one told her that the President, Vice President, and everyone associated with the Administration have stated categorically that they have NO intention of doing any such thing.
Last week, Don Rumsfeld was on the Hill, and that very question came to him. He dismissed the whole idea as nonsense. There is "NO" truth to that rumor. We have plenty of people already in the military, are happy with our retention and recruitment rates, and don't want an army full of people put in there by compulsion.
Of course, that would play right into the hands of the Democrats--an unwilling army is one more easily pulled out of an unpopular war. So maybe this mom and her kids had better vote for Bush.
Because a vote for Kerry or for Democratic domination in the Congress is far more likely to achieve a draft than a vote for Bush.
Look at it this way, President Bush says he's not interested in doing this, and if there's one thing we know about President Bush, it's that he means what he says, no matter what anybody else wants him to do. And as for Kerry?
Well, Senator Kerry has already said he won't re-institute the draft--but as we well know, he can ALWAYS change HIS mind.
I rarely, if ever, watch mainstream network news. But, as it happens, I was erroneously told that our gubernatorial debate was going to be on the local CBS station last night immediately after the news (it was actually on the PBS station.) So I happened to catch the tail-end of the CBS Evening News (Currently) with Dan Rather last night.
The "What Does It Mean to You" segment featured a woman and her children ("and they are not alone," according to Richard Schlesinger) who are so stupid that they are basing their vote on the rumor that Bush might re-instate the draft if re-elected. Actually, that's my interpretation. CBS seemed to consider them alert, rather than stupid, but what do you expect from a network that can't tell the difference between a 2004 Word document and a 1971 memo?
This is another low blow from the network that's becoming synonymous with political dirty trickery. It is irresponsible, as CBS made no effort to disabuse this deluded woman and her kids of the notion that Bush has a secret plan. No one told her that the bills to re-instate the draft in Congress are not only going nowhere, but every one of them is sponsored by a Democrat. No one told her that the President, Vice President, and everyone associated with the Administration have stated categorically that they have NO intention of doing any such thing.
Last week, Don Rumsfeld was on the Hill, and that very question came to him. He dismissed the whole idea as nonsense. There is "NO" truth to that rumor. We have plenty of people already in the military, are happy with our retention and recruitment rates, and don't want an army full of people put in there by compulsion.
Of course, that would play right into the hands of the Democrats--an unwilling army is one more easily pulled out of an unpopular war. So maybe this mom and her kids had better vote for Bush.
Because a vote for Kerry or for Democratic domination in the Congress is far more likely to achieve a draft than a vote for Bush.
Look at it this way, President Bush says he's not interested in doing this, and if there's one thing we know about President Bush, it's that he means what he says, no matter what anybody else wants him to do. And as for Kerry?
Well, Senator Kerry has already said he won't re-institute the draft--but as we well know, he can ALWAYS change HIS mind.
Monday, September 27, 2004
WHAT IF IRAQ GOES BAD?
JOHN KERRY'S POLITICKING ENDANGERS AMERICA'S FUTURE SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
So far, John Kerry has trashed the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and insulted the "coalition of the bribed"--that is, Britain, Australia, Italy, Poland, the former Soviet satellite states, and the 30 or so others that are spilling their blood in Iraq on behalf of the Iraqi people. The other day, he even extended his disdain to the Iraqi Prime Minister himself.
Prime Minister Allawi came here not just to beg for help, but to personally convey his gratitude for all the help we've already been so far. He spoke to a joint session of Congress--which one might remember is the actual job site for both Kerry and Edwards--and was honorably and respectfully received. Some (not Democrats) were visibly moved by the Prime Minister's speech.
John Kerry was not present, nor was John Edwards. They were, instead, politicking, as usual. And it was in the form of politics, as usual. Despite the fact that he does not himself live in Iraq (one of the few places in the world where his wife has not bought any real estate), Kerry presumed to know what the reality on the ground really is. He accused the Prime Minister of living in the same "fantasyland" as the President. He essentially accused him of (you'll excuse the popular expression) "sugarcoating" the situation for political purposes.
How disgusting.
Even the president, during the joint press conference, deferred to the Prime Minister on questions of how things were going there. Don't ask me, he implied repeatedly. Ask him; he lives there. The press, however, continued to ignore the Prime Minister, as though their only interest in Iraq is what American politicians think of it. Given the opportunity to "ask the man who owns one," their journalistic instincts disappeared completely.
Imagine if you will, what will happen if John Kerry becomes president and the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate.
Already, he has given our actual allies no reason to continue working with us, because he considers them beneath his contempt (which reaches pretty low). He wants to trade them in for other "allies" who currently won't give us the time of day and didn't show any interest in deposing Saddam to begin with. Now that Iraq's a quagmire, he seems to argue, they will all jump in with us, if I just ask nicely enough.
But what if France (which has already publicly stated it won't come into the war no matter who is president) and Germany and Russia and the rest of the more valuable "allies" decide they don't want to play after all. And what if John Kerry's sister's unconscionable meddling in the Australian election actually helps result in a change in government in that nation? The prospective new leader promises to leave Iraq if he wins. If that happens, and other real allies start to fall away, what will keep Allawi and the Iraqis from falling apart?
If we don't support the new Iraqi government, who will? And if no one does, how can it survive? Suppose something happens to Allawi, or suppose he just fails to sustain the pro-American government? Suppose Iraq, oil and all, becomes a sworn and violent enemy of the US--only now with a new and improved terrorist training haven for your jihadist pleasure?
How is President Kerry going to keep the evildoers at bay when he has dismantled every potential bar to their ascendancy? The Islamofascists hate two sets of people: Americans and Jews. They hate others for helping us. They attack others to get them out of the way. If we have no will to win, no military morale, and no intention of doing the hard work to get a Democratic Iraq up and running, there are no other nations who have any incentive to do so.
Nitwits across Europe want their countries out of the war. So do the terrorists. And so does John Kerry.
But it won't be London picking up the pieces when the vicious psychotics nurtured and trained in an anti-US Iraq flies more planes into buildings. It won't be Eastern Europeans beheaded in a country they aren't fighting in. It won't be Belgians at risk when there's no one to stop the terrorists.
It will be us.
Can President Kerry come up with some kind of magical plan to protect us against a fully hostile, terroristic and independent Iraq? Will his buddies at the UN intervene to help us? Once he's fired John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge and revoked the Patriot Act and dismantled the homeland security system, what's he going to defend us with? As Zell Miller pointedly inquired, "Spitballs?"
So far, John Kerry has trashed the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and insulted the "coalition of the bribed"--that is, Britain, Australia, Italy, Poland, the former Soviet satellite states, and the 30 or so others that are spilling their blood in Iraq on behalf of the Iraqi people. The other day, he even extended his disdain to the Iraqi Prime Minister himself.
Prime Minister Allawi came here not just to beg for help, but to personally convey his gratitude for all the help we've already been so far. He spoke to a joint session of Congress--which one might remember is the actual job site for both Kerry and Edwards--and was honorably and respectfully received. Some (not Democrats) were visibly moved by the Prime Minister's speech.
John Kerry was not present, nor was John Edwards. They were, instead, politicking, as usual. And it was in the form of politics, as usual. Despite the fact that he does not himself live in Iraq (one of the few places in the world where his wife has not bought any real estate), Kerry presumed to know what the reality on the ground really is. He accused the Prime Minister of living in the same "fantasyland" as the President. He essentially accused him of (you'll excuse the popular expression) "sugarcoating" the situation for political purposes.
How disgusting.
Even the president, during the joint press conference, deferred to the Prime Minister on questions of how things were going there. Don't ask me, he implied repeatedly. Ask him; he lives there. The press, however, continued to ignore the Prime Minister, as though their only interest in Iraq is what American politicians think of it. Given the opportunity to "ask the man who owns one," their journalistic instincts disappeared completely.
Imagine if you will, what will happen if John Kerry becomes president and the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate.
Already, he has given our actual allies no reason to continue working with us, because he considers them beneath his contempt (which reaches pretty low). He wants to trade them in for other "allies" who currently won't give us the time of day and didn't show any interest in deposing Saddam to begin with. Now that Iraq's a quagmire, he seems to argue, they will all jump in with us, if I just ask nicely enough.
But what if France (which has already publicly stated it won't come into the war no matter who is president) and Germany and Russia and the rest of the more valuable "allies" decide they don't want to play after all. And what if John Kerry's sister's unconscionable meddling in the Australian election actually helps result in a change in government in that nation? The prospective new leader promises to leave Iraq if he wins. If that happens, and other real allies start to fall away, what will keep Allawi and the Iraqis from falling apart?
If we don't support the new Iraqi government, who will? And if no one does, how can it survive? Suppose something happens to Allawi, or suppose he just fails to sustain the pro-American government? Suppose Iraq, oil and all, becomes a sworn and violent enemy of the US--only now with a new and improved terrorist training haven for your jihadist pleasure?
How is President Kerry going to keep the evildoers at bay when he has dismantled every potential bar to their ascendancy? The Islamofascists hate two sets of people: Americans and Jews. They hate others for helping us. They attack others to get them out of the way. If we have no will to win, no military morale, and no intention of doing the hard work to get a Democratic Iraq up and running, there are no other nations who have any incentive to do so.
Nitwits across Europe want their countries out of the war. So do the terrorists. And so does John Kerry.
But it won't be London picking up the pieces when the vicious psychotics nurtured and trained in an anti-US Iraq flies more planes into buildings. It won't be Eastern Europeans beheaded in a country they aren't fighting in. It won't be Belgians at risk when there's no one to stop the terrorists.
It will be us.
Can President Kerry come up with some kind of magical plan to protect us against a fully hostile, terroristic and independent Iraq? Will his buddies at the UN intervene to help us? Once he's fired John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge and revoked the Patriot Act and dismantled the homeland security system, what's he going to defend us with? As Zell Miller pointedly inquired, "Spitballs?"
THE POLITICS OF PETULANCE
BUSH PLANS TO WIN, BUT THE KERRY KOOL-AID DRINKERS WON'T TAKE LOSING LYING DOWN
We already know that the Democrats have dispatched legions of lawyers to states where they expect the election to be close (most notably, Florida--though they may have gone home for this month to avoid drowning in the wrath of God). We already know that the Democrats didn't believe they lost last time, even after multiple counts of the votes and a thorough explanation of the electoral college system had been made available to them.
So I was wondering what will happen this time, if last time is any indication. It seems likely that a close election will be interpreted again as a "stolen" one. Any state in which the margin is less than five million votes (including Vermont and Rhode Island) will be held in abeyance while the lawyers hash it out. The absentee votes will be complicated and final results won't be available for a time, during which the Democrats will attempt to discover a new form of math that allows them to win without taking the majority of either the electoral college or the popular vote.
Of course, the race card will be flipped out again, with Democratic lawmakers (or are they? Their elections, too, might be in jeopardy) dragging out whatever minority, poor, elderly, handicapped, or freedom-challenged (incarcerated) would-be voters they can find or coach to claim their vote was interfered with. Jesse Jackson, Henry Waxman, Robert Wexler, and other troublemakers from the donkey side of the circus will hold rallies and act victimized. No doubt, there will be plenty of Alzheimer's patients who didn't get to vote for fear that they might be Democrats. Perhaps the party will sue because they aren't allowed to get people drunk and take them to the polls anymore. Who can know what they might do?
What I do know is that all of this is extremely dangerous. Democrats and their lawyer buddies might find the sue-till-you-drop game fun and exciting, but what it does is retard the transition from one administration to the next. It prevents people from getting into position to do the job of running--and protecting--this country.
Wouldn't it have been nice, and generous, and statesmanlike of Al Gore to eschew all that time-wasting lawyering in 2000? How come, being the Vice President and (one assumes) knowledgeable of the immensity of the threat that international terrorism posed to the US, Mr. Gore did not choose to go quietly and let the next president get settled in before something horrible happened? Why did Gore barely mention national security when vying to become our next president? Why did he act like the most terrible threat this nation faced was gas-guzzling SUVs and traffic jams?
He was THERE. He was in the White House. He should have known, as well as President Clinton now claims to have known, how dangerous Osama was. Was he so inconsequential as a Vice President that President Clinton, Sandy Berger, and Geroge Tenet didn't even consider him worthy of finding out about the mayhem going on against American interests all around the world? Doesn't that make you feel better about having Vice President Cheney on the team? We KNOW he knows what's going on. No question. He's on top of it.
But if Gore knew, his oath to preserve, protect and defend this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic, took a backseat to his political ambition--nay, lust--to be president of the United States. Instead of protecting the system, instead of protecting the process, instead of protecting the nation, Gore chose to resist, rebuke, and recount.
Can we expect any less from Mr. Kerry and his team?
We already know that the Democrats have dispatched legions of lawyers to states where they expect the election to be close (most notably, Florida--though they may have gone home for this month to avoid drowning in the wrath of God). We already know that the Democrats didn't believe they lost last time, even after multiple counts of the votes and a thorough explanation of the electoral college system had been made available to them.
So I was wondering what will happen this time, if last time is any indication. It seems likely that a close election will be interpreted again as a "stolen" one. Any state in which the margin is less than five million votes (including Vermont and Rhode Island) will be held in abeyance while the lawyers hash it out. The absentee votes will be complicated and final results won't be available for a time, during which the Democrats will attempt to discover a new form of math that allows them to win without taking the majority of either the electoral college or the popular vote.
Of course, the race card will be flipped out again, with Democratic lawmakers (or are they? Their elections, too, might be in jeopardy) dragging out whatever minority, poor, elderly, handicapped, or freedom-challenged (incarcerated) would-be voters they can find or coach to claim their vote was interfered with. Jesse Jackson, Henry Waxman, Robert Wexler, and other troublemakers from the donkey side of the circus will hold rallies and act victimized. No doubt, there will be plenty of Alzheimer's patients who didn't get to vote for fear that they might be Democrats. Perhaps the party will sue because they aren't allowed to get people drunk and take them to the polls anymore. Who can know what they might do?
What I do know is that all of this is extremely dangerous. Democrats and their lawyer buddies might find the sue-till-you-drop game fun and exciting, but what it does is retard the transition from one administration to the next. It prevents people from getting into position to do the job of running--and protecting--this country.
Wouldn't it have been nice, and generous, and statesmanlike of Al Gore to eschew all that time-wasting lawyering in 2000? How come, being the Vice President and (one assumes) knowledgeable of the immensity of the threat that international terrorism posed to the US, Mr. Gore did not choose to go quietly and let the next president get settled in before something horrible happened? Why did Gore barely mention national security when vying to become our next president? Why did he act like the most terrible threat this nation faced was gas-guzzling SUVs and traffic jams?
He was THERE. He was in the White House. He should have known, as well as President Clinton now claims to have known, how dangerous Osama was. Was he so inconsequential as a Vice President that President Clinton, Sandy Berger, and Geroge Tenet didn't even consider him worthy of finding out about the mayhem going on against American interests all around the world? Doesn't that make you feel better about having Vice President Cheney on the team? We KNOW he knows what's going on. No question. He's on top of it.
But if Gore knew, his oath to preserve, protect and defend this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic, took a backseat to his political ambition--nay, lust--to be president of the United States. Instead of protecting the system, instead of protecting the process, instead of protecting the nation, Gore chose to resist, rebuke, and recount.
Can we expect any less from Mr. Kerry and his team?
Saturday, September 25, 2004
NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH DAN RATHER
HERE'S MY LARRY KING IMPRESSION
So now we know. Democrats fake both their documentaries AND their documents.
John Kerry likes to compare Iraq to Vietnam. We've just had our 1000th (watch that "th"; it might be forged) casualty. At this rate, to be Vietnam the war has to last more than 50 years.
Be sure to read frontpagemag's expose on Mrs. Kerry's charitable activities.
If I had to place a bet today (and I don't gamble), I would predict a landslide for President Bush (Kerry will probably keep Massachusetts, DC, and Vermont). Once the evangelical vote mobilizes in the last few weeks of the campaign, Kerry is toast. Burned toast.
Why hasn't anyone in the media noticed that the DVD of Passion of the Christ is the number one DVD on Amazon and sold 9 million copies in its first 2 weeks?
If Kerry has some kind of voodoo power to get "allies" (by the way, aren't "allies" supposed to be on our side?) to help us, why doesn't he volunteer his services and go talk to them now? Wouldn't that be more statesmanlike than just calling President Bush names?
Considering all that Prime Minister Allawi has been through and how tough he seems to be--not to mention the resources he has the potential to control in the Middle East as either friend or foe to the US--I would stop sniping at him if I were Kerry.
Where's John Edwards these days? It must be seminar season at the Ramada or something (am I the only one eerily reminded of a no-money-down real estate crook when he talks?)
Why does Teresa H. Kerry want to be First Lady of a nation full of "scumbags," "liars," and "idiots" who have already elected a president and vice-president who are "unpatriotic"? Is there some law in France that keeps Kerry off THEIR ticket?
The Democrats keep screeching about losing 1,000 men in a year in Iraq (over a year actually). But the Union Army lost that many in some single battles of the Civil War (and so did the Confederates). More are murdered in a year in New York or L.A. or Chicago. Four times that many innocent lives are taken in abortion EVERY DAY. And they don't have body armor to protect them, either.
Why should government health care cover people up to 300% of the poverty level, as Kerry wants to do? Shouldn't 300% of the poverty level be considered rich? How far above poverty do Democrats have to get before they think they can make it on their own?
Isn't it funny that pro-Bush "negative" ads (Swift Boat vets excepted) attack Senator Kerry's record, political statements, and issue positions, while anti-Bush "negative" ads call him and the vice-president criminals, liars, racists, and Nazis? When President Bush ran a soft-focus positive ad with a small image of 9/11, the Democrats screamed at that, too. I think they will only be happy when the only sound they hear from the GOP is the President intoning "I'm George Bush, and I approved this message" before a Kerry commercial.
Why are cultural issues that bring people to the polls in great number--like abortion, gay marriage, and gun control--considered "wedge" issues, while issues that excite the media and the Democrats--like health care, social security, and the environment--are "real" issues? When you break it down, "health care" and "social "security" are programs, not issues. "The environment" is a policy target, not an issue. An "issue" is a question of preference, on which there are two sides. No one is "against" the environment. No one "opposes" health care. If the Democrats were to honestly talk about issues, they would have to re-frame their topics. For example, to make "health care" an issue, they have to specify "government-paid" or "single-payer" health care. "Privatization" of social security is an issue.
I love watching Donald Rumsfeld testify before Senate committees. (Paraphrased) "Are things bad in 3 provinces? Sure, they are! Can they get better? Of course! Does negative rumor-mongering hurt the war effort? Of course! Senator, I disagree with the very premise of your question. The president is not a lying weasel bent on re-introducing the draft, and his mother did not wear army boots!"
Can we elect Allawi to something here? He seems to be a good, tough guy. He might be able to whip some of these blue states into shape.
Someone should search Democratic statements for the phrase "sugar coat" over the past few years prior to the forgery of the CBS documents. Then you'd have your culprit.
It amuses me when the Democrats claim that they are going to fight the war "smarter" when they don't want to fight the war at all. I get the feeling "smarter" means "on paper, from a think tank at Harvard." I have no idea what "more sensitive" could possibly have meant.
I noticed something the other day. Last weekend, C-SPAN was following Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, walking around surveying hurricane-related damage. Where was Trent Lott? Home in Mississippi, sending folks from there over to help Sessions and the people of Alabama. But where, I wondered, was North Carolina Senator John Edwards? Why, he was rampaging through battleground states like Ohio and Iowa! What a great example of constituent service. If I were a North Carolinian, I would be fed up with this self-serving politician, and I would want to know why he couldn’t bother to show up in his own storm-ravaged state to check on his own people. Some family values he's got.
Speaking of family values, have you noticed that after a brief roll-out of the notion that Republicans don't have a monopoly on values and that Democrat "issues" and "programs" ARE American values--you haven't heard word one on it again? I guess the family values thing didn't go over. So, since it was a gimmick to begin with, they've pitched it in the trash and (forgive the expression) moved on.
My, we live in interesting times.
So now we know. Democrats fake both their documentaries AND their documents.
John Kerry likes to compare Iraq to Vietnam. We've just had our 1000th (watch that "th"; it might be forged) casualty. At this rate, to be Vietnam the war has to last more than 50 years.
Be sure to read frontpagemag's expose on Mrs. Kerry's charitable activities.
If I had to place a bet today (and I don't gamble), I would predict a landslide for President Bush (Kerry will probably keep Massachusetts, DC, and Vermont). Once the evangelical vote mobilizes in the last few weeks of the campaign, Kerry is toast. Burned toast.
Why hasn't anyone in the media noticed that the DVD of Passion of the Christ is the number one DVD on Amazon and sold 9 million copies in its first 2 weeks?
If Kerry has some kind of voodoo power to get "allies" (by the way, aren't "allies" supposed to be on our side?) to help us, why doesn't he volunteer his services and go talk to them now? Wouldn't that be more statesmanlike than just calling President Bush names?
Considering all that Prime Minister Allawi has been through and how tough he seems to be--not to mention the resources he has the potential to control in the Middle East as either friend or foe to the US--I would stop sniping at him if I were Kerry.
Where's John Edwards these days? It must be seminar season at the Ramada or something (am I the only one eerily reminded of a no-money-down real estate crook when he talks?)
Why does Teresa H. Kerry want to be First Lady of a nation full of "scumbags," "liars," and "idiots" who have already elected a president and vice-president who are "unpatriotic"? Is there some law in France that keeps Kerry off THEIR ticket?
The Democrats keep screeching about losing 1,000 men in a year in Iraq (over a year actually). But the Union Army lost that many in some single battles of the Civil War (and so did the Confederates). More are murdered in a year in New York or L.A. or Chicago. Four times that many innocent lives are taken in abortion EVERY DAY. And they don't have body armor to protect them, either.
Why should government health care cover people up to 300% of the poverty level, as Kerry wants to do? Shouldn't 300% of the poverty level be considered rich? How far above poverty do Democrats have to get before they think they can make it on their own?
Isn't it funny that pro-Bush "negative" ads (Swift Boat vets excepted) attack Senator Kerry's record, political statements, and issue positions, while anti-Bush "negative" ads call him and the vice-president criminals, liars, racists, and Nazis? When President Bush ran a soft-focus positive ad with a small image of 9/11, the Democrats screamed at that, too. I think they will only be happy when the only sound they hear from the GOP is the President intoning "I'm George Bush, and I approved this message" before a Kerry commercial.
Why are cultural issues that bring people to the polls in great number--like abortion, gay marriage, and gun control--considered "wedge" issues, while issues that excite the media and the Democrats--like health care, social security, and the environment--are "real" issues? When you break it down, "health care" and "social "security" are programs, not issues. "The environment" is a policy target, not an issue. An "issue" is a question of preference, on which there are two sides. No one is "against" the environment. No one "opposes" health care. If the Democrats were to honestly talk about issues, they would have to re-frame their topics. For example, to make "health care" an issue, they have to specify "government-paid" or "single-payer" health care. "Privatization" of social security is an issue.
I love watching Donald Rumsfeld testify before Senate committees. (Paraphrased) "Are things bad in 3 provinces? Sure, they are! Can they get better? Of course! Does negative rumor-mongering hurt the war effort? Of course! Senator, I disagree with the very premise of your question. The president is not a lying weasel bent on re-introducing the draft, and his mother did not wear army boots!"
Can we elect Allawi to something here? He seems to be a good, tough guy. He might be able to whip some of these blue states into shape.
Someone should search Democratic statements for the phrase "sugar coat" over the past few years prior to the forgery of the CBS documents. Then you'd have your culprit.
It amuses me when the Democrats claim that they are going to fight the war "smarter" when they don't want to fight the war at all. I get the feeling "smarter" means "on paper, from a think tank at Harvard." I have no idea what "more sensitive" could possibly have meant.
I noticed something the other day. Last weekend, C-SPAN was following Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, walking around surveying hurricane-related damage. Where was Trent Lott? Home in Mississippi, sending folks from there over to help Sessions and the people of Alabama. But where, I wondered, was North Carolina Senator John Edwards? Why, he was rampaging through battleground states like Ohio and Iowa! What a great example of constituent service. If I were a North Carolinian, I would be fed up with this self-serving politician, and I would want to know why he couldn’t bother to show up in his own storm-ravaged state to check on his own people. Some family values he's got.
Speaking of family values, have you noticed that after a brief roll-out of the notion that Republicans don't have a monopoly on values and that Democrat "issues" and "programs" ARE American values--you haven't heard word one on it again? I guess the family values thing didn't go over. So, since it was a gimmick to begin with, they've pitched it in the trash and (forgive the expression) moved on.
My, we live in interesting times.
Monday, September 20, 2004
HOW COME NO ONE'S NOTICED THE IRAQI WAR IS OVER?
FIGHTING IN IRAQ IS NOT THE SAME AS FIGHTING WITH IRAQ
I'm sick to death of hearing Democrats say the President was wrong on Iraq. They complain that we're in a "quagmire," that the President said we'd be welcomed as liberators but now we're "occupiers," that the war was supposed to be a "cake walk," that there were no links to terrorism and no WMDs, and so on and so on and so on.
But the President was right and they're the ones who were wrong. Before this war, the Democrats predicted tens of thousands of casualties, a long and protracted war against an intractable regime, starvation and misery and strife for endless ages as we plundered and pillaged the people of Iraq (you know--just like Vietnam.) They were predicting this before the war began, and as soon as the war was over they started revising history to do their best to make it true.
But it's not.
Let's get one thing straight right now. The Iraqi war is OVER. No one seems to have noticed it, but the war with Iraq initially ended when Saddam fell, and fully and technically ended on June 28, when Iraq officially became an independent nation with which the United States is NOT at WAR.
A war is a condition of enmity between two governments. The government of Iraq is not only friendly to us, it is dependent on our help and goodwill. We are allies, even if not equals.
The war that took place and is now over was against an Iraqi government led by Saddam Hussein. That war took very little time and resulted in the toppling of Saddam (and all his hideous statuary). While the Saddam regime was out and no other Iraqi government was yet in, the Coalition Provisional Government ran things. We were also not at war with the CPG. There is an immense difference between being attacked by rebel forces within a nation and being in a condition of war with the government of that nation.
When we entered Iraq and toppled the government, though the media and the left (and even many on the right) have convenient amnesia on the subject, we WERE welcomed as liberators. Have we so soon forgotten the joyous Iraqis beating statues with their shoes and shouting, "Thank you, Mister Bush!"? Have we no memory of the thousands being helped by the Coalition forces to seek their loved ones in mass graves and the remains of Saddam's horrible prisons? Just because they want us out now doesn't obliterate the fact that they welcomed us as liberators THEN.
I don't recall the President telling us that it was going to be finished in a few weeks. I don't remember being under the impression that resistance fighters would not continue their insurgency. And I do remember that the ravenous murderers that were trained by Saddam Hussein were said to be capable of anything against either Coalition forces or the Iraqi people.
Moreover, there is a direct connection between Iraq and terrorism. You may say, "Sure, NOW there is," but do you really think that if we had invaded France and toppled ITS government that it would suddenly fill up with psychotic kidnapping thugs? Iraq was a haven for terrorists--whether al Qaeda or not shouldn't make any difference. The idea that we shouldn't be in Iraq because our enemies are soulless and bloodthirsty is ridiculous. The fact that they kidnap innocents, behead people, blow up children, and generally (sorry John Kerry) outdo Genghis Khan in their brutality and madness--that very fact should argue FOR utterly destroying them.
That said, I'll concede that we have found no completed weapons of mass destruction. The combined intelligence of the United Nations, the United States, the British, the Russians, and everyone else (including, some reports indicate, Saddam himself) were utterly convincing in their assumption that Saddam had them. Many today still think he did, but hid them somewhere before we got there. We have found the precursors and the makings of such things. We have found the manuals for making them. We have found the computers containing plans and plots and schemes to make and use biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons of various kinds.
What is NOT in question is that Saddam violated the UN resolutions demanding his transparent disarmament. There's a lot of hand-wringing about how we "didn't let the inspectors do their job." But the fact is that it was Saddam and his regime that was preventing the inspectors from doing their job. Remember: they were U.N. INSPECTORS, not DETECTIVES. They were not charged with sneaking around Iraq poking into hidey-holes and guessing at where WMDs might be hiding.
They were supposed to INSPECT the weapons Saddam had and his records of having destroyed the illegal ones. They were supposed to be INVITED to look at these things, not sent on wild goose chases, "minded" 24 hours a day, and controlled by the regime. Perhaps that is why they were so awful at the job. They didn't want to look, because they weren't supposed to have to. So they only looked where they were permitted to, and odds are good that Saddam and his minions just moved things around. How else can you explain their unwillingness to let the inspectors go wherever they wanted to? If they weren't hiding something, why was so much off-limits?
Just because the world's suspicions have so far come up empty doesn't mean Saddam didn't invite invasion. He didn't comply with the UN resolutions, he didn't cooperate for a decade, he didn't even attempt to fulfill the agreement he himself signed following Gulf War One. We had every legal and moral right to go in and force compliance.
And once we got there, we discovered just how battered and abused the Iraqi people really were. One of the problems we now have is that it's not easy to teach people self-sufficiency when they've been dependent on a tyrant all their lives. The Iraqi people knew they wanted freedom; they've just never tried it before, and it's a little tricky at first. Look at how many people STILL sign up to be policemen and national guardsmen and security forces--even when standing outside such an installation is a virtual ticket to eternity by way of car bomb.
We are at war with terrorists. Of that, there is no question. And we have no idea how long that war will go on.
Terrorists have no government. They have no negotiators. They have only ideological drive and murderous intent. Anyone can be a terrorist, while not everyone can be a citizen of whatever nation they happen to pick. The state of terrorism has no borders. It has no diplomats to deal with, no resources to trade, and no value to civilized nations. With this maddeningly stubborn enemy we are in a war for the survival of Western civilization.
But no matter what you hear, never forget: We are NOT at war with Iraq. We HAD a war with Iraq.
And we WON.
I'm sick to death of hearing Democrats say the President was wrong on Iraq. They complain that we're in a "quagmire," that the President said we'd be welcomed as liberators but now we're "occupiers," that the war was supposed to be a "cake walk," that there were no links to terrorism and no WMDs, and so on and so on and so on.
But the President was right and they're the ones who were wrong. Before this war, the Democrats predicted tens of thousands of casualties, a long and protracted war against an intractable regime, starvation and misery and strife for endless ages as we plundered and pillaged the people of Iraq (you know--just like Vietnam.) They were predicting this before the war began, and as soon as the war was over they started revising history to do their best to make it true.
But it's not.
Let's get one thing straight right now. The Iraqi war is OVER. No one seems to have noticed it, but the war with Iraq initially ended when Saddam fell, and fully and technically ended on June 28, when Iraq officially became an independent nation with which the United States is NOT at WAR.
A war is a condition of enmity between two governments. The government of Iraq is not only friendly to us, it is dependent on our help and goodwill. We are allies, even if not equals.
The war that took place and is now over was against an Iraqi government led by Saddam Hussein. That war took very little time and resulted in the toppling of Saddam (and all his hideous statuary). While the Saddam regime was out and no other Iraqi government was yet in, the Coalition Provisional Government ran things. We were also not at war with the CPG. There is an immense difference between being attacked by rebel forces within a nation and being in a condition of war with the government of that nation.
When we entered Iraq and toppled the government, though the media and the left (and even many on the right) have convenient amnesia on the subject, we WERE welcomed as liberators. Have we so soon forgotten the joyous Iraqis beating statues with their shoes and shouting, "Thank you, Mister Bush!"? Have we no memory of the thousands being helped by the Coalition forces to seek their loved ones in mass graves and the remains of Saddam's horrible prisons? Just because they want us out now doesn't obliterate the fact that they welcomed us as liberators THEN.
I don't recall the President telling us that it was going to be finished in a few weeks. I don't remember being under the impression that resistance fighters would not continue their insurgency. And I do remember that the ravenous murderers that were trained by Saddam Hussein were said to be capable of anything against either Coalition forces or the Iraqi people.
Moreover, there is a direct connection between Iraq and terrorism. You may say, "Sure, NOW there is," but do you really think that if we had invaded France and toppled ITS government that it would suddenly fill up with psychotic kidnapping thugs? Iraq was a haven for terrorists--whether al Qaeda or not shouldn't make any difference. The idea that we shouldn't be in Iraq because our enemies are soulless and bloodthirsty is ridiculous. The fact that they kidnap innocents, behead people, blow up children, and generally (sorry John Kerry) outdo Genghis Khan in their brutality and madness--that very fact should argue FOR utterly destroying them.
That said, I'll concede that we have found no completed weapons of mass destruction. The combined intelligence of the United Nations, the United States, the British, the Russians, and everyone else (including, some reports indicate, Saddam himself) were utterly convincing in their assumption that Saddam had them. Many today still think he did, but hid them somewhere before we got there. We have found the precursors and the makings of such things. We have found the manuals for making them. We have found the computers containing plans and plots and schemes to make and use biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons of various kinds.
What is NOT in question is that Saddam violated the UN resolutions demanding his transparent disarmament. There's a lot of hand-wringing about how we "didn't let the inspectors do their job." But the fact is that it was Saddam and his regime that was preventing the inspectors from doing their job. Remember: they were U.N. INSPECTORS, not DETECTIVES. They were not charged with sneaking around Iraq poking into hidey-holes and guessing at where WMDs might be hiding.
They were supposed to INSPECT the weapons Saddam had and his records of having destroyed the illegal ones. They were supposed to be INVITED to look at these things, not sent on wild goose chases, "minded" 24 hours a day, and controlled by the regime. Perhaps that is why they were so awful at the job. They didn't want to look, because they weren't supposed to have to. So they only looked where they were permitted to, and odds are good that Saddam and his minions just moved things around. How else can you explain their unwillingness to let the inspectors go wherever they wanted to? If they weren't hiding something, why was so much off-limits?
Just because the world's suspicions have so far come up empty doesn't mean Saddam didn't invite invasion. He didn't comply with the UN resolutions, he didn't cooperate for a decade, he didn't even attempt to fulfill the agreement he himself signed following Gulf War One. We had every legal and moral right to go in and force compliance.
And once we got there, we discovered just how battered and abused the Iraqi people really were. One of the problems we now have is that it's not easy to teach people self-sufficiency when they've been dependent on a tyrant all their lives. The Iraqi people knew they wanted freedom; they've just never tried it before, and it's a little tricky at first. Look at how many people STILL sign up to be policemen and national guardsmen and security forces--even when standing outside such an installation is a virtual ticket to eternity by way of car bomb.
We are at war with terrorists. Of that, there is no question. And we have no idea how long that war will go on.
Terrorists have no government. They have no negotiators. They have only ideological drive and murderous intent. Anyone can be a terrorist, while not everyone can be a citizen of whatever nation they happen to pick. The state of terrorism has no borders. It has no diplomats to deal with, no resources to trade, and no value to civilized nations. With this maddeningly stubborn enemy we are in a war for the survival of Western civilization.
But no matter what you hear, never forget: We are NOT at war with Iraq. We HAD a war with Iraq.
And we WON.
Friday, September 17, 2004
"EVERY UNION SOLDIER WAS DOWNED BY A DEMOCRAT"
RACE, REALITY, AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
"Every union soldier was downed by a Democrat" was a Republican slogan for many years after the Civil War ended. We should think about resurrecting it. It's a lot (as Bill O'Reilly would say) pithier than most of the nonsense that passes for political rhetoric these days ("Stronger at home, respected in the world." Huh?) It's short and to the point. And it's true.
As in any political season, as we run down to the wire, the race card flips out of the Democratic deck, and the left seems to think it can partner up with "Bush lied, kids died" to form a trump suit. Surely by now we are smarter than that.
Aren't we?
I can't say I was surprised by the news that the Media Fund is running blatantly race-baiting ads in minority-heavy communities, but I have to admit I frequently wonder just how much they can get away with.
It was bad enough when the Dems ran ads equating the GOP with church arsonists (it is little known, by the way, but the fact is that the bulk of that "epidemic" of church arsons was perpetrated by Satanists and other anti-Christian nutballs). But now the Democrats have come so close to taking off the mask of tolerance it seems likely that any day now they will let slip their real agenda.
After all, can a party that bungled a political dirty trick as badly as this one did with the "Bush was AWOL" story possibly sustain itself much longer? Any school child could have identified the font on those documents as computer-generated. Anyone with half a brain (or, as Mrs. Kerry thinks of them, resisters of Mr. Kerry's health proposals) could tell you that no one in their right mind would use the term "CYA" in writing a memo to himself to do something nefarious. It's like writing a list you leave in your car when you have it detailed that reads: "Buy gun. Buy rope. Kill Bob. Pick up dry cleaning."
The 60 Minutes documents are about as hard to refute as the Encyclopedia Brown villain who doesn't know that ancient coins don't have "B.C." stamped on them.
But here we have, on another track, another example of the Democrats' seemingly inexhaustible capacity for underestimating the intelligence of the American public. They seem especially certain of their ability to deceive minorities with feats of transparent misdirection. Consider these new ads. Apparently, they are targeted to black voters, and they assert that when President Bush talks about success in America, he's not talking about black Americans. They also claim that when Bush says we're turning a corner, "he's not talking about the corners in YOUR neighborhood."
The voiceover is a black man (although I remember Johnny Cochran teaching us that black voices aren't distinguishable from white ones). The ads urge minority voters to quit being "played" by the Republicans, who will allegedly be trying to prevent them from voting, and call the president a "rich white man." (John Kerry, one assumes, is only using "rich white man" as a clever disguise. He's really a small blonde black woman with a slight limp.)
By any means necessary, as they used to say.
The other day, John Kerry told an audience that the President has put the "no minorities allowed" sign on the White House door.
I wonder how Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Mel Martinez, Elaine Chao, and Rod Paige (among others) manage to go to work (excuse me, "slavery") in the morning.
It is amazing that a party that did so little to bring black talent to the forefront during its past administrations has the nerve to accuse the Republican Party of being anti-minority. Perhaps the Democrats have a little memory problem. Let me help.
It was not the Democratic party that was founded explicitly to abolish the scourge of slavery in these United States. It was, in fact, the Republican party. Moreover, the Democrats were the party that attempted to dissolve the Union in its desperate effort to retain the ungodly, inhuman, murderous practice of buying, selling, and owning human beings. Hundreds of thousands of good men, white and black, died in the fight to legally destroy the practice of slavery. The Democrats cared more for their tradition of exploitation than either the Constitution or the unity of the nation.
Guess we forgot that, huh?
And the one party that ran the South as a virtual prison for black people for a hundred extra, unnecessary tragic years was not the Republican party. It was the Democrats. It was the Southern Democratic party that terrorized and tortured black people (and Republicans) in the private fiefdoms that every Southern county became. The Republicans couldn't even get ballot access in the South, because the Democratic party was the only party there was.
Oh, yeah. Forgot that, too.
It's really amazing that the Democratic party has managed to create a mythology that claims that racist Southern Democrats left their party because they were so much more comfortable with the evil Republicans. Actually, the Republicans didn't become racists--Democrats became Republicans, hoping to have some chance of gaining elective office in the good-old-boy closed system of the South. Maybe some of them were racists, but it wasn't becoming Republicans that made them so. And after a while, most of them got over it.
The Civil Rights Act wouldn't have passed if it weren't for Republicans. It wasn't the Republican party divided by racism--it was the Democrats. It wasn't Republicans who joined the Klan and the White Supremacist parties. And maybe we could recall for just a minute who's been running this misbegotten "war on poverty" that has only succeeded in driving men out of their families, children out of their homes, and hope out of the hearts of millions of fine black men and women. Who runs the system? Did Republicans invent the dependency system of welfare? Did Republicans encourage men and women to avoid marriage to get more state benefits? Do the Republicans perpetuate programs to make bureaucrats rich and poor people miserable?
No, that would be the Democrats again.
And why don't people like Al Sharpton ask some pointed questions of their oh-so-close white liberal friends in the Democratic party?
Like, why is it that the only black on the Supreme Court was appointed by a Republican? How come Democrats can't find it in their hearts to put black folk in real positions of power? How come the leaders of the Democratic ticket are as white as they come? Who's that white guy that runs the party? How come so few of the blacks in Congress have real leadership positions? Why are Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and Rod Paige Republicans? Why was the first black man to run for President in a party primary (Alan Keyes) a Republican? Why is it that an unknown governor from a miniscule state like Vermont can be touted as the Next Big Thing and supported by the Democratic party, while long-time loyalists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Maynard Ferguson and Andrew Young are considered lesser lights--and when Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun ran for office, even the party didn't think they had a chance?
And let's talk about policy. How come Democrat politicians are so adamant in their opposition to school vouchers when black parents are practically standing on top of their cars screaming for them? Don't they mean it when they say they care about educating children? Or do they really just mean they care about making sure the people who aren't educating children don't lose their jobs? What policies do the Democratic party pursue that actually help black people--or any people? Explain just how creating dependency makes people stronger.
Maybe the "leadership" of the black community should be giving the Democratic party some tough scrutiny these days. After faithfully delivering better than 90% of the vote for decades, what have they got? They got a 40% share of the Democratic convention. So what? The candidate still doesn't have a plan to do anything but throw money into programs that have never worked in the first place.
And you know what's really insulting?
Here we have a major 527 of a major party basically assuming that YOU, the "black voter" in "YOUR neighborhood" aren't going to be affected by the president's plan for "America." You, black voter, are not part of the America of privilege. We know this, because we are Democrats, and we realize that all blacks are poor, ignorant, and live in bad neighborhoods. In fact, we ASSUME the neighborhood is bad because YOU live in it.
Think about it.
The Democrats are assuming that black voters, by DEFINITION, are excluded from the president's economic policies, even though there is no way that money can see your color. Democrats assume that black people are neither Dr. Cosby nor Dr. Dre. In fact, they have castigated Dr. Cosby for criticizing black parents who aren't teaching their children manners. Democrats don't bother with manners, because they think they might offend someone by demanding standards of civility and decorum. They think this because they don't live in black neighborhoods. Even if they live next door to black people, they don't think of them as (whisper) "black."
This is going to be brutal, but it's a truth the Democrats and those who vote for them need to face.
The Democratic party has a completely unhealthy preoccupation with race because it's run by white liberals who can't let go of their own 300-year (or more) history of racism. To this day, they can't see people as people. To this very minute, they can't stop categorizing everyone by skin color.
Oh, they don't wear sheets and burn crosses (but they have been known to both burn and wear flags, though not simultaneously). They don't put "whites only" signs on their fountains. Instead, they condescend to blacks by treating them as children, by assuming that they can't achieve on their own, and by setting them on a separate track than they themselves would follow.
Look at the speeches at the Democratic convention. How did the "son of a mill worker" get where he is today? (Where he is today, though he didn't mention it, is in the highest reaches of wealth in America, a perch to which he flew by destroying OB-GYN doctors as a trial lawyer.) How did any of them achieve? Why, the same way Republicans did, of course. They worked hard, did the right things, lived right, and kept going. All politicians did--and those who didn't learn quickly to align themselves with those who did or to find a small moment of deprivation in their lives from which to biographically recover.
What they never do is use the welfare system as a stepping stone to success. What we never hear is how a Democrat politician learned from her social worker how to become self-sufficient and get off welfare and start her own business. What the Democrats never trot out are people who have risen from the ashes of poverty on the winds of welfare. Even if they could find such people, they wouldn't showcase them because Democrats actually agree with Republicans that welfare is not something to be proud of.
Republicans see a successful welfare program as one that ends because all of its clients move into a higher economic bracket. Democrats see a successful welfare program as one that lives on forever, growing larger and larger, encompassing more and more people. Republicans create programs to help people grow out of welfare. Democrats write grants for programs to go out and find more people to put in the system.
What may be most insulting of all is the way the Democratic party uses, rather than welcomes, black people. A person who is black who votes is, to Democrats, a "black voter." A politician who is black is a "black politician." A civil rights activist who is black is a "black leader." A Republican who is black is an "Uncle Tom."
Democrats define race not only by skin color, but also by levels of agreement with the positions of the Democratic party. Just like in slavery times, the left labels people "good" or "bad" blacks based on their willingness to take direction. There are, in Democrat terms, "our" blacks, and "their" blacks--"their" blacks are inauthentic because they have failed to develop the proper opinions for black people--which are easily discerned from a careful study of great black leaders like Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung, and William Jefferson Clinton.
So now the Media Fund wants to hammer home the point that President Bush isn't black. That's hardly a surprise. But the fact is that John Kerry isn't either, so if we follow the multicultural line of logic, Kerry cannot truly represent black people either. Is there something coming down the line that we aren't yet aware of? Do the hopelessly white Kerry and Edwards plan to put Al Sharpton and Carol Mosely Braun in the cabinet? From the way the commercials run, it sounds more like they want us to think they will put 50-cent and Nelly in there.
Don't get played by the Republicans?
At least Republicans play fair.
"Every union soldier was downed by a Democrat" was a Republican slogan for many years after the Civil War ended. We should think about resurrecting it. It's a lot (as Bill O'Reilly would say) pithier than most of the nonsense that passes for political rhetoric these days ("Stronger at home, respected in the world." Huh?) It's short and to the point. And it's true.
As in any political season, as we run down to the wire, the race card flips out of the Democratic deck, and the left seems to think it can partner up with "Bush lied, kids died" to form a trump suit. Surely by now we are smarter than that.
Aren't we?
I can't say I was surprised by the news that the Media Fund is running blatantly race-baiting ads in minority-heavy communities, but I have to admit I frequently wonder just how much they can get away with.
It was bad enough when the Dems ran ads equating the GOP with church arsonists (it is little known, by the way, but the fact is that the bulk of that "epidemic" of church arsons was perpetrated by Satanists and other anti-Christian nutballs). But now the Democrats have come so close to taking off the mask of tolerance it seems likely that any day now they will let slip their real agenda.
After all, can a party that bungled a political dirty trick as badly as this one did with the "Bush was AWOL" story possibly sustain itself much longer? Any school child could have identified the font on those documents as computer-generated. Anyone with half a brain (or, as Mrs. Kerry thinks of them, resisters of Mr. Kerry's health proposals) could tell you that no one in their right mind would use the term "CYA" in writing a memo to himself to do something nefarious. It's like writing a list you leave in your car when you have it detailed that reads: "Buy gun. Buy rope. Kill Bob. Pick up dry cleaning."
The 60 Minutes documents are about as hard to refute as the Encyclopedia Brown villain who doesn't know that ancient coins don't have "B.C." stamped on them.
But here we have, on another track, another example of the Democrats' seemingly inexhaustible capacity for underestimating the intelligence of the American public. They seem especially certain of their ability to deceive minorities with feats of transparent misdirection. Consider these new ads. Apparently, they are targeted to black voters, and they assert that when President Bush talks about success in America, he's not talking about black Americans. They also claim that when Bush says we're turning a corner, "he's not talking about the corners in YOUR neighborhood."
The voiceover is a black man (although I remember Johnny Cochran teaching us that black voices aren't distinguishable from white ones). The ads urge minority voters to quit being "played" by the Republicans, who will allegedly be trying to prevent them from voting, and call the president a "rich white man." (John Kerry, one assumes, is only using "rich white man" as a clever disguise. He's really a small blonde black woman with a slight limp.)
By any means necessary, as they used to say.
The other day, John Kerry told an audience that the President has put the "no minorities allowed" sign on the White House door.
I wonder how Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Mel Martinez, Elaine Chao, and Rod Paige (among others) manage to go to work (excuse me, "slavery") in the morning.
It is amazing that a party that did so little to bring black talent to the forefront during its past administrations has the nerve to accuse the Republican Party of being anti-minority. Perhaps the Democrats have a little memory problem. Let me help.
It was not the Democratic party that was founded explicitly to abolish the scourge of slavery in these United States. It was, in fact, the Republican party. Moreover, the Democrats were the party that attempted to dissolve the Union in its desperate effort to retain the ungodly, inhuman, murderous practice of buying, selling, and owning human beings. Hundreds of thousands of good men, white and black, died in the fight to legally destroy the practice of slavery. The Democrats cared more for their tradition of exploitation than either the Constitution or the unity of the nation.
Guess we forgot that, huh?
And the one party that ran the South as a virtual prison for black people for a hundred extra, unnecessary tragic years was not the Republican party. It was the Democrats. It was the Southern Democratic party that terrorized and tortured black people (and Republicans) in the private fiefdoms that every Southern county became. The Republicans couldn't even get ballot access in the South, because the Democratic party was the only party there was.
Oh, yeah. Forgot that, too.
It's really amazing that the Democratic party has managed to create a mythology that claims that racist Southern Democrats left their party because they were so much more comfortable with the evil Republicans. Actually, the Republicans didn't become racists--Democrats became Republicans, hoping to have some chance of gaining elective office in the good-old-boy closed system of the South. Maybe some of them were racists, but it wasn't becoming Republicans that made them so. And after a while, most of them got over it.
The Civil Rights Act wouldn't have passed if it weren't for Republicans. It wasn't the Republican party divided by racism--it was the Democrats. It wasn't Republicans who joined the Klan and the White Supremacist parties. And maybe we could recall for just a minute who's been running this misbegotten "war on poverty" that has only succeeded in driving men out of their families, children out of their homes, and hope out of the hearts of millions of fine black men and women. Who runs the system? Did Republicans invent the dependency system of welfare? Did Republicans encourage men and women to avoid marriage to get more state benefits? Do the Republicans perpetuate programs to make bureaucrats rich and poor people miserable?
No, that would be the Democrats again.
And why don't people like Al Sharpton ask some pointed questions of their oh-so-close white liberal friends in the Democratic party?
Like, why is it that the only black on the Supreme Court was appointed by a Republican? How come Democrats can't find it in their hearts to put black folk in real positions of power? How come the leaders of the Democratic ticket are as white as they come? Who's that white guy that runs the party? How come so few of the blacks in Congress have real leadership positions? Why are Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and Rod Paige Republicans? Why was the first black man to run for President in a party primary (Alan Keyes) a Republican? Why is it that an unknown governor from a miniscule state like Vermont can be touted as the Next Big Thing and supported by the Democratic party, while long-time loyalists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Maynard Ferguson and Andrew Young are considered lesser lights--and when Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun ran for office, even the party didn't think they had a chance?
And let's talk about policy. How come Democrat politicians are so adamant in their opposition to school vouchers when black parents are practically standing on top of their cars screaming for them? Don't they mean it when they say they care about educating children? Or do they really just mean they care about making sure the people who aren't educating children don't lose their jobs? What policies do the Democratic party pursue that actually help black people--or any people? Explain just how creating dependency makes people stronger.
Maybe the "leadership" of the black community should be giving the Democratic party some tough scrutiny these days. After faithfully delivering better than 90% of the vote for decades, what have they got? They got a 40% share of the Democratic convention. So what? The candidate still doesn't have a plan to do anything but throw money into programs that have never worked in the first place.
And you know what's really insulting?
Here we have a major 527 of a major party basically assuming that YOU, the "black voter" in "YOUR neighborhood" aren't going to be affected by the president's plan for "America." You, black voter, are not part of the America of privilege. We know this, because we are Democrats, and we realize that all blacks are poor, ignorant, and live in bad neighborhoods. In fact, we ASSUME the neighborhood is bad because YOU live in it.
Think about it.
The Democrats are assuming that black voters, by DEFINITION, are excluded from the president's economic policies, even though there is no way that money can see your color. Democrats assume that black people are neither Dr. Cosby nor Dr. Dre. In fact, they have castigated Dr. Cosby for criticizing black parents who aren't teaching their children manners. Democrats don't bother with manners, because they think they might offend someone by demanding standards of civility and decorum. They think this because they don't live in black neighborhoods. Even if they live next door to black people, they don't think of them as (whisper) "black."
This is going to be brutal, but it's a truth the Democrats and those who vote for them need to face.
The Democratic party has a completely unhealthy preoccupation with race because it's run by white liberals who can't let go of their own 300-year (or more) history of racism. To this day, they can't see people as people. To this very minute, they can't stop categorizing everyone by skin color.
Oh, they don't wear sheets and burn crosses (but they have been known to both burn and wear flags, though not simultaneously). They don't put "whites only" signs on their fountains. Instead, they condescend to blacks by treating them as children, by assuming that they can't achieve on their own, and by setting them on a separate track than they themselves would follow.
Look at the speeches at the Democratic convention. How did the "son of a mill worker" get where he is today? (Where he is today, though he didn't mention it, is in the highest reaches of wealth in America, a perch to which he flew by destroying OB-GYN doctors as a trial lawyer.) How did any of them achieve? Why, the same way Republicans did, of course. They worked hard, did the right things, lived right, and kept going. All politicians did--and those who didn't learn quickly to align themselves with those who did or to find a small moment of deprivation in their lives from which to biographically recover.
What they never do is use the welfare system as a stepping stone to success. What we never hear is how a Democrat politician learned from her social worker how to become self-sufficient and get off welfare and start her own business. What the Democrats never trot out are people who have risen from the ashes of poverty on the winds of welfare. Even if they could find such people, they wouldn't showcase them because Democrats actually agree with Republicans that welfare is not something to be proud of.
Republicans see a successful welfare program as one that ends because all of its clients move into a higher economic bracket. Democrats see a successful welfare program as one that lives on forever, growing larger and larger, encompassing more and more people. Republicans create programs to help people grow out of welfare. Democrats write grants for programs to go out and find more people to put in the system.
What may be most insulting of all is the way the Democratic party uses, rather than welcomes, black people. A person who is black who votes is, to Democrats, a "black voter." A politician who is black is a "black politician." A civil rights activist who is black is a "black leader." A Republican who is black is an "Uncle Tom."
Democrats define race not only by skin color, but also by levels of agreement with the positions of the Democratic party. Just like in slavery times, the left labels people "good" or "bad" blacks based on their willingness to take direction. There are, in Democrat terms, "our" blacks, and "their" blacks--"their" blacks are inauthentic because they have failed to develop the proper opinions for black people--which are easily discerned from a careful study of great black leaders like Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung, and William Jefferson Clinton.
So now the Media Fund wants to hammer home the point that President Bush isn't black. That's hardly a surprise. But the fact is that John Kerry isn't either, so if we follow the multicultural line of logic, Kerry cannot truly represent black people either. Is there something coming down the line that we aren't yet aware of? Do the hopelessly white Kerry and Edwards plan to put Al Sharpton and Carol Mosely Braun in the cabinet? From the way the commercials run, it sounds more like they want us to think they will put 50-cent and Nelly in there.
Don't get played by the Republicans?
At least Republicans play fair.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
SENATOR KERRY, DO YOU HAVE A MINUTE?
TEN QUESTIONS NOBODY'S GOING TO ASK KERRY AT THE DEBATES
1.) Senator Kerry, you said in July that you believe that "life begins at conception." Yet you have a near-perfect record on opposing legislation that would reduce the availability of abortion, even partial-birth abortion. Can you assure pro-choice voters that you have so little core conviction that you will protect their interests as president? Or can you assure pro-life voters that you aren't just a lying weasel and you might entertain some of the same kinds of abortion-reducing legislation president Bush has signed?
2.) Senator, can you cite one piece of legislation you have sponsored in the last 19 years, why you did, and what effect it has had on the lives of Americans?
3.) Senator Kerry, I'm a Vietnam veteran. Would you like to apologize to me for telling American legislators that I and my comrades in arms committed atrocities during the Vietnam War on "a daily basis?"
4.) Senator Kerry, you have said that any attack on the US would be met with a swift and sure response. Could you be more specific as to what form that response would likely take?
5.) Senator Kerry, do you now believe that the first Persian Gulf War was the right thing to do, and if so do you regret not voting to authorize that war?
6.) Senator, your team has criticized President Bush for disappearing during 3 months while he was in the Texas Air National Guard. You have said he did not fulfill his duty. You have been absent for 92% of the most recent session of the Senate, the job you now hold and one which you pledged to do for the people of Massachusetts. Would you please release all your travel records for the past Senate session so we can see what was so important that you had to miss all those votes?
7.) Senator Kerry, one of your surrogates, Max Cleland, recently referred to Bush and Cheney as "pure evil." Do you think that kind of language goes over the line, even in the heat of a political campaign? Also, various elements of your campaign have either hinted or outright said that the President compares unfavorably to Adolf Hitler. Do you think that is appropriate rhetoric to use about the commander in chief during a war?
8.) Just how many advisors are there on your campaign, and what do you need them for if you already know what you think?
9.) Senator Kerry, how much of the national security infrastructure will you keep on if you are elected president, and what safeguards would you employ to ensure that the security of the United States is not compromised by a radical change in administrations?
10.) Senator Kerry, would you autograph my copy of "Unfit for Command?"
1.) Senator Kerry, you said in July that you believe that "life begins at conception." Yet you have a near-perfect record on opposing legislation that would reduce the availability of abortion, even partial-birth abortion. Can you assure pro-choice voters that you have so little core conviction that you will protect their interests as president? Or can you assure pro-life voters that you aren't just a lying weasel and you might entertain some of the same kinds of abortion-reducing legislation president Bush has signed?
2.) Senator, can you cite one piece of legislation you have sponsored in the last 19 years, why you did, and what effect it has had on the lives of Americans?
3.) Senator Kerry, I'm a Vietnam veteran. Would you like to apologize to me for telling American legislators that I and my comrades in arms committed atrocities during the Vietnam War on "a daily basis?"
4.) Senator Kerry, you have said that any attack on the US would be met with a swift and sure response. Could you be more specific as to what form that response would likely take?
5.) Senator Kerry, do you now believe that the first Persian Gulf War was the right thing to do, and if so do you regret not voting to authorize that war?
6.) Senator, your team has criticized President Bush for disappearing during 3 months while he was in the Texas Air National Guard. You have said he did not fulfill his duty. You have been absent for 92% of the most recent session of the Senate, the job you now hold and one which you pledged to do for the people of Massachusetts. Would you please release all your travel records for the past Senate session so we can see what was so important that you had to miss all those votes?
7.) Senator Kerry, one of your surrogates, Max Cleland, recently referred to Bush and Cheney as "pure evil." Do you think that kind of language goes over the line, even in the heat of a political campaign? Also, various elements of your campaign have either hinted or outright said that the President compares unfavorably to Adolf Hitler. Do you think that is appropriate rhetoric to use about the commander in chief during a war?
8.) Just how many advisors are there on your campaign, and what do you need them for if you already know what you think?
9.) Senator Kerry, how much of the national security infrastructure will you keep on if you are elected president, and what safeguards would you employ to ensure that the security of the United States is not compromised by a radical change in administrations?
10.) Senator Kerry, would you autograph my copy of "Unfit for Command?"
Monday, September 13, 2004
THE BONESMAN AND HIS BOXES
THE UNNECESSARY CRUELTY OF KERRY'S CAMPAIGN PROVES HE IS UNFIT TO BE PRESIDENT
This weekend I saw the protest in Washington held by Vietnam veterans opposing John Kerry's candidacy, based on his actions after he left his Vietnam service to become a willing useful idiot for the North Vietnamese. Any American who saw this event should be on the warpath today. The speakers, many of whom had suppressed the horrible memories of Vietnam and its aftermath in their long and otherwise ordinary lives, related how Kerry's statements before the Congress and his "Winter Soldier evidence" made their lives more miserable--while they were in country, when they came back to this ungrateful country, and ever after, ever since.
Let me make this clear. My primary differences with John Kerry pre-exist my learning of the extent to which he manipulated his war record and treasonously gave the enemy what it wanted by way of confession. My cutpoint for Kerry comes in other character issues, policies, the people with whom he surrounds himself, and his generally untrustworthy, self-aggrandizing Brahmin nature. There is plenty of Kerry for me to reject him without resorting to the cold case files of Vietnam that have recently been opened on both sides (though not BY both sides.)
But perhaps the worst thing Kerry has done, perhaps the most egregiously selfish act of his entire life has been, paradoxically, to wrap himself in the American flag at the Democratic National Convention and declare himself to be "reporting for duty."
For those who have long harbored a visceral hatred of the Fonda-Kerry crowd--the kind of hatred one can only know after years of festering misery, frustration, and shame--the idea of a Kerry presidency is a slap in the face. It tells them that the "loving" flower children that spit on them and threw bags of feces on returning vets, even the disabled, were right all along. It signals to them the possibility that the country they bled for, the country their comrades-in-arms died for, the country they were tortured for, the country they have maintained a strained and desperate allegiance to, to this very day--that country has determined by election that their efforts were, in fact, in vain.
If John Kerry and his theory of American error is allowed to be taken as fact beyond the rarified halls of the academic, political, and media elite, it will be the last gutshot to a generation of fine young men who did their duty, were tortured for their loyalty, and came back to no reward. It will be the triumphant howl of the draft-dodger and the tenured radical shouting down the patriotic hymns of American exceptionalism that have, though battered, survived the ravages of time and the revisionists of history. It is a cruel and nasty form of piling on, one the radical element of the Democrat left cannot resist--but one that Kerry should have been a better man than to have participated in.
Regardless of the Swift Boat veterans' accusations, this was the wrong time to bring Vietnam back into the national consciousness. To bring up a still controversial and divisive war while we are in the middle of a war for the very survival of Western Civilization is utterly without precedent. It is foolish and it is dangerous.
For a supposedly principled politician to purposely drive a wedge between Americans at war by insisting on his vision of another war is an unconscionable use of his public access. So long as Vietnam remains the battleground of the American psyche, and so long as the Iraq War is used to stand in for Vietnam, this nation is at risk. If we cannot agree that the war on terror is, regardless of the past, a war of necessity, a war of survival, and a war we must win, we will remain paralyzed and polarized. The Democrats do not care enough for the safety of this nation in the 21st century to give up their quest to take home the trophy on Vietnam.
The veterans of Vietnam have gone on with their lives, doing their best to help make a nation, as their forebears of nearly every generation before has done. American gratitude to her fighting men (and now women) has always been a source of honor and dignity. America honors her war dead. And, until Kerry's beloved revolution came, she honored her returning soldiers, as well.
By this time, one would think the nation would have healed. But it never could, because the patriotism of the Vietnam veterans could never be spoken after the war. The forces of radical pacifism had, in their own minds, ended a war and brought down a president. They were ascendent. It was to be the Age of Aquarius, a peaceful, loving time. Everyone was supposed to move on with their lives.
Except, as is always the case with the left, they never bothered with the healing. While there were therapeutic circles to which one could turn to learn how to deal with Vietnam guilt, or to manage post-traumatic stress disorder, where were the reconciliations sought or apologies offered by those who had taunted, teased, and trashed the returning heroes in ways that would make Lord of the Flies look like a Bahai tea party? Where were the imprecations to the hippies and the radicals to apologize for their part in the vicious battle of hard-hats and long-hairs? Why is it the left is always forcing other people to apologize, even when they give as good as they get in the fight?
John Kerry, by claiming his right to the presidency rests on a single, painful, divisive moment of American history, has torn open this wound and now the maggots of the left are in full squirm. Make no mistake--whatever Kerry's motivation may have been, the far left loves this argument. They won't be satisfied until the last American flag has been burned and the last American soldier has been brought by the truth squads before their 21st century Red Guard (though today they've changed the uniform to blue, thanks to Comrade Rather). They won't rest until every child whose parent served "understands" who was "really" right. They can't, because they know that maintaining a lie requires constant vigilance. The truth will, if not artificially suppressed, denied, and re-written, rise to the surface and be found.
There are veterans of Vietnam who have never stopped hearing the shots in their heads and smelling the blood in their lonely late night. There are those who put their uniforms in a trunk somewhere and tried to forget and go on. When I was working on my dissertation, an analysis of the image of Vietnam veterans Hollywood gave us, I met many men whose anger and bitterness and rage at those who sent them was matched only by the same emotions for those who forced them into silence when they returned. The very idea of dragging these walking wounded back through one of the worst moments of their lives--with the intention of denigrating their choice to serve and remain loyal to the nation--is simply unthinkable. I cannot imagine the callousness that can deliberately, for partisan political gain, bring this horrific episode back to the stage.
John McCain, the still proud warrior who has risen to the top in politics and in the esteem of many, speaks little of his own experience as a prisoner of war in the so-called "Hanoi Hilton." When all of this came up, he refused to make comment on Kerry's Vietnam service. No one listened to him, but he wished out loud that we could leave this 35-year old episode to fade into history.
But Kerry didn't let that happen. Instead, he orchestrated (or allowed to be orchestrated) a convention whose front and center claim was that Kerry's fitness for office was to be judged not by his 20 years on the public payroll, but by his moment in the sun 35 years ago, when he was winning medals (and filming himself for posterity) in Vietnam. He allowed a book to be written that purported to tell the story of his stunning heroism. He claimed to be proud to have been a soldier.
But it could never have worked. Unless he is utterly self-absorbed, he must have known that there were veterans and their families who had never forgotten the misery his words had inflicted on them. He had to have known there were those whose first-hand knowledge would refute his claims. At the very least, he should have suspected that there might even be those out there willing to say anything, do anything to get revenge on him and keep him from being president.
Yet he came to Boston and stood in the teeth of those whose bodies had been tortured based on his testimony, those whose minds had been tortured by the image of themselves his self-serving words had painted, those whose children and grandchildren had never been able to get them to say a word about their experiences--because people like John Kerry had pre-empted the story. Once Kerry had won the American debate on Vietnam--quite literally so, on the Dick Cavett show in 1971, against the very John O'Neill that now spearheads Swift Boat Veterans for Truth--their voices would not be heard.
Having put in motion the cultural mechanism that would shut down any attempt the veterans could have made to tell their own stories, Kerry abandoned them, moving on to become a rather unremarkable, though well-connected, Senator. He could have stayed there. He could have even come to this very moment of his life, running for the presidency, without mentioning his Vietnam experience. He could have, like President Bush, included it only as an incidental part of the resume, one you might miss if you blinked during the convention. He could have challenged his fellow member of Yale's Skull and Bones on the basis of almost anything else you could imagine, any shared aspects of their lives and history. Or he could have just stuck to "the issues."
But he didn't.
He opened this box and showed us his medals. But they weren't really there, because he threw them away. Or maybe he didn't. Or maybe they were ribbons.
When his fellow Swift Boat officers replied to what they consider his egregious lies, Kerry tried to shut the box. He held it over his head like a banner, but he didn't want us to look in any more. Instead, he went looking for President Bush's box.
But President Bush hasn't made the contents of his box an issue in the campaign. Its contents aren't the basis of his qualification for office. They weren't last time, and now that he has a track record as president, they aren't this time, either.
And now other men are coming forward to show us what's in their boxes. Long sealed from public view, sources of shame and guilt, these boxes aren't shiny and nice like Kerry's--and most of them aren't inconsequential like Bush's.
Theirs are the boxes that no one wanted to look in. Their boxes are full of bones and fear, of frustrated ambitions, of limbs and loves lost, of trust betrayed, of dignity denied. Like zombies staggering through the graveyard, these men thrust their boxes forward at Kerry, demanding that he finally look, that he finally see. For in them are their ruined reputations, their mental anguish, the blood of comrades, and the spit of hippies.
And now Kerry doesn't want to look. He wants to talk about something else. He wants to run away to the safety of Social Security and health care and the economy. He wants the accusations to stop, the boxes to close, the men and women whose 30-plus years he stole to go away.
But this is the graveyard he made. Now let him lie in it.
This weekend I saw the protest in Washington held by Vietnam veterans opposing John Kerry's candidacy, based on his actions after he left his Vietnam service to become a willing useful idiot for the North Vietnamese. Any American who saw this event should be on the warpath today. The speakers, many of whom had suppressed the horrible memories of Vietnam and its aftermath in their long and otherwise ordinary lives, related how Kerry's statements before the Congress and his "Winter Soldier evidence" made their lives more miserable--while they were in country, when they came back to this ungrateful country, and ever after, ever since.
Let me make this clear. My primary differences with John Kerry pre-exist my learning of the extent to which he manipulated his war record and treasonously gave the enemy what it wanted by way of confession. My cutpoint for Kerry comes in other character issues, policies, the people with whom he surrounds himself, and his generally untrustworthy, self-aggrandizing Brahmin nature. There is plenty of Kerry for me to reject him without resorting to the cold case files of Vietnam that have recently been opened on both sides (though not BY both sides.)
But perhaps the worst thing Kerry has done, perhaps the most egregiously selfish act of his entire life has been, paradoxically, to wrap himself in the American flag at the Democratic National Convention and declare himself to be "reporting for duty."
For those who have long harbored a visceral hatred of the Fonda-Kerry crowd--the kind of hatred one can only know after years of festering misery, frustration, and shame--the idea of a Kerry presidency is a slap in the face. It tells them that the "loving" flower children that spit on them and threw bags of feces on returning vets, even the disabled, were right all along. It signals to them the possibility that the country they bled for, the country their comrades-in-arms died for, the country they were tortured for, the country they have maintained a strained and desperate allegiance to, to this very day--that country has determined by election that their efforts were, in fact, in vain.
If John Kerry and his theory of American error is allowed to be taken as fact beyond the rarified halls of the academic, political, and media elite, it will be the last gutshot to a generation of fine young men who did their duty, were tortured for their loyalty, and came back to no reward. It will be the triumphant howl of the draft-dodger and the tenured radical shouting down the patriotic hymns of American exceptionalism that have, though battered, survived the ravages of time and the revisionists of history. It is a cruel and nasty form of piling on, one the radical element of the Democrat left cannot resist--but one that Kerry should have been a better man than to have participated in.
Regardless of the Swift Boat veterans' accusations, this was the wrong time to bring Vietnam back into the national consciousness. To bring up a still controversial and divisive war while we are in the middle of a war for the very survival of Western Civilization is utterly without precedent. It is foolish and it is dangerous.
For a supposedly principled politician to purposely drive a wedge between Americans at war by insisting on his vision of another war is an unconscionable use of his public access. So long as Vietnam remains the battleground of the American psyche, and so long as the Iraq War is used to stand in for Vietnam, this nation is at risk. If we cannot agree that the war on terror is, regardless of the past, a war of necessity, a war of survival, and a war we must win, we will remain paralyzed and polarized. The Democrats do not care enough for the safety of this nation in the 21st century to give up their quest to take home the trophy on Vietnam.
The veterans of Vietnam have gone on with their lives, doing their best to help make a nation, as their forebears of nearly every generation before has done. American gratitude to her fighting men (and now women) has always been a source of honor and dignity. America honors her war dead. And, until Kerry's beloved revolution came, she honored her returning soldiers, as well.
By this time, one would think the nation would have healed. But it never could, because the patriotism of the Vietnam veterans could never be spoken after the war. The forces of radical pacifism had, in their own minds, ended a war and brought down a president. They were ascendent. It was to be the Age of Aquarius, a peaceful, loving time. Everyone was supposed to move on with their lives.
Except, as is always the case with the left, they never bothered with the healing. While there were therapeutic circles to which one could turn to learn how to deal with Vietnam guilt, or to manage post-traumatic stress disorder, where were the reconciliations sought or apologies offered by those who had taunted, teased, and trashed the returning heroes in ways that would make Lord of the Flies look like a Bahai tea party? Where were the imprecations to the hippies and the radicals to apologize for their part in the vicious battle of hard-hats and long-hairs? Why is it the left is always forcing other people to apologize, even when they give as good as they get in the fight?
John Kerry, by claiming his right to the presidency rests on a single, painful, divisive moment of American history, has torn open this wound and now the maggots of the left are in full squirm. Make no mistake--whatever Kerry's motivation may have been, the far left loves this argument. They won't be satisfied until the last American flag has been burned and the last American soldier has been brought by the truth squads before their 21st century Red Guard (though today they've changed the uniform to blue, thanks to Comrade Rather). They won't rest until every child whose parent served "understands" who was "really" right. They can't, because they know that maintaining a lie requires constant vigilance. The truth will, if not artificially suppressed, denied, and re-written, rise to the surface and be found.
There are veterans of Vietnam who have never stopped hearing the shots in their heads and smelling the blood in their lonely late night. There are those who put their uniforms in a trunk somewhere and tried to forget and go on. When I was working on my dissertation, an analysis of the image of Vietnam veterans Hollywood gave us, I met many men whose anger and bitterness and rage at those who sent them was matched only by the same emotions for those who forced them into silence when they returned. The very idea of dragging these walking wounded back through one of the worst moments of their lives--with the intention of denigrating their choice to serve and remain loyal to the nation--is simply unthinkable. I cannot imagine the callousness that can deliberately, for partisan political gain, bring this horrific episode back to the stage.
John McCain, the still proud warrior who has risen to the top in politics and in the esteem of many, speaks little of his own experience as a prisoner of war in the so-called "Hanoi Hilton." When all of this came up, he refused to make comment on Kerry's Vietnam service. No one listened to him, but he wished out loud that we could leave this 35-year old episode to fade into history.
But Kerry didn't let that happen. Instead, he orchestrated (or allowed to be orchestrated) a convention whose front and center claim was that Kerry's fitness for office was to be judged not by his 20 years on the public payroll, but by his moment in the sun 35 years ago, when he was winning medals (and filming himself for posterity) in Vietnam. He allowed a book to be written that purported to tell the story of his stunning heroism. He claimed to be proud to have been a soldier.
But it could never have worked. Unless he is utterly self-absorbed, he must have known that there were veterans and their families who had never forgotten the misery his words had inflicted on them. He had to have known there were those whose first-hand knowledge would refute his claims. At the very least, he should have suspected that there might even be those out there willing to say anything, do anything to get revenge on him and keep him from being president.
Yet he came to Boston and stood in the teeth of those whose bodies had been tortured based on his testimony, those whose minds had been tortured by the image of themselves his self-serving words had painted, those whose children and grandchildren had never been able to get them to say a word about their experiences--because people like John Kerry had pre-empted the story. Once Kerry had won the American debate on Vietnam--quite literally so, on the Dick Cavett show in 1971, against the very John O'Neill that now spearheads Swift Boat Veterans for Truth--their voices would not be heard.
Having put in motion the cultural mechanism that would shut down any attempt the veterans could have made to tell their own stories, Kerry abandoned them, moving on to become a rather unremarkable, though well-connected, Senator. He could have stayed there. He could have even come to this very moment of his life, running for the presidency, without mentioning his Vietnam experience. He could have, like President Bush, included it only as an incidental part of the resume, one you might miss if you blinked during the convention. He could have challenged his fellow member of Yale's Skull and Bones on the basis of almost anything else you could imagine, any shared aspects of their lives and history. Or he could have just stuck to "the issues."
But he didn't.
He opened this box and showed us his medals. But they weren't really there, because he threw them away. Or maybe he didn't. Or maybe they were ribbons.
When his fellow Swift Boat officers replied to what they consider his egregious lies, Kerry tried to shut the box. He held it over his head like a banner, but he didn't want us to look in any more. Instead, he went looking for President Bush's box.
But President Bush hasn't made the contents of his box an issue in the campaign. Its contents aren't the basis of his qualification for office. They weren't last time, and now that he has a track record as president, they aren't this time, either.
And now other men are coming forward to show us what's in their boxes. Long sealed from public view, sources of shame and guilt, these boxes aren't shiny and nice like Kerry's--and most of them aren't inconsequential like Bush's.
Theirs are the boxes that no one wanted to look in. Their boxes are full of bones and fear, of frustrated ambitions, of limbs and loves lost, of trust betrayed, of dignity denied. Like zombies staggering through the graveyard, these men thrust their boxes forward at Kerry, demanding that he finally look, that he finally see. For in them are their ruined reputations, their mental anguish, the blood of comrades, and the spit of hippies.
And now Kerry doesn't want to look. He wants to talk about something else. He wants to run away to the safety of Social Security and health care and the economy. He wants the accusations to stop, the boxes to close, the men and women whose 30-plus years he stole to go away.
But this is the graveyard he made. Now let him lie in it.
Friday, September 10, 2004
SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE AND WALKING THE TALK
WHY RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES LOVE BUSH AND WHY THEY'RE RIGHT
During the 2000 campaign, when George W. Bush was just a governor, I remember the moment I knew I would be voting for him.
It was in the middle of a primary debate, and the question to the panelists was "Who is your favorite political philosopher?" Without apology, yet with deep humility, the Texas governor replied, "Jesus Christ, because he changed my heart."
My conservative antenna went way up. I knew Bush was considered a favorite, but I didn't know all that much about him. I had though that the clear religious candidate was Alan Keyes, who had no chance to win. But here--here was a man unafraid to start a storm of controversy by openly declaring his allegiance to the "hateful" philosophy the Democrats and the ACLU had spent 8 years trying to bludgeon us away from.
And it wasn’t just that he said it. It was the way he said it. The words he used. The humility. The simplicity. The sincerity.
My discernment went on high alert, and I knew that statement came from his heart. It certainly wasn't going to come from any political advisor worth his or her paycheck.
And so I started to watch George W. Bush. And, more importantly, to listen to him.
That phrase, "changed my heart" is a telling one. It's the phrase of the evangelical, because it carries the evangelical assumption that being born again (or "born from above," "of the Spirit," as the Bible says) is not something you inherit or fall into. It's a moment or an evolution of moments that you can identify as a definite change of your very being. A new birth.
It rings truer than "changed my life," because people can change their lives through diet and exercise, having children, or watching Oprah (so I'm told.) But your "heart" only changes in a religious conversion. He was talking in code, and he was talking to us. In the center of the secular political arena, he had let the secret out. It was like drawing a fish in the dust of the coliseum.
When Bush had to face the question of letting Karla Faye Tucker die for her crimes, Pat Robertson lobbied to save her. After committing the horrific crimes for which Texas had given her the death penalty, Tucker had found Christ and led Bible studies. I have no doubt that she was sincere. But Governor Bush, following his own discernment, used his authority and meted out the justice she had earned. And even she didn't disagree with him.
At that point, I knew he had instincts beyond the political, because if he wanted to pander to a religious base, he would have done the easy thing and given in to Pat's pleadings. Pat was wrong on Karla Faye, as he was wrong to assume that just because God prompted him to run for president meant he was to win. As he later admitted, that might not have been in the plan. God had a plan for Pat's candidacy, and it would be a powerful force in political history--but it was Pat's flesh that expected victory. God wanted obedience.
When George W. carried out his duty as the governor, he took a small political hit, but he preserved the authority of the office he held. It would not be the last time that George W. Bush would fight for a principle against the winds of political expediency. He has developed a history of making unpopular decisions and sticking with them. And that makes us love him more.
When President Bush started talking about compassionate conservatism, few understood the ramifications of this grand vision. If you were in the Christian conservative camp, however, and politically aware (admittedly not that big a group), you recognized the influence of Marvin Olasky (The Tragedy of American Compassion--click below to buy through amazon.) If you listened to him talk about prison reform--even if you weren't all that political--you recognized the outlines of Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship, which had introduced rehabilitative religion into the prison system.
Al Gore tried to talk about his religion, and it rang hollow from a pro-choice politico whose sole driving force seemed to be the need to become president. Bush wanted it, seemed to think he was called to it--but he didn't ravenously desire it, he didn't need it to complete himself. He was comfortable in his own skin, the way Christians are when they have faced down their demons and moved on.
His inauguration speech was a masterpiece of spiritual exhortation. He called us to follow our American destiny, linking that destiny to something huge and unknowable to which we are called by God. Time and again, he acted as our national prophet/priest, evoking Biblical imagery as we dealt with the explosion of the space shuttle, and, of course, the tragedies of 9/11. Over and over, he told the citizens who met him on the rope lines, when they told him they were praying for him, "That's the most important thing you can do for a president." He didn't just talk the talk. He walked the walk.
One of the reasons we religious red folk love this president so much is that he truly is a praying man. We know from interviews he's done with "our" press that President G.W. Bush is a man of faith and prayer. (By "our" press, I mean the Christian media, not the ordinary kind, in whom we have little--you'll excuse the expression--faith.) We know that he is genuine pals with Billy and Franklin Graham--not just because he's president, but way before that. We know that he prayed about starting the war, and, unlike Dan Rather and Michael Moore, we find it reassuring, not alarming.
We know it from the people he's surrounded himself with--Vice President Cheney, whose wife Lynn is well known to us; Andrew Card, whose wife is a minister; Karen Hughes, who is so traditional she left her job with her president and her friend to be in-house mom to her teenage son; and, of course, John Ashcroft. And we even know it from the testimony of other familiar faces of the religious red--Franklin Graham, James Robison, Pat Robertson, J.C. Watts, Charles Colson, Rick Santorum, Michael Reagan, and John Danforth, to name just a few.
We also know that he prays for the nation on a daily basis, that he is driven to his knees by the weight of the office, just like Lincoln. As a friend of mine likes to say, "I feel good knowing that not only am I praying for my president--he's praying for me, too."
This is a feeling we did not have while the former resident of the Oval Office was there. It's not that we didn't pray for President Clinton, too, though. We did, though I confess I suspect much less enthusiastically than we do for Bush 43, and some of our prayers were likely along the lines of the "blessing for the Czar" from Fiddler on the Roof--"May God bless and keep the Czar…far away from us!"
And we know it from the people who oppose him, from the unreasoning, visceral hatred spewed by Hollywood actors, pro-choice and pro-gay activists, and the ever-more-obviously liberal media. If you look at the box office, you'll soon discern that for a nation of 250 million people, it would seem that there is no statistical majority going even to one movie a year. The media may be obsessed with Hollywood's comings and goings, with the couplings and de-couplings of people paid to pretend to be someone else--but the heartland really isn't listening.
The religious red have had it up to here with Hollywood and its horrible language and values leading our children into the abyss. We are doing all we can to protect them from the culture of hip-hop and lyrical hatred of America, its institutions, and its president. We are, as my pastor says, "different." We don't wear the latest fashions. We don't read the hot new novel. We don't see the movie that brings in millions and glorifies adultery or homosexuality or child prostitution or drug addiction, no matter how many academy awards it gets nominated for. We see movies we have to buy to get. We rent our movies at Christian stores, where statistics aren't collected.
You wouldn't know it from the media, by the way, but Christian bookstores (which are not counted in the New York Times best seller calculation) make up one-third of all bookstores in the nation. And Christian books make more money than all but the most over-paid secular authors (like Bill Clinton.) Think what that means for Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, authors of the end-times Left Behind thrillers. Those books repeatedly went to the New York Times list, even excluding their number one position on the Christian best-seller list. That means they are even more popular than the New York Times can imagine. And the New York Times hates that.
We don't care who Whoopi Goldberg wants us to vote for, or whether Ben Affleck will be appearing with John Kerry. We won't be swayed--except those who weren't really planning to vote, who will now be driven by piety and citizenship to the polls--by the caterwauling of ridiculous singers trying to rock the vote out of the hands of Republicans. We don't take our life cues from them. We flee them.
We don't believe what the liberal elites say about our president. We note that most of the actors, activists, and singers that want to tell us how stupid the president is didn't themselves graduate from college--some didn't even make it out of high school. President Bush, on the other hand, went to Yale (like Kerry and Bill and Hillary) AND Harvard (like Jack Kennedy). He was also a fighter pilot, which you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know takes no small intelligence. (Imagine if strings were pulled to get an unqualified son of a Congressman into a position as dangerous as flying F-102 fighter jets--and he DIED. Is there anyone crazy enough--even the scandalously corrupt Ben Barnes--to do that? No, far more likely that Yalie Bush got into the Texas Air National Guard because he was good enough to do the job.)
So, the snippy elitist mantra that "Bush is a moron" doesn't play in Red country.
And we don’t get our news from the mainstream media. We get it from the Christian media. We get it from FoxNews. We get it from the Internet and from specialized publications. We don't trust information coming from an institution in which better than 80% of the reporters oppose our core beliefs.
So we don't care what happens on 60 Minutes, or how many Kitty Kellys might be out there waiting to hamstring the president. We heard early in the campaign of Dean backers' willingness to spread malicious rumors that Bush had taken part in an abortion. These rumors were expected to appear in pro-life chat rooms, a stealth attempt to deliberately spread falsehoods in cyberspace. The singer (I think he's a singer--I don't know much about modern music) Moby encouraged people to lie about the president if it would achieve the objective of defeating president Bush.
Now, we are told, the same smear-merchant gossip-monger that tried to claim our beloved President Reagan's wife had an affair with Frank Sinatra is trying to claim that our President used illegal drugs at Camp David while his dad was in the White House. And that he paid for some girl's abortion. Well, look at that. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?
We don't buy it.
And even if we did, it wouldn't matter. Because the other thing about us that the president can count on is that we believe in redemption. As far as we are concerned, what George W. Bush did before that change of heart when he was forty is irrelevant. We know he was a drunk (we don't usually buy "alcoholism" as a "disease." We consider it a sinful behavior, as destructive and as changeable as any other). We know he was a party boy, an unserious person uncertain of what to do with his life. Did he do harder drugs? Maybe. But that's the old nature.
We pick up George W. Bush when he becomes a born-again Christian. After the DUIs, and after any of the behavior the left is trying to insinuate he engaged in. We take him for who he is today. Jesus changed him. He became a serious person, a good husband and father, a strong Christian and a sober and thoughtful man.
And even beyond that, we take him as president for who he became after the terrorist attacks of September 11. His character as president was built on that mound of rubble from which he thundered through that megaphone and forged with the twisted steel of the Twin Towers. That moment of murder and mayhem is more than an event; it has become a part of his character. It shapes his destiny, and he knows it.
And so do we.
We believe in President Bush because he believes in God, the people of America, the family, and freedom. And he sees how they all fit together in the plan God has chosen him to fulfill.
God has a plan for each of us, not just the ones in "big power" positions. Every person on earth has a purpose for being here, a fact made evident by the fact that the Almighty God, Creator of the universe, the most powerful entity there is, cared enough for each one's potential to create them in the first place. Part of George W. Bush's destiny has been to carry the mantle of the presidency for four years in obedience to God. Another part is to engage this electoral battle again.
We have seen George W. Bush in the dark night of the morning of September 11. We have seen him rise above the ashes in the bright future he leads us toward as we continue to recover from attack and drive to ground those who would attack again. He has laid out his credentials, and he awaits our decision.
President Bush has his destiny. You have yours. I have mine. Part of your destiny, and mine, is to determine, in consultation with God, whom we most trust to shepherd this good nation into the bright future or the dark night that the next four years may bring
And the final poll to be taken will have a universe of One. Our "right track/wrong track" scores will be 100% or nothing. We won't be able to deny our voting record. We won't be able to spin it.
And it won't just be about the next four years.
So, please. Vote. But if you're a Christian, vote like one. Don't vote based on selfish interests and economics. Sure, the President has a great economic plan, too. But that's not what God's looking at.
Vote for the ones who can't speak for themselves, and vote for the values God gave us. Vote for the children yet unborn this president pledges to protect. Vote for the marriages yet unmade that this president will fight to preserve. Vote for the children yet to be adopted that the President, to no fanfare, held a summit meeting to help. Vote for the young who will yet grow old, whose lives this president will protect from involuntary euthanasia.
And vote for the billions of people of the world who labor yet without hope under despots and dictators and strong-men and tyrants. Whether liberty spreads through their lands will have a grave impact on how safe we can be. They can continue under the yoke of the self-serving bureaucrats of the UN and the murderous maniacs that have hijacked their religion or be released through the international spread of freedom in what the President has pre-emptively declared "Liberty's Century."
Vote as if billions of lives and the hope of the future depended on it.
Because they do.
Further recommended reading:
During the 2000 campaign, when George W. Bush was just a governor, I remember the moment I knew I would be voting for him.
It was in the middle of a primary debate, and the question to the panelists was "Who is your favorite political philosopher?" Without apology, yet with deep humility, the Texas governor replied, "Jesus Christ, because he changed my heart."
My conservative antenna went way up. I knew Bush was considered a favorite, but I didn't know all that much about him. I had though that the clear religious candidate was Alan Keyes, who had no chance to win. But here--here was a man unafraid to start a storm of controversy by openly declaring his allegiance to the "hateful" philosophy the Democrats and the ACLU had spent 8 years trying to bludgeon us away from.
And it wasn’t just that he said it. It was the way he said it. The words he used. The humility. The simplicity. The sincerity.
My discernment went on high alert, and I knew that statement came from his heart. It certainly wasn't going to come from any political advisor worth his or her paycheck.
And so I started to watch George W. Bush. And, more importantly, to listen to him.
That phrase, "changed my heart" is a telling one. It's the phrase of the evangelical, because it carries the evangelical assumption that being born again (or "born from above," "of the Spirit," as the Bible says) is not something you inherit or fall into. It's a moment or an evolution of moments that you can identify as a definite change of your very being. A new birth.
It rings truer than "changed my life," because people can change their lives through diet and exercise, having children, or watching Oprah (so I'm told.) But your "heart" only changes in a religious conversion. He was talking in code, and he was talking to us. In the center of the secular political arena, he had let the secret out. It was like drawing a fish in the dust of the coliseum.
When Bush had to face the question of letting Karla Faye Tucker die for her crimes, Pat Robertson lobbied to save her. After committing the horrific crimes for which Texas had given her the death penalty, Tucker had found Christ and led Bible studies. I have no doubt that she was sincere. But Governor Bush, following his own discernment, used his authority and meted out the justice she had earned. And even she didn't disagree with him.
At that point, I knew he had instincts beyond the political, because if he wanted to pander to a religious base, he would have done the easy thing and given in to Pat's pleadings. Pat was wrong on Karla Faye, as he was wrong to assume that just because God prompted him to run for president meant he was to win. As he later admitted, that might not have been in the plan. God had a plan for Pat's candidacy, and it would be a powerful force in political history--but it was Pat's flesh that expected victory. God wanted obedience.
When George W. carried out his duty as the governor, he took a small political hit, but he preserved the authority of the office he held. It would not be the last time that George W. Bush would fight for a principle against the winds of political expediency. He has developed a history of making unpopular decisions and sticking with them. And that makes us love him more.
When President Bush started talking about compassionate conservatism, few understood the ramifications of this grand vision. If you were in the Christian conservative camp, however, and politically aware (admittedly not that big a group), you recognized the influence of Marvin Olasky (The Tragedy of American Compassion--click below to buy through amazon.) If you listened to him talk about prison reform--even if you weren't all that political--you recognized the outlines of Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship, which had introduced rehabilitative religion into the prison system.
Al Gore tried to talk about his religion, and it rang hollow from a pro-choice politico whose sole driving force seemed to be the need to become president. Bush wanted it, seemed to think he was called to it--but he didn't ravenously desire it, he didn't need it to complete himself. He was comfortable in his own skin, the way Christians are when they have faced down their demons and moved on.
His inauguration speech was a masterpiece of spiritual exhortation. He called us to follow our American destiny, linking that destiny to something huge and unknowable to which we are called by God. Time and again, he acted as our national prophet/priest, evoking Biblical imagery as we dealt with the explosion of the space shuttle, and, of course, the tragedies of 9/11. Over and over, he told the citizens who met him on the rope lines, when they told him they were praying for him, "That's the most important thing you can do for a president." He didn't just talk the talk. He walked the walk.
One of the reasons we religious red folk love this president so much is that he truly is a praying man. We know from interviews he's done with "our" press that President G.W. Bush is a man of faith and prayer. (By "our" press, I mean the Christian media, not the ordinary kind, in whom we have little--you'll excuse the expression--faith.) We know that he is genuine pals with Billy and Franklin Graham--not just because he's president, but way before that. We know that he prayed about starting the war, and, unlike Dan Rather and Michael Moore, we find it reassuring, not alarming.
We know it from the people he's surrounded himself with--Vice President Cheney, whose wife Lynn is well known to us; Andrew Card, whose wife is a minister; Karen Hughes, who is so traditional she left her job with her president and her friend to be in-house mom to her teenage son; and, of course, John Ashcroft. And we even know it from the testimony of other familiar faces of the religious red--Franklin Graham, James Robison, Pat Robertson, J.C. Watts, Charles Colson, Rick Santorum, Michael Reagan, and John Danforth, to name just a few.
We also know that he prays for the nation on a daily basis, that he is driven to his knees by the weight of the office, just like Lincoln. As a friend of mine likes to say, "I feel good knowing that not only am I praying for my president--he's praying for me, too."
This is a feeling we did not have while the former resident of the Oval Office was there. It's not that we didn't pray for President Clinton, too, though. We did, though I confess I suspect much less enthusiastically than we do for Bush 43, and some of our prayers were likely along the lines of the "blessing for the Czar" from Fiddler on the Roof--"May God bless and keep the Czar…far away from us!"
And we know it from the people who oppose him, from the unreasoning, visceral hatred spewed by Hollywood actors, pro-choice and pro-gay activists, and the ever-more-obviously liberal media. If you look at the box office, you'll soon discern that for a nation of 250 million people, it would seem that there is no statistical majority going even to one movie a year. The media may be obsessed with Hollywood's comings and goings, with the couplings and de-couplings of people paid to pretend to be someone else--but the heartland really isn't listening.
The religious red have had it up to here with Hollywood and its horrible language and values leading our children into the abyss. We are doing all we can to protect them from the culture of hip-hop and lyrical hatred of America, its institutions, and its president. We are, as my pastor says, "different." We don't wear the latest fashions. We don't read the hot new novel. We don't see the movie that brings in millions and glorifies adultery or homosexuality or child prostitution or drug addiction, no matter how many academy awards it gets nominated for. We see movies we have to buy to get. We rent our movies at Christian stores, where statistics aren't collected.
You wouldn't know it from the media, by the way, but Christian bookstores (which are not counted in the New York Times best seller calculation) make up one-third of all bookstores in the nation. And Christian books make more money than all but the most over-paid secular authors (like Bill Clinton.) Think what that means for Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, authors of the end-times Left Behind thrillers. Those books repeatedly went to the New York Times list, even excluding their number one position on the Christian best-seller list. That means they are even more popular than the New York Times can imagine. And the New York Times hates that.
We don't care who Whoopi Goldberg wants us to vote for, or whether Ben Affleck will be appearing with John Kerry. We won't be swayed--except those who weren't really planning to vote, who will now be driven by piety and citizenship to the polls--by the caterwauling of ridiculous singers trying to rock the vote out of the hands of Republicans. We don't take our life cues from them. We flee them.
We don't believe what the liberal elites say about our president. We note that most of the actors, activists, and singers that want to tell us how stupid the president is didn't themselves graduate from college--some didn't even make it out of high school. President Bush, on the other hand, went to Yale (like Kerry and Bill and Hillary) AND Harvard (like Jack Kennedy). He was also a fighter pilot, which you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know takes no small intelligence. (Imagine if strings were pulled to get an unqualified son of a Congressman into a position as dangerous as flying F-102 fighter jets--and he DIED. Is there anyone crazy enough--even the scandalously corrupt Ben Barnes--to do that? No, far more likely that Yalie Bush got into the Texas Air National Guard because he was good enough to do the job.)
So, the snippy elitist mantra that "Bush is a moron" doesn't play in Red country.
And we don’t get our news from the mainstream media. We get it from the Christian media. We get it from FoxNews. We get it from the Internet and from specialized publications. We don't trust information coming from an institution in which better than 80% of the reporters oppose our core beliefs.
So we don't care what happens on 60 Minutes, or how many Kitty Kellys might be out there waiting to hamstring the president. We heard early in the campaign of Dean backers' willingness to spread malicious rumors that Bush had taken part in an abortion. These rumors were expected to appear in pro-life chat rooms, a stealth attempt to deliberately spread falsehoods in cyberspace. The singer (I think he's a singer--I don't know much about modern music) Moby encouraged people to lie about the president if it would achieve the objective of defeating president Bush.
Now, we are told, the same smear-merchant gossip-monger that tried to claim our beloved President Reagan's wife had an affair with Frank Sinatra is trying to claim that our President used illegal drugs at Camp David while his dad was in the White House. And that he paid for some girl's abortion. Well, look at that. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?
We don't buy it.
And even if we did, it wouldn't matter. Because the other thing about us that the president can count on is that we believe in redemption. As far as we are concerned, what George W. Bush did before that change of heart when he was forty is irrelevant. We know he was a drunk (we don't usually buy "alcoholism" as a "disease." We consider it a sinful behavior, as destructive and as changeable as any other). We know he was a party boy, an unserious person uncertain of what to do with his life. Did he do harder drugs? Maybe. But that's the old nature.
We pick up George W. Bush when he becomes a born-again Christian. After the DUIs, and after any of the behavior the left is trying to insinuate he engaged in. We take him for who he is today. Jesus changed him. He became a serious person, a good husband and father, a strong Christian and a sober and thoughtful man.
And even beyond that, we take him as president for who he became after the terrorist attacks of September 11. His character as president was built on that mound of rubble from which he thundered through that megaphone and forged with the twisted steel of the Twin Towers. That moment of murder and mayhem is more than an event; it has become a part of his character. It shapes his destiny, and he knows it.
And so do we.
We believe in President Bush because he believes in God, the people of America, the family, and freedom. And he sees how they all fit together in the plan God has chosen him to fulfill.
God has a plan for each of us, not just the ones in "big power" positions. Every person on earth has a purpose for being here, a fact made evident by the fact that the Almighty God, Creator of the universe, the most powerful entity there is, cared enough for each one's potential to create them in the first place. Part of George W. Bush's destiny has been to carry the mantle of the presidency for four years in obedience to God. Another part is to engage this electoral battle again.
We have seen George W. Bush in the dark night of the morning of September 11. We have seen him rise above the ashes in the bright future he leads us toward as we continue to recover from attack and drive to ground those who would attack again. He has laid out his credentials, and he awaits our decision.
President Bush has his destiny. You have yours. I have mine. Part of your destiny, and mine, is to determine, in consultation with God, whom we most trust to shepherd this good nation into the bright future or the dark night that the next four years may bring
And the final poll to be taken will have a universe of One. Our "right track/wrong track" scores will be 100% or nothing. We won't be able to deny our voting record. We won't be able to spin it.
And it won't just be about the next four years.
So, please. Vote. But if you're a Christian, vote like one. Don't vote based on selfish interests and economics. Sure, the President has a great economic plan, too. But that's not what God's looking at.
Vote for the ones who can't speak for themselves, and vote for the values God gave us. Vote for the children yet unborn this president pledges to protect. Vote for the marriages yet unmade that this president will fight to preserve. Vote for the children yet to be adopted that the President, to no fanfare, held a summit meeting to help. Vote for the young who will yet grow old, whose lives this president will protect from involuntary euthanasia.
And vote for the billions of people of the world who labor yet without hope under despots and dictators and strong-men and tyrants. Whether liberty spreads through their lands will have a grave impact on how safe we can be. They can continue under the yoke of the self-serving bureaucrats of the UN and the murderous maniacs that have hijacked their religion or be released through the international spread of freedom in what the President has pre-emptively declared "Liberty's Century."
Vote as if billions of lives and the hope of the future depended on it.
Because they do.
Further recommended reading:
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
THE HAWK THAT EATS ITS YOUNG
KERRY'S POSITION ON ABORTION SHOULD DISTURB EVERYONE
(Reprinted from July)
Just before John Kerry thrilled Democrats and near-Democrats alike with his selection of the Dan Quayle of the left, he said something that few in the press bothered to examine closely.
The headline they missed should have read: "Kerry declares support for murder."
None of the mainstream media outlets chose to interpret the candidate's remarks this way, of course. By "this way" I mean the only possible way they could be interpreted. Since (not in case) you missed it, here is the verbatim statement made by the pro-choice Senator: "I oppose abortion personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception."
Now. While all you pro-choicers who were busy that weekend wipe the Chardonnay off your copy of Bill Clinton's book, let me explain why this is such an enormously important component in Kerry's character map.
Kerry has repeatedly, consistently, unendingly, and loyally toed the Massachusetts liberal line on abortion. He votes for every expansion of the practice, and against every common sense measure that would help to make it (as the Democrats never tire of claiming they want it to be) "safe, legal, and rare." Moreover, like all pro-choice Catholic politicians, he has claimed to be "personally pro-life" while voting publicly "pro-choice."
The reason so many allegedly Catholic politicians can get away with this theological sleight of hand is that no one in their right mind, from the Pope to the President, believes for a minute that these people are "personally pro-life." Unless that phrase is meant to mean that the politician would find it rather distasteful to personally, with their own hands, crush the skull of an unborn baby in order to personally commit a partial-birth abortion, they are actually "personally" pro-choice. However, they continue to claim to be Catholic in order to have a chance of fooling some of those who fall on the red side of the electoral map into not considering them evil weasels.
None, though, has ever come out with the kind of blasphemy against the pro-choice movement that Kerry's statement represents. No pro-choice politician is EVER supposed to admit--er, claim--that life begins at conception. The feminist pro-abortion movement doesn't stand for that sort of thing. Anyone who could say such a thing is clearly beholden to a superstitious, unscientific mindset, a puppet of the Vatican, a right-wing fanatic, a kook.
Except this time.
This time they, like the media, are strangely silent about Kerry's newfound commitment to the fetus. He hasn't yet exhibited the "love affair" with it that Jocelyn Elder accused the pro-life movement of having (insert your favorite joke about the hugginess of the Kerry/Edwards team here), but he's opened the rhetorical door.
In fact, he's done more than that. He's painted himself into a corner with people on both sides of the question, as well as with people who can follow a simple argument.
This is what it boils down to. If you believe that "life begins at conception," then any interference with pregnancy after that point is definitionally an intentional termination of "life," which most people, red and blue alike, would agree pretty much adds up to murder.
So, John Kerry's position is that unborn children are alive, that he hates the fact that they are killed, but since the Supreme Court has allowed it to happen he will defend to the death a woman's right to choose to--well, to murder her child.
Huh?
Some think that perhaps Kerry is simply lying. But why would he say something so stupid? Why, if he doesn't believe that life begins at conception, would he say such a thing? And if he does believe it, what else can we make of his willingness to preserve "choice" but that he is simply not bothered by cold-blooded murder?
Of course, that would also explain how he can claim to think not only that the war in Iraq should not have been started (even though he gave the president permission by voting for it), but ALSO that we should not now leave. Apparently, he is bothered by the loss of life in Iraq to pursue what he considers a phony war, but not so much so that he is willing to make it stop.
Kerry is, quite simply, a man without a conscience. Out of his own mouth we have the proof. A man of conscience does not define murder and then advocate it. Instead, as president Bush has done, he examines his conscience and his faith with great care, finds the right position, and stays with it.
President Bush thought through his position on stem cell research. It is clear-eyed and clear-headed. Despite the opposition of conservative icon Nancy Reagan and her not-so-beloved of the right son, Ron, President Bush has no intention of changing his policy. The Congressmen can beg him, Orrin Hatch can side with the embryo-killers, and famous sick celebrities can whine all they like, but President Bush is a man of his word. The president's position of conscience dictates his position on policy, and dependably so.
John Kerry, on the other hand, has hidden his conscience from us lo these many years, only revealing now that his treatment of fetal life is even more horrific and self-serving than we thought.
When we knew only of John Kerry that he was "Catholic" and that he was "pro-choice," we could rest fairly easily, understanding him to be merely a "lapsed" Catholic who deep down worshipped at the altar of Planned Parenthood. But now we know something horrible about him, and the notion that this happy murderer might someday be president should scare us to death.
To be completely inflammatory about it, even Hitler didn't believe he was murdering human beings when he gassed the Jews. He thought of the Jews as sub-human. Even the most strident pro-lifer has a hard time believing that pro-choicers believe, as they do, that abortion is murder. They cannot understand how that simple fact eludes their opponents, but they do give them the benefit of the doubt and accept their claim to see only "tissue" when they look at the ultrasound.
But here we have, for the very first time, a self-confessed sociopath, a man who understands the words of morality but cannot internalize them. It is interesting to note this in light of his past behavior (you did know he was in Vietnam, didn't you? I think everyone has gotten that memo by now).
John Kerry, as we have all been told until it makes us want to puke, was a "war hero" in Vietnam. He spent four whole months there, during which time he later claimed to have witnessed and participated in "atrocities." When he returned to the safety of the states to pursue his political ambition, he viciously turned on his fellow soldiers, accusing them of all manner of horrific treatment of their Vietnamese opponents. Though he confessed incessantly on Capitol Hill, he never apparently bothered to inform anyone who might have been able to put a stop to it in Vietnam. Now we know why.
We can now see that it is likely that Kerry's behavior was fully sociopathic, entirely to serve his political ambition. John Kerry had no reaction to the atrocities he saw while in country; he saved his reaction for the cameras and the eager ears of politicians and media vultures seeking clubs with which to beat President Nixon. They got what they wanted, and so did he--a hawk outfit he could put on and take off at will.
For most of his political life, it's been hanging there in the closet, waiting for the right time, waiting until it was time to go to the costume party in Boston. When the Democratic National Convention came, the suit was freshly pressed, the medals were lined up nicely (forget he once threw them away; they're back now), and Kerry's metaphorical shoes were shined. And the Senator put on his suit and went to his Party.
When Kerry came back to Boston he was wearing the hawk suit, and he was claiming to be a patriot. Any discrepancies between his voting record and his purported support for the troops were, of course, decried as "questioning" his "patriotism."
But now we have a more serious charge on which to hang the Senator. We need not question his "patriotism" or try to have him done up for treason. No, this most damning statement of his own making provides a gap between fantasy and reality that will drive the Democrats screaming to the fax machines, if anyone has the guts to bring it up in debate.
I'll spare the news media the work of designing the question. Here it is: "Senator Kerry, you said this summer that you believe that life begins at conception. If that is the case, can you reassure pro-choice Americans that you don't believe it enough to actually prevent any murders by abortion? And can you assure pro-life voters that you believe it enough to make an effort to reduce the number of abortions that take place in this country, perhaps by following the President's lead in banning partial-birth abortion, encouraging adoption by federal policy, or reducing funding to Planned Parenthood International?"
"Senator?"
That sound you hear is Kerry's four million paid and unpaid advisors wrackng their brains to make this position comprehensible to human beings.
For when someone has the nerve to point out the difference between Kerry's "life begins at conception" core belief and his incredible willingness to vote for policies that threaten, shorten, and terminate that life, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Because now we are questioning his humanity.
(Reprinted from July)
Just before John Kerry thrilled Democrats and near-Democrats alike with his selection of the Dan Quayle of the left, he said something that few in the press bothered to examine closely.
The headline they missed should have read: "Kerry declares support for murder."
None of the mainstream media outlets chose to interpret the candidate's remarks this way, of course. By "this way" I mean the only possible way they could be interpreted. Since (not in case) you missed it, here is the verbatim statement made by the pro-choice Senator: "I oppose abortion personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception."
Now. While all you pro-choicers who were busy that weekend wipe the Chardonnay off your copy of Bill Clinton's book, let me explain why this is such an enormously important component in Kerry's character map.
Kerry has repeatedly, consistently, unendingly, and loyally toed the Massachusetts liberal line on abortion. He votes for every expansion of the practice, and against every common sense measure that would help to make it (as the Democrats never tire of claiming they want it to be) "safe, legal, and rare." Moreover, like all pro-choice Catholic politicians, he has claimed to be "personally pro-life" while voting publicly "pro-choice."
The reason so many allegedly Catholic politicians can get away with this theological sleight of hand is that no one in their right mind, from the Pope to the President, believes for a minute that these people are "personally pro-life." Unless that phrase is meant to mean that the politician would find it rather distasteful to personally, with their own hands, crush the skull of an unborn baby in order to personally commit a partial-birth abortion, they are actually "personally" pro-choice. However, they continue to claim to be Catholic in order to have a chance of fooling some of those who fall on the red side of the electoral map into not considering them evil weasels.
None, though, has ever come out with the kind of blasphemy against the pro-choice movement that Kerry's statement represents. No pro-choice politician is EVER supposed to admit--er, claim--that life begins at conception. The feminist pro-abortion movement doesn't stand for that sort of thing. Anyone who could say such a thing is clearly beholden to a superstitious, unscientific mindset, a puppet of the Vatican, a right-wing fanatic, a kook.
Except this time.
This time they, like the media, are strangely silent about Kerry's newfound commitment to the fetus. He hasn't yet exhibited the "love affair" with it that Jocelyn Elder accused the pro-life movement of having (insert your favorite joke about the hugginess of the Kerry/Edwards team here), but he's opened the rhetorical door.
In fact, he's done more than that. He's painted himself into a corner with people on both sides of the question, as well as with people who can follow a simple argument.
This is what it boils down to. If you believe that "life begins at conception," then any interference with pregnancy after that point is definitionally an intentional termination of "life," which most people, red and blue alike, would agree pretty much adds up to murder.
So, John Kerry's position is that unborn children are alive, that he hates the fact that they are killed, but since the Supreme Court has allowed it to happen he will defend to the death a woman's right to choose to--well, to murder her child.
Huh?
Some think that perhaps Kerry is simply lying. But why would he say something so stupid? Why, if he doesn't believe that life begins at conception, would he say such a thing? And if he does believe it, what else can we make of his willingness to preserve "choice" but that he is simply not bothered by cold-blooded murder?
Of course, that would also explain how he can claim to think not only that the war in Iraq should not have been started (even though he gave the president permission by voting for it), but ALSO that we should not now leave. Apparently, he is bothered by the loss of life in Iraq to pursue what he considers a phony war, but not so much so that he is willing to make it stop.
Kerry is, quite simply, a man without a conscience. Out of his own mouth we have the proof. A man of conscience does not define murder and then advocate it. Instead, as president Bush has done, he examines his conscience and his faith with great care, finds the right position, and stays with it.
President Bush thought through his position on stem cell research. It is clear-eyed and clear-headed. Despite the opposition of conservative icon Nancy Reagan and her not-so-beloved of the right son, Ron, President Bush has no intention of changing his policy. The Congressmen can beg him, Orrin Hatch can side with the embryo-killers, and famous sick celebrities can whine all they like, but President Bush is a man of his word. The president's position of conscience dictates his position on policy, and dependably so.
John Kerry, on the other hand, has hidden his conscience from us lo these many years, only revealing now that his treatment of fetal life is even more horrific and self-serving than we thought.
When we knew only of John Kerry that he was "Catholic" and that he was "pro-choice," we could rest fairly easily, understanding him to be merely a "lapsed" Catholic who deep down worshipped at the altar of Planned Parenthood. But now we know something horrible about him, and the notion that this happy murderer might someday be president should scare us to death.
To be completely inflammatory about it, even Hitler didn't believe he was murdering human beings when he gassed the Jews. He thought of the Jews as sub-human. Even the most strident pro-lifer has a hard time believing that pro-choicers believe, as they do, that abortion is murder. They cannot understand how that simple fact eludes their opponents, but they do give them the benefit of the doubt and accept their claim to see only "tissue" when they look at the ultrasound.
But here we have, for the very first time, a self-confessed sociopath, a man who understands the words of morality but cannot internalize them. It is interesting to note this in light of his past behavior (you did know he was in Vietnam, didn't you? I think everyone has gotten that memo by now).
John Kerry, as we have all been told until it makes us want to puke, was a "war hero" in Vietnam. He spent four whole months there, during which time he later claimed to have witnessed and participated in "atrocities." When he returned to the safety of the states to pursue his political ambition, he viciously turned on his fellow soldiers, accusing them of all manner of horrific treatment of their Vietnamese opponents. Though he confessed incessantly on Capitol Hill, he never apparently bothered to inform anyone who might have been able to put a stop to it in Vietnam. Now we know why.
We can now see that it is likely that Kerry's behavior was fully sociopathic, entirely to serve his political ambition. John Kerry had no reaction to the atrocities he saw while in country; he saved his reaction for the cameras and the eager ears of politicians and media vultures seeking clubs with which to beat President Nixon. They got what they wanted, and so did he--a hawk outfit he could put on and take off at will.
For most of his political life, it's been hanging there in the closet, waiting for the right time, waiting until it was time to go to the costume party in Boston. When the Democratic National Convention came, the suit was freshly pressed, the medals were lined up nicely (forget he once threw them away; they're back now), and Kerry's metaphorical shoes were shined. And the Senator put on his suit and went to his Party.
When Kerry came back to Boston he was wearing the hawk suit, and he was claiming to be a patriot. Any discrepancies between his voting record and his purported support for the troops were, of course, decried as "questioning" his "patriotism."
But now we have a more serious charge on which to hang the Senator. We need not question his "patriotism" or try to have him done up for treason. No, this most damning statement of his own making provides a gap between fantasy and reality that will drive the Democrats screaming to the fax machines, if anyone has the guts to bring it up in debate.
I'll spare the news media the work of designing the question. Here it is: "Senator Kerry, you said this summer that you believe that life begins at conception. If that is the case, can you reassure pro-choice Americans that you don't believe it enough to actually prevent any murders by abortion? And can you assure pro-life voters that you believe it enough to make an effort to reduce the number of abortions that take place in this country, perhaps by following the President's lead in banning partial-birth abortion, encouraging adoption by federal policy, or reducing funding to Planned Parenthood International?"
"Senator?"
That sound you hear is Kerry's four million paid and unpaid advisors wrackng their brains to make this position comprehensible to human beings.
For when someone has the nerve to point out the difference between Kerry's "life begins at conception" core belief and his incredible willingness to vote for policies that threaten, shorten, and terminate that life, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Because now we are questioning his humanity.
CAN I GET A WITNESS?
WHY I DON'T ASSUME THE SWIFTEES ARE LYING
I understand that during his (apparently Constitutionally permitted) Kerry campaign speech in Riverside church recently, former President Clinton opined that the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth should be ashamed of themselves. We are not supposed to bear, the former president and admitted serial liar reminded us, "false witness." I have also heard this mantra from various purveyors of Democratic talking points. It is apparently designed to silence religious Bush supporters, by tarring them with a brush of hypocrisy.
But it doesn't work.
The assumption this operates on is that the Swiftees are "bearing false witness." But bearing false witness--usually termed "lying" requires that one state something is true that one knows to be false. (This is why "Bush lied, kids died" is a canard. Unless you want to list all the people, including Senator Kerry, who "lied" by believing and disseminating and acting on the information that Saddam probably had WMDs, you can't claim Bush "lied.") Yet there is no reason to believe this to be the case, unless you are predisposed to believe that Senator Kerry is presumptively NOT lying.
True, we are not to bear false witness. But a witness is someone who testifies to something they saw or heard or have first-hand knowledge of. A false witness invents those things. While Kerry denies the claims of the Swiftees, it is unclear to me why my adhesion to the 10 Commandments requires me to accept Kerry's veracity over theirs. (And coming from Clinton, who accused his accusers of lying about him while he was lying himself the entire time, it is even more murky.)
The Bible does say to let everything be determined by two or three witnesses. But here we have a dozen or so on one side and at least 150 on the other. What are we to do with that? If they are telling the truth, then Kerry is lying, and he is the one bearing false witness, and he did it first. Therefore, my loyalty belongs on the side of those who expose the truth in the service of justice and to protect America from a bad and uninformed choice.
Moreover, if they are lying--which I have no way of knowing, not having been there--their evidence should be answerable, and it is the duty of Kerry (because he is asking us to make him president on the basis of his valor as a soldier) to answer them. Instead, he has behaved as a guilty man, accusing the accusers and refusing to engage the issue.
My duty as a Christian and a voter is to vote for the man I believe will be the best and most God-honoring president for this nation. In the process of doing this, I must evaluate the character, statements, and policies of both men. When accusations come, I should indeed note the character of the accusers, but not to the exclusion of the content. Thus, I look at the Swift Boat veterans and I see noble men who don't particularly like John Kerry. And I see a lot more of them than I see of veterans in the Kerry camp.
I look at those accusing President Bush of various nefarious intents, and I see Michael Moore, a self-aggrandizing propagandist driven by an unreasoning hatred not only of the President but of America itself (if you don't believe me go look up the things he says in other countries.)
More importantly, I weigh the character of each man in consideration of each accusation. President Bush's character is well-established. He is a godly man, who reads The Word and Oswald Chambers daily. He is a leader concerned with the well being of the nation, a man whose destiny was forged in the twisted steel of the Twin Towers, who swore that such carnage would never again take place on American soil. And he has held to his word, chasing the terrorists across the globe and employing our military to kill and capture them. He has no intention of ending the war against terrorism while the terrorist philosophy still holds a death grip on billions of the world's people. And he has no intention of signing a treaty with evil and calling it a day.
When I look at Senator Kerry, I see a man with no convictions. He claims to be a Catholic, yet he disagrees with the Church on nearly every issue. As I have written here before, his confusing position on abortion paints him as a sociopath. You can't believe something is murder and still, in good conscience, vote for its unending continuance. On this issue he leaves us two choices: he is lying or he is evil. His positions have changed with the political winds--not, as some would claim, merely evolving as he observes the nuances of the situation. Instead, he has parroted members of his party (like Howard Dean) when their ideas were popular and contradicted them (as when he tries to decorate himself with "conservative values") when it became convenient to him.
The idea that the Swift Boat Veterans were an invention of the Bush Administration is ridiculous. The men who now want to stop him from being president long ago wanted to stop him from testifying in Congress. Especially the ones who were being tortured by North Vietnamese sadists quoting his very words to them to prove America was a wicked country destined to lose against the Communists.
When I was in college, I did my master's thesis on the image of the Vietnam War and its veterans that Hollywood gave us. It was not a pretty picture. Until Rambo arrived, the Vietnam veteran was depicted as a crazed baby-killer, conflicted by his continuing thirst for war and bitter at his nation. That was the image John Kerry fed us all. And the men who fought the war did not deserve the disdain, cruelty, and venom that was hurled at them when they returned--largely as a result of Kerry's claims (which, by the way, were later demonstrated to have involved at least some totally fabricated stories.) The anti-war hippies wanted to "bring the boys home," but when they got them home, the flower children met them at the airport with protest signs and spittle.
The claims of the Swift Boat veterans are logical, considering the character of John Kerry. The evidence is compelling. I do not believe they would have sought this publicity had they not felt forced to by what they saw as the danger of Kerry becoming President without their having lifted a finger to stop it. I cannot say they bear false witness, and I cannot judge their claims. The best I can do is accept their right to make those claims, and weigh them against what I can and do know.
Are hundreds of decorated veterans to be assumed liars because they accuse one? Are their medals and ribbons (which they kept and honored, instead of throwing them over the White House wall) less deserving of respect than Kerry's merely because he is a Senator who wants now to be president?
During the Vietnam war, the President spent 5 years in the National Guard and Kerry spent four and a half months in Vietnam. The president flew planes, Kerry piloted a boat. Both left the service for political activity. Both served. Both should be proud of their service. The President has done the right thing. He deplored all the 527 ads and has moved to pressure the FEC to close the loophole that they slithered through in the McCain-Feingold legislation. He honors Senator Kerry's service. He does not ask the question.
Kerry has done the opposite. He has continued to question the president's service, let his surrogates call him a "draft-dodger" (note to Democrats: "serving" is not "dodging."), and trashed the Vice President for taking family deferments. For those who don't know (which seems to be most of those backing the Senator at his rallies), the law allowed various types of deferments during different periods of the war. They were based on government assumptions about the value of those activities the deferments applied to. Being newly married could earn you one. Having a small child counted, too. The idea was that we didn't want to draft people into a situation that unfairly burdened their family. Today, lest we forget, the Democrats complain when mothers and fathers are deployed at the same time, even though they volunteered for the armed forces. You would think that Democrats would appreciate the "family leave" concept applied to the draft. Guess not.
The Vietnam era is not yet over. It will not be over, no matter how many other wars we fight and win, until the last veteran and the last anti-war protestor are lying in their graves. As long as anti-war protestors like Senator Kerry try to perpetuate their vision of the war and try to stand on their service to justify their thirst for power, people like John O'Neill will try to stop them.
My faith tells me that God invented government. Attacking a nation at war from the inside is simply wrong. Are the Swiftees bearing false witness? Maybe. But even if they are, they are not running for office. It is the Senator who asks for the mantle of leadership, and it is the Senator who must be judged by the voters.
I understand that during his (apparently Constitutionally permitted) Kerry campaign speech in Riverside church recently, former President Clinton opined that the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth should be ashamed of themselves. We are not supposed to bear, the former president and admitted serial liar reminded us, "false witness." I have also heard this mantra from various purveyors of Democratic talking points. It is apparently designed to silence religious Bush supporters, by tarring them with a brush of hypocrisy.
But it doesn't work.
The assumption this operates on is that the Swiftees are "bearing false witness." But bearing false witness--usually termed "lying" requires that one state something is true that one knows to be false. (This is why "Bush lied, kids died" is a canard. Unless you want to list all the people, including Senator Kerry, who "lied" by believing and disseminating and acting on the information that Saddam probably had WMDs, you can't claim Bush "lied.") Yet there is no reason to believe this to be the case, unless you are predisposed to believe that Senator Kerry is presumptively NOT lying.
True, we are not to bear false witness. But a witness is someone who testifies to something they saw or heard or have first-hand knowledge of. A false witness invents those things. While Kerry denies the claims of the Swiftees, it is unclear to me why my adhesion to the 10 Commandments requires me to accept Kerry's veracity over theirs. (And coming from Clinton, who accused his accusers of lying about him while he was lying himself the entire time, it is even more murky.)
The Bible does say to let everything be determined by two or three witnesses. But here we have a dozen or so on one side and at least 150 on the other. What are we to do with that? If they are telling the truth, then Kerry is lying, and he is the one bearing false witness, and he did it first. Therefore, my loyalty belongs on the side of those who expose the truth in the service of justice and to protect America from a bad and uninformed choice.
Moreover, if they are lying--which I have no way of knowing, not having been there--their evidence should be answerable, and it is the duty of Kerry (because he is asking us to make him president on the basis of his valor as a soldier) to answer them. Instead, he has behaved as a guilty man, accusing the accusers and refusing to engage the issue.
My duty as a Christian and a voter is to vote for the man I believe will be the best and most God-honoring president for this nation. In the process of doing this, I must evaluate the character, statements, and policies of both men. When accusations come, I should indeed note the character of the accusers, but not to the exclusion of the content. Thus, I look at the Swift Boat veterans and I see noble men who don't particularly like John Kerry. And I see a lot more of them than I see of veterans in the Kerry camp.
I look at those accusing President Bush of various nefarious intents, and I see Michael Moore, a self-aggrandizing propagandist driven by an unreasoning hatred not only of the President but of America itself (if you don't believe me go look up the things he says in other countries.)
More importantly, I weigh the character of each man in consideration of each accusation. President Bush's character is well-established. He is a godly man, who reads The Word and Oswald Chambers daily. He is a leader concerned with the well being of the nation, a man whose destiny was forged in the twisted steel of the Twin Towers, who swore that such carnage would never again take place on American soil. And he has held to his word, chasing the terrorists across the globe and employing our military to kill and capture them. He has no intention of ending the war against terrorism while the terrorist philosophy still holds a death grip on billions of the world's people. And he has no intention of signing a treaty with evil and calling it a day.
When I look at Senator Kerry, I see a man with no convictions. He claims to be a Catholic, yet he disagrees with the Church on nearly every issue. As I have written here before, his confusing position on abortion paints him as a sociopath. You can't believe something is murder and still, in good conscience, vote for its unending continuance. On this issue he leaves us two choices: he is lying or he is evil. His positions have changed with the political winds--not, as some would claim, merely evolving as he observes the nuances of the situation. Instead, he has parroted members of his party (like Howard Dean) when their ideas were popular and contradicted them (as when he tries to decorate himself with "conservative values") when it became convenient to him.
The idea that the Swift Boat Veterans were an invention of the Bush Administration is ridiculous. The men who now want to stop him from being president long ago wanted to stop him from testifying in Congress. Especially the ones who were being tortured by North Vietnamese sadists quoting his very words to them to prove America was a wicked country destined to lose against the Communists.
When I was in college, I did my master's thesis on the image of the Vietnam War and its veterans that Hollywood gave us. It was not a pretty picture. Until Rambo arrived, the Vietnam veteran was depicted as a crazed baby-killer, conflicted by his continuing thirst for war and bitter at his nation. That was the image John Kerry fed us all. And the men who fought the war did not deserve the disdain, cruelty, and venom that was hurled at them when they returned--largely as a result of Kerry's claims (which, by the way, were later demonstrated to have involved at least some totally fabricated stories.) The anti-war hippies wanted to "bring the boys home," but when they got them home, the flower children met them at the airport with protest signs and spittle.
The claims of the Swift Boat veterans are logical, considering the character of John Kerry. The evidence is compelling. I do not believe they would have sought this publicity had they not felt forced to by what they saw as the danger of Kerry becoming President without their having lifted a finger to stop it. I cannot say they bear false witness, and I cannot judge their claims. The best I can do is accept their right to make those claims, and weigh them against what I can and do know.
Are hundreds of decorated veterans to be assumed liars because they accuse one? Are their medals and ribbons (which they kept and honored, instead of throwing them over the White House wall) less deserving of respect than Kerry's merely because he is a Senator who wants now to be president?
During the Vietnam war, the President spent 5 years in the National Guard and Kerry spent four and a half months in Vietnam. The president flew planes, Kerry piloted a boat. Both left the service for political activity. Both served. Both should be proud of their service. The President has done the right thing. He deplored all the 527 ads and has moved to pressure the FEC to close the loophole that they slithered through in the McCain-Feingold legislation. He honors Senator Kerry's service. He does not ask the question.
Kerry has done the opposite. He has continued to question the president's service, let his surrogates call him a "draft-dodger" (note to Democrats: "serving" is not "dodging."), and trashed the Vice President for taking family deferments. For those who don't know (which seems to be most of those backing the Senator at his rallies), the law allowed various types of deferments during different periods of the war. They were based on government assumptions about the value of those activities the deferments applied to. Being newly married could earn you one. Having a small child counted, too. The idea was that we didn't want to draft people into a situation that unfairly burdened their family. Today, lest we forget, the Democrats complain when mothers and fathers are deployed at the same time, even though they volunteered for the armed forces. You would think that Democrats would appreciate the "family leave" concept applied to the draft. Guess not.
The Vietnam era is not yet over. It will not be over, no matter how many other wars we fight and win, until the last veteran and the last anti-war protestor are lying in their graves. As long as anti-war protestors like Senator Kerry try to perpetuate their vision of the war and try to stand on their service to justify their thirst for power, people like John O'Neill will try to stop them.
My faith tells me that God invented government. Attacking a nation at war from the inside is simply wrong. Are the Swiftees bearing false witness? Maybe. But even if they are, they are not running for office. It is the Senator who asks for the mantle of leadership, and it is the Senator who must be judged by the voters.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)