Posted on 01/21/2005 3:21:06 PM PST by goldstategop
I know that there's a lot of criticism of the president's speech. It began last night. It has carried on into this morning and today, and I know that some of the criticism is even coming from Republicans. I'm not going to address the criticisms of each individual specifically, but, rather, I want to try to take the apparent broad themes of the criticism -- especially from the left. The complaints from the left include that Bush did not mention any specifics about his plans to promote freedom in the world, and that we had some complaints -- even one from the right -- that he mentioned God too much in the speech. "There was just too much God," and, you know, I think about other aspects. This is a philosophically ambitious speech. I find it fascinating. I really do here, folks, and in the plain old common-sense realm. I find it fascinating that standing for and desiring and promoting freedom can become so controversial. It literally stuns me. If you go back -- you know, one of the first things I would ask the left, who are raucously criticizing this speech, could we go back into histoire and could we ask ourselves, what was the purpose in the founding of the United Nations?
Wasn't the purpose in the founding of the United Nations peace? World peace? Wasn't it supposed to be a body that was to promote the best of mankind? It was supposed to. Isn't that what it was all about? Now, the people who react to Bush's speech, who say, "Well, that's just silly. Why, that's sophistry. Why, that's too ambitious. Freedom? For everybody in the world? Ha, ha! What a joke. Ha, ha. You idiot, Bush. Freedom around the world? How are we going to do this? Are we going to invade every country that doesn't like us? Ha, ha, ha, ha." Well, then I might say, "Why the hell have a United Nations?" What the hell is the purpose of the United Nations? The UN has become a home for renegade thugs, third-world pimps, tyrants and dictators and the last thing it's interested in is world peace. It is a corrupt body and nobody has a problem with it! Nobody but us. Around the world, the United Nations is looked at as the repository for all that's whatever in the world. Certainly isn't good. So here we have a president who talks about something as simple as fundamental to human existence as freedom and desiring it for as many people in the world as possible, and we get snickers, and we get hrumphs and we get, "Oh, yeah, right! Really! Ha, ha, ha!" a bunch of deriding laughter, and yet those same people look to the UN and see something godlike -- and therein, ladies and gentlemen, lies one of the problems with the critics.
Lincoln's Gettysburg address did not get into the details of the Civil War and nobody complained about that. Lincoln did not discuss in detail his post-war plans prior to victory in the Civil War. He wasn't going around making speeches detailing specifics. What's the demand here? You know, today is a good day. Defeating the axis powers, World War II axis powers, that was ambitious. So we get hit at Pearl Harbor and we decide, "All right we're going to clean this whole cotton-pickin' world neighborhood up." So we went to Italy and we went to Europe and we went to Germany. We went everywhere that we had to do to clean this world up. That was ambitious as hell. We saved this union. We had over 500,000 American citizens die to save this union. It was called the Civil War, for those of you who graduated from the American public school system. Ending slavery. We ended slavery. That was ambitious. We even had a stupid Supreme Court decision, Dred Scott, that said it was okay for one man to own another man. Those of you who believe in the court, ha, ha. Try bringing that ruling back today. Let's see how long the court survives. It was ambitious. We didn't accept a Supreme Court ruling back then. We said, "Screw that." We took up a great ambition and people in this country died to end slavery and to preserve the union.
Winning the Cold War? That was ambitious. One man thought it possible; everybody else snickered. "You can't do that. What do you mean? Why, there has to be a balance of power. We can't beat the Soviets. It would lead to nuclear Holocaust. Oh, no, we're all going to die!" We won it without firing a shot! We just buried the man responsible for it last year, Ronaldus Magnus. Where are our memories? What do you mean we can't do this? You shoot for the heavens; you shoot for the stars; you get there. You certainly are not going to get there by not aiming at them. For crying out loud, folks, what in the world is happening to our society where a broad-themed vision of goodness and kindness, and freedom for as many people as possible is snickered at, and in fact, has become controversial. A president needs to think big because if he doesn't, he won't accomplish anything. He becomes mired in the agenda of the bureaucrats, the diplomats, and the civil servants. Somebody tell me, we want to get enmeshed in the agenda of the State Department? They exist so that they will never cease to exist. They want problems to solve so they never have problems to solve so they never solve problems because that's the only reason they exist. It's sort of like the Reverend Jacksons of the world. If we ever really eliminated racism, he wouldn't have a job, and neither would the Reverend Sharpton.
If they can't point to problems and show examples of racism and bigotry and all that, those hucksters don't have a job. Same thing in the State Department: If people aren't killing themselves for stupid reasons all over the world, there's no reason for the State Department to get involved diplomatically and not solve it. So, yeah, let's have the agenda of the State Department. Yeah, let's do that. Let's have the agenda of bureaucrats. Let's have the Bill Clinton agenda, where you don't do anything hard. You don't do anything majestic. You don't do anything big, because your approval rating might suffer and you won't have a library that costs $163 million with a massage parlor on the side that nobody wants to visit. You'll have the luv of the UN, the luv of the State Department, the luv of Madeleine Albright, the luv of everybody if you don't do anything. If you tackle big visionary issues like Abe Lincoln, any number of other presidents, yes, you're going to have enemies. They're going to hate you; they're going to snicker, but boy, a vision of freedom? I tell you, you people who are having big problems with this, you better get and read it, because (interruption). What? What Mr. Snerdley? I'm talking to people in this audience. Get Natan Sharansky's book. We've interviewed him in the newsletter. We've talked about the book.
It will help put all this controversy, I think, that's being generated by the left and some on the right into perspectives. Clinton. Again for all the talk, Clinton was nothing more than an administrator of the government. He was nothing more than the bureaucrat-in-chief. He accomplished nothing. He chose not to think big, and the consequences were devastating in terms of our national security. He avoided dealing with real problems that were resulting in the loss of innocent American lives. He put them aside so as to protect his so-called legacy, and his approval rating. No one urged him to attack the Taliban and defeat those forces before they strike again and he didn't. Even in the Mideast, these constant negotiations he had with Arafat. That was the safe source. It was what the UN would do: Invest all of your capital in a terrorist. Invest your capital in a terrorist is what Bill Clinton did with Arafat, and from his point of view, that was the safe course. Bush finally comes to office, says, 'To hell with all this. We got nowhere with this guy, Clinton, so to heck with him." We got nowhere with any president that simply wanted to administer the government and throw parties and have state dinners and try to get the mainstream media on his side to talk about what a great guy he was. Now, something is really... Who among us is actually intellectually opposed to freedom? Ah, that's an interesting question. Some people are acting like they are opposed to it. "Don't accuse me of opposing freedom!" Well, show me how your attitude would be any different if you were opposed to it. I must take a brief time-out here, ladies and gentlemen, but we will continue this... I wouldn't call this a rant. I'd call this a rather brilliant think piece and monologue.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, look, just in the break, just in the last break, folks, two stories (shuffling papers) cleared them from the wires. I mean, it's amazing how the opposition is in lock-step. The left is saying one thing. Every media organ on the left picks up the theme, writes their own story, does their own interviews. First off, the Los Angeles Times. Doyle McManus, Times staff writer: "Putting Democracy First May Test Key Relationships." Oh, see, this can't be done! We can't do it. Putting democracy and freedom first? Why, we're going to destroy existing relationships that we have. Why, we can't do this! "For more than a century presidents have wrestled with the recurring conflict between America's democratic ideals and its real-world interests, interests that sometimes led the US into alliances with unpalatable dictators. In his inaugural address on Thursday, President Bush boldly declared that debate over. 'From now on,' he said, 'the principal goal of the US must be to promote democracy everywhere in the world, even where that may mean instability in the short run.' If Bush carries through on that pledge, it will be a significant shift in US foreign policy, which has often oscillated between promoting democracy and defending narrower military and economic interests. The president gave himself some wiggle room, but not much.
"'The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations,' he said, but he added 'the difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it.'" Why in the world everybody thinks that we're going to load up the military and send armies all over the world to do this is beyond me. This is not how this is to be achieved. The president never said that was to be the manner in which this would happen. You know, it's like I said yesterday. I don't even want to repeat myself. This is so fundamental, it's ridiculous to have to keep repeating this, "and the test of Bush's sweeping new doctrine, though, won't come in Afghanistan, but in more powerful countries like China and Russia, where the US wants to maintain cordial relationships with repressive governments for practical, political and economic reasons." All right, you know, call me silly. Call me naïve. Call me stupid. Say I have hubris. But if you ask me, the ChiComs are loosing grip on their country. Now, it's not happening overnight but the very economic freedoms that are penetrating the ChiCom wall are proof positive of what can happen with the introduction of market economics to oppressed societies. Russia? What the hell does he think happened in Russia, the old Soviet Union?
Look at the Ukraine elections, the surrounding countries that were controlled by Soviet puppets. It's just recent history. This is nothing you have to go back to the 1800s and read about to find out the possibilities. Thinking big throughout the last century is what got us where we are, and I'll get back to that theme here in just a second. The other story, ladies and gentlemen -- now, that's the L.A. Times. Of course this can't be done. Putting democracy first may test key relationships and we can't destroy our great relationships with these thugs. From Reuters: "Sweeping Freedom Proposal Could Pit US, Partners." It's the same theme. There's one theme. It's gone out on some fax machine. Every media organ on the left has picked it up and is running the story. "President Bush has made a sweeping promise to stand with oppressed people if they challenge tyrannical leaders, an ambitious goal that may put the US at odds with some of its anti-terrorism allies who lack popular support like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. 'The speech is nice rhetoric, but on a practical level means nothing absolutely, because it doesn't tell us how we're going to go about trying to achieve that goal,' said Ivo Daalder, a former foreign policy aid of Bill Clinton now at the Brookings Institution," one of the guys the Clinton administration who did diddly-squat about anything meaningful!
My friends, how many times have we talked about your individual life and your success track, and how many times have I tried to tell you, "If there's something you want to do... Let's say that you want to be a nuclear physicist. Don't go to people that flunked out of school, telling you, 'You can't do it,' and there are plenty of them. There are plenty of people who have failed at everything. Don't go talking to them. They don't want anybody else to succeed. They're obviously embittered and they're going to tell you it can't be done and even if you succeed, it isn't worth it because the people in that business will eat you up, chew you out, spit you apart, whatever. The thing to do is go talk to people who have gotten such things done. Go talk to people who are successful in the endeavor you seek to enter, and let them tell you how they did it. Be inspired and motivated by that. Who wants to keep going back to the Clinton administration to find out advice on anything? You know, Clinton appeased; Clinton tried to make friends; Clinton wanted everybody to like him; Clinton did what the left always wants everybody to do, and you know what we got for it? We got a burning hole in Manhattan where 3,000 people went to work one morning!
That's what you get when you try to appease these kind of people. At any rate, when you think big, big things happen. When you think small, guess what you're going to end up accomplishing? Little or nothing! When you rely on someone or something bigger than yourself, such as God or faith, you end up thinking big and you end up being humble. When you realize there's something bigger than you, how in the world can you have hubris? But that's what they say they've got. I really never thought that I would see the day when a speech focused on liberty and freedom, the fundamental foundation on which this country is built, would be panned, would be ridiculed, would be said to be controversial. But the truth is, the elites everywhere are saying just that. You know what really is at root here? You know why they don't like hearing about God? You know why they don't like hearing about freedom and big visions and so forth? The elitist liberals play god all the time. That's what liberalism is all about, folks. If you are a single parent and you're living in a hellhole, the liberal answer is: "Vote for me and I'll give you a program. I'm your god. I'm where you turn to. I'm where you have hope. I'm where you have salvation. The Republicans will kick you out of your house and starve you and steal your pork 'n' beans or what have you." The minute somebody comes along and suggests that this single mother in dire economic straits have faith in God, who panics? The left!
Anytime God's mentioned by anybody in a political realm, who panics? The left! Why are they so afraid of God? Why? Those of you who believe in God, what's the basis? Why be so fearful of God you've got to take it out of your Founding Documents; you got to take it out of the Pledge of Allegiance; you can't let it be uttered by elected officials. Why? There has to be a reason for the fear, and I think when you look at libs who think only of themselves, God threatens them. God is a competitor to them. Faith in something larger than government, faith in something larger than ourselves, is competitive, is competition to the left. They don't like competition. They stamp it out. They wipe it out. It's called political correctness. It's called not letting this idiot Harvard professor say what he thinks. They have to shut him up and ruin his career, even if he's one of them. They can't handle the competition! They can't handle something different and they can't handle change and they can't handle something larger than themselves, and so faith in God is a competition they can't win, so they besmirch it. They discredit it. They mock it, and make fun of it, and the people who have such faith, and if you doubt this, just look at the last presidential campaign and what it was based on, and look at the election aftermath when the left thinks that it was values and morality that beat them.
Look at the abject panic that they're in, because they know they can't compete with it. They can only stifle it and discredit it, and they have failed to do so. Playing god is precisely what liberalism is all about. I may be overstating it a bit, but liberalism's biggest challenge today is religious faith, faith in something other than them and big government. That's the stumbling block they have. That's the largest obstacle in front of their recovery. They have people who will not survive if they make a practice of citing faith in God. The left doesn't want to hear this! The loony left in Europe, the socialist left, doesn't want to hear about God. They don't want to hear about religion. It's too threatening. It's too frightening, and all it represents in a basic human sense is the understanding that there's something larger than ourselves, and that's essentially what the left cannot deal with, because they are larger than the rest of us. They are the elites. They are the ones that are smart. They're the ones that run the government. They'll protect us. They'll make sure we'll do the right things because we're too stupid to do it ourselves. When we know that there are forces, however we define them, greater than ourselves, and seeking to use that faith to improve ourselves.
When the left sees that, they are in abject fear! Because it means the gig is up. It means that more and more people are not going to look at Ted Kennedy as their salvation, or Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Boxer or any other leftist elitists you want to mention. They're going to look to things larger than themselves and their government, and this is, I think, the central reason that George W. Bush is so feared. The fear manifests itself in ridicule and insulting laughter and mockery, but make no mistake, folks: It is real, quake-in-their-boots, fear. Read the Declaration of Independence. All of its lofty talk about natural rights, God, equality and liberty? No wonder the left has school teachers that are trying to get that document banned from being taught in Cupertino, California! You want to read a lofty document? You want to hear about an ambitious vision of the future? Read the damned Declaration of Independence. Let's start making fun of that and then let's say, "Oh, no, that's not possible!" Go back to the 1700s and tell the people that wrote that, "Oh, you're silly. We can't do that. That's not possible. What do you mean? Only 37% of the people are in favor of this." Yeah, that's something lofty, and then the Constitution. Oh, oh, oh! Let's look at that. "That will never work, that will never hold up."
The world and life is full of the Can't Do It's, the Can't Get It Dones, the We Shouldn't Do Its, and never, ever, as long as you live, listen to them, folks. They've got nothing to teach you. They have nothing worth inspiring. Big issues like immigration, they're huge issues out there that have to be discussed that require a large vision and an understanding of the elements of freedom. Why is it assumed that we're going to militarily invade every non-free country? That's not Bush's point. The goal is on to promote freedom through all our dealings with these other places. Why the hell should freedom be so friggin' controversial and why in the world do people come along and say, "It can't be done. It's just silly. Why, that's not possible! Who are we?" Another way to look at this: Who the hell are we to say, No, they don't want freedom. No, it's not for them. It's only for us? "I'm not saying it's only for us, Rush, but they're..." Yes, you are. When you are denying the right of other people to be free, you're saying it's good for us but not for them. On what basis do you have that right? You didn't create these people. You didn't create them in their image. You have no knowledge of their lives whatsoever, other than what you're told by a bunch of people in the media who couldn't get it right if their lives depended on it anymore. What ought to be controversial today is the large number of people who think this isn't possible and shouldn't be done, and is too risky, and are worried about making the Chinese mad, worried about making the Pakistanis mad, worried about making who the hell else knows mad. That's how we got along with the Soviets for 30 or 40 years until somebody came long who didn't give a rat's rear end whether they got mad, because there was something larger and more important than whether somebody got mad at us. People on the left cannot get out of the notion that everybody revolves around them. They are the center of the universe. Their thoughts, their hopes, their dreams, their fears: That's what should define everything, and it has for too long, and those days are over.
Rush absolutely rocks. Thank you again, sir.
Bump!
Somoza and the Shah were both pro Western and merited our support. Musharraf and the CCP are anti Western and we are foolish to continue pretending they are not.
No time to do it here, but I can make the case that the military all out war on Communism should have commenced no later than 1945 (even earlier would have been better) and been completed by 1950. If anything, we did not do enough. Even after the events of 1989 - 1991, Communism still festers.
RE: They are inherently flawed, because they are premised upon the same fantasies that drove the great Totalitarian movements of the last Century.
I have to challenge you here. Totalitarianism seeks true world conquest and direct control of all man. Totalitarianism also does not believe in the spread of the rule of law, but instead, subscribes to the rather lawless notion that what must be spread is not law, but, acceleration of some supposed "current of history" or "natural law." If anything, Islamism, as well as Communism and Naziism, embody this, whereas, our form of government and beliefs, even at their most globalist, socialist flawed level, still embody the rule of law and the self evidently liberal basis of English Common Law. These are important distinctions.
Now this is a great concern. Indeed, if we are to win this war, we must also tighten our borders. Borders, language, culture.
Wasn't Japan a democracy before the military started running things?
bookmark
Nor is my purpose to convict anyone of anything, at this point. My purpose is to challenge what I consider seriously flawed judgment. And the Messianic references go to the President's overly dramatic speech. The policy is flawed, and so in my opinion is the rhetoric advanced to support it.
As for North Korea, my point was not that the President does not recognize the danger there; but rather he does not give it quite the priority he should. Whereas, for whatever reason, he gives excess priority to Iraq.
And if I was prosecuting anyone, I would have to excuse you from the Jury. But relax, I am not. This is more about ideas than crime. (Although when Dean Rusk pursued this policy (1961 to 1969), he crossed some lines for which he should have been indicted, in my opinion.)
William Flax
You also invite lasting bitterness for no conceivable gain--no realistically conceivable gain.
We need the traditional cultural leaders of all of the countries in the world, to help us track down our actual enemies. When we attack traditional cultures, we simply help the Terrorists recruit, as well as undermine two centuries of good will, and legitimate moral authority--all part of the legacy of the Founding Fathers.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Well my first reaction was since it was led by an "emperor" in collaboration with an imperial court, I'm not sure you would call it a classic democracy.
I did a quick google and it is an interesting discussion
on the one hand there is a constitution in effect
http://www.utexas.edu/coc/journalism/Js363/hiroshima.htm
on the other there was significant unopposed power:
The previous Japanese constitution, the Meiji Constitution, was written in 1889. The 1889 constitution was named after the emperor Meiji - the grandfather of the then reigning emperor, Hirohito. The parliamentary government, or Diet, came under the emperor. Members of the Diet were both appointed from wealthy families and elected by male voters who paid high taxes.
Since very few Japanese owned land or had wealth, few people participated in the government prior to World War II. A feudal system existed in Japan before 1945. Land was leased and not owned by farmers, women had no rights over property and marriage, voting rights belonged to the wealthy few, and there was little freedom of the press.
Building on many of the elements in the United States Constitution, MacArthur and a small staff drew up a new constitution for Japan. Some of the elements found in the new Japanese constitution include: a Bill of Rights; equal rights, freedom of religion; political parties; abolish war; abolish feudalism; governmental power resides in the people, not the emperor, end discrimination of women, religion, races; free enterprise; freedom of speech; right of minimum standard of living; right to unions or collective bargaining.
One of the elements in the new constitution specifically gives governmental power to the people. The Meiji constitution explicitly stated that the emperor held supreme power over Japan because as a descendant of the sun goddess, the emperor was semi-devine
http://www.baylink.org/lessons/mm8-occ-japan_r.html and
http://www3.la.psu.edu/textbooks/172/Rest%20of%20the%20Story.htm
I think in balance you can say that Japan was not a democracy prior to the US imposing a new constitution in 1946.
I didn't hear Rush at all today, but I can tell you that the Democrats have been slowly getting more and more furious and at-a-loss, because their big issue of IDEALISM
is being taken away from them. They believe they are the rightful heirs of fearless idealism, even though every time and place they've tried to spread it has proven to be a failure, because the "analysis" supporting it was never grounded in a realistic appraisal of any situation.
Bush's Administration has put Idealism into ACTION, and though we don't really know short or long term effects, even the possibility that it will be successful has gotten the Dems into a red-faced apopleptic fit.
"a red-faced apopleptic fit" I might add, that they share with their more violent brothers, the "insurgents", who also don't want to see freedom and democracy take a foothold there.
"
And that's the problem, unless you're a fan of the French Revolution and the Jacobins it spawned.
I once suggested something of that sort to my father, a regular Army officer who served in the 7th Army from North Africa to the end of the war. I'm afraid your idea appeals to young arm chair theorists rather than the men who fought the war. They were tired, their equipment was tired, and they all were being prepared for a massive invasion of the Japanese home islands. To suggest an all out attack on Russia would have probably resulted in mutiny on a grand scale. Not to mention the problem with logisitics, supply lines, weather, and other mundane but important problems.
You'll notice my non-partisan tone----I agree, that's the problem....I am VERY ambiguous about what I call this "apocalyptic idealism"---it is simply TOO BIG a project
with too many bloody X factors to carry off without unlimited global mayhem following in its wake. Commentators just now, in the aftermath of the inauguration speech, are noticing the "Wilsonian" complexion of Bush's plans, but they're still not bringing any critical analysis to it. Santayana, where are you??
I meant to say "very AMBIVALENT" , not ambiguous....
The current rage in the White House seems to run more to Billington's
Fire in the Minds of Men.
Those conditions were a result of the policies of FDR. As much as he is lauded for "helping to win WW2" he made many, many serious errors. Had the US started war preparations during the early 1930s, then the conditions you noted would not have been nearly as bad as they were. I try to avoid rationalizing outcomes. I would rather think of, had the objective been "X" what would have been required to attain it. Taking this same philosophy into the future can then help to avoid failure.
Agree.
Everything else seems distant, and pales, while watching our very own country being literally over run by millions entering illegally, making our very own citizenship close to being pointless. With some estimates now ranging up to 25 million in our country illegally. The lawlessness here at home is epic, and the lack of government action is far beyond disturbing.
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