Posted on 10/03/2006 5:14:04 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
PRIME Minister John Howard has named Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II as the "three towering figures" of the late 20th century.
He said their moral clarity "punctured the nonsense" of left-wing apologists for communist dictatorships.
In a blistering attack on the left's role in global history, to mark the 50th anniversary of the conservative journal Quadrant, the Prime Minister last night lauded those who resisted the "stultifying orthodoxies and dangerous utopias" of Western intelligentsia.
And he linked the great historical battle of ideas between communism and capitalist democracies to the modern-day struggle with Islamist terrorism, arguing that both clashes demanded "clear and unambiguous statements of belief and purpose".
Seeing a sinister threat in the left activism of the 1950s in Australia, Mr Howard said it was anything but an innocent ideological gambol.
"There is a view that the pro-communist left in Australia in decades past was no more than a bunch of naive idealists, rather than what they were — ideological barrackers for regimes of oppression opposed to Australia and its interests," he said.
But publications such as Quadrant, which was set up with funding from the CIA, countered such views in "a noble and moral cause".
Deploring the "philo-communism" of the 1950s and 1960s, Mr Howard pilloried historian Manning Clark for likening the ideals of Lenin to those of Christ, and Vietnam War opponents who "fed the delusion that Ho Chi Minh was some sort of Jeffersonian democrat intent on spreading liberty in Asia".
By contrast, Ronald Reagan branded the Soviet Union "the evil empire", the sort of talk "that sends diplomats the world over into panicked meltdown". Margaret Thatcher "as well as anyone grasped and articulated the essential connection of personal, political and economic freedom". And the late pope "inspired millions" behind the Iron Curtain to dream.
Rejecting charges that the West was anti-Muslim, he said it was not the Arab League that went to war in the 1990s on behalf of Muslim minorities in the Balkans, and the person who probably killed more Muslims in history was Saddam Hussein.
Gotta love him!!!
Can't disagree. we are three for three
TT
Can we import this guy and pass a Constitutional Amendment that Aussies with a clue can become President?
I'll sign the petition!
When you're right, you're right.
Yeah, he's on the same page I am. Gotta like that.
I appreciate it when leaders address issues like this. The left is subversive and it needs to be framed accurately often as possible.
yeah he sure has.
Any chance he'd be willing to move to the U.S. and take a position in the RNC?
We could use someone with backbone and vision to keep the Republican Party on track, and an outsider with the right vision has a better chance of holding the line against the desire by long time Republican Committee officers to seek non-confrontational positions.
Big anglosphere bump.
My exact same choices, since around 1984. I only wish we had such leaders now. Bush does not see Islam as clearly as Reagan saw Communism. They are one and the same.
Now I know which country to emigrate to, if the wacko libs take over the USA.
COME ON DOWN!!!!
I do love John Howard, and I have the same three heroes as he does as well. Further, I wish Pres. Bush was as direct and straightforward on the subject of Islam as Prime Minister Howard. My read on the Anglosphere is that the Brits are screwing the pooch big time, the Canukians are of two minds (with one of them being French and therefore perfidous), we Americans are making lots of mistakes but still doing ok on account of our electrifyin' mojo, and you Australians are pretty much just plowing straight ahead. I wish we were more like y'all (but with our mojo intact, of course).
And Pope Benedict XVI will be.
Good speech.
Awesome speech!
Bump
TT
I can't see anyone else who needs to be on that list, except maybe Chuck Norris.
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