Posted on 08/29/2002 1:14:57 PM PDT by adam stevens
A CAMILLE AUGUST: Here's one last August entry from Camille Paglia, who has filled in for me manfully this past month. It's a dissection of the decline of the Left in America and elsewhere. Some sharp points as always. I'm really grateful for her contributions. The last one garnered 75,000 visits in a single day. From the hammock, I've been monitoring the latest twists and turns in the debate on war with Iraq. It's been a deeply revealing month - both because of what it has revealed about those who oppose war with our enemies under any circumstances and those who have merely spent the month taking no position themselves but quibbling at every possible element of a pre-emptive strike. The good news is that sooner rather than later, the anti-war left will actually have to take a stand - against war with Iraq, against preventing Saddam from getting nukes, against continuing the war against terror to its sources in the terror-sponsoring Islamist states of the Middle East. So far, very few have had the cojones to take such a stand, especially in Congress. (There are some honorable, principled exceptions among traditional pacifists, leftists and hard-core foreign policy 'realists.') But soon, even Howell Raines will have to take responsibility for backing a passive policy of leaving America and our allies vulnerable to massive destruction. Far from ducking this vital debate, those of us who believe our national security is at stake should embrace the discussion enthusiastically. And each side should be held accountable for the difficult and unknowable consequences of our respective stands. After all, what is at issue is the possible future murder of thousands of American citizens, nuclear blackmail from a rogue state, or chemical warfare waged in American cities by agents in close contact with the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Saudi axis. It's hard to think of a graver moment in recent American history. For my part, I'll leave you with a quote from an unpublished piece of writing by Michael Oakeshott. He wrote it in 1943, and I discovered it in a new doctoral dissertation on Oakeshott's work:
"No settlement with our enemies will ever be satisfactory unless it arises from a real confidence in our civilization."That's the rub, isn't it? Do we believe in the fundamentals of Western civilization? Or do we think they can bartered and appeased away?
I enjoy reading Sullivan and Paglia. But this line from Andrew the gay describing Camille the dyke as "manfully" filling in has got me giggling.
Could we say, um, giggling like a school girl? Or is it giggling in a MANLY way?
Pinging the Sullivan list.
This is the part that is killing them. They're either with us or against us.
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