From yesterday’s (London) Times:
Democracy, Winston Churchill famously observed, is the worst form of government ever devised ”“ except for all the others. Well, he was right about the first part.
In America these days democracy is living down to its reputation, producing sticking-plaster solutions to epochal challenges, indulging the worst populist instincts of its voters, throwing up demagogic leaders unworthy of the job and rejecting those of true courage. The most depressing spectacle is unfolding over Iraq. Washington has reached the stage where vital national interests ”“ and the security of much of the world ”“ are being determined almost entirely by immediate, panicky political considerations. Americans want their troops home.
It’s a wholly understandable sentiment. But it is one that needs to be resisted, not massaged and nurtured, as members of Congress from both parties have been doing.
And people wonder why Congress’ approval rating is at its lowest point ever (14%)!
I’m surprised these people in congress have the courage to get up in the morning. My son is a former Marine and served in operation Iraqi Freedom. He was proud to serve and I proud of him. I wish I could say the same of our legislators. We either fight these killers on their turf or ours. The choice is ours come election time.
Why do we persist in electing people with such weak and corrupted charactors?
DonGander
The silver lining appeared when the “people” rose up re. the immigration issue. Americans do not dislike Mexicans – they are simply tired of an ad nauseum non-effective policy on the matter. The “history of immigrants being welcomed to this country” is a red herring. They talked about Lincoln’s “ineptitude” in the Civil War. So what’s new? I don not think Congressional leadership now with a favorable rating of 16% under Democrats is sitting well. Mr. Baker’s feel for what’s “going on” in America seems a bit wan. The “desperate pleas for peace” are coming from the wimpy collection of White House “press corps” visible on C-Span this week, with nothing better among them than to look for any loophole they could find with their cavelling collection of stupid questions. I predict the people will arise to take control effectively, Mr. Baker, and quite soon.
There has long been sentiment in Britian that America should step up and become a world empire, like the Brits once did. That would mean either persuading the American people that world empire is good, as our neo-cons are doing, or taking decisions on war out of the people’s hands, by effectively changing parts of the Constitution, as the Cheny/Bush Administration has been doing. I think this politacal and psychological war against our Constitution, is one from which we dare not shrink.
It is true that the war party has manouvered us into a situation where there are no easy ways for us to back away from empire, and I have grave doubts that Congress has the wisdom and courage to effectively challenge the Administration. I pray a lot. God is able to do what humans cannot. After all Psalm 68 implores God to “scatter the people that delight in war.”
Sam Dargan (#5.) said,
“It is true that the war party has manouvered us into a situation where there are no easy ways for us to back away ….”
Interesting term “war party.” I suppose then that you would agree that in the 1960s that Johnson, a Democrat president and the Democrat majority in Congress constituted a Democrat “war party.”
A “war party” that later abruptly reversed it’s position and left the South Vietnamese people at the mercy of the North Vietnamese communists.
“…persuading the American people that world empire is good, as the neo-cons are doing…”
“… effectively changing parts of the Constitution, as the Bush/Cheney administration has been doing…”
Dargan [ #5 ] , kindly embellish on your rather novel thesis.
As a neo-con I have not at all been persuaded that “world empire is good”.
But I have been persuaded that defense against attackers is 1) constitutionally required, and 2) best on another country’s soil and not our own.
You know . . . sort of like the other world wars we’ve participated in.
I wonder where Baker came up with the idea that the current US situation contains “little Napoleans”. Bonaparte was a man of action, and would probably be vaguely amused with our current media culture.
Bush’s “rare” accomplishments, as referenced by the author, are considerably less rare than Baker seems capable of recognizing. As to the apparently-pejorative “little Napoleans” reference, the author’s use of the term is off-point, unless he’s referring to Pelosi, Boxer and Mayor Bloomberg [ who all stand about 5′-0″ ]. Comment re. the British and the reference to Churchill: The British were fairweather “supporters” of Churchill: they voted him out of office the minute the war was over. I think the American people will not allow themselves to be underestimated at this time and will fill the leadership void very rapidly.
As I read the article, I wondered what a parallel article about Britain in the NY Times would look like. For example, an article by an American commentator about the UK legislature, lambasting it as governed by an outmoded multi-cultural philosophy that could not recognise the need for an integrated Britain proud of its democratic heritage; a place where the representatives were primarily concerned about securing their re-selection by their party committees and thus painfully politically correct because anything different would scupper their future, and hence were terrified to tackle the uncontrolled immigration (recently-convicted bombers turned out to be yet more phony ‘asylum-seekers’ one of whom had been given over the years a total of £100,000 in social security); a country where Islam is praised as a religion of peace by politicians while the same politicians are contemptuous about Christianity … what would we Brits feel about an article like that? Would we be angry at an American opining arrogantly about the state of our nation, or would we sorrowfully recognise the truth of it?
I’ve read a lot about the British empire recently (Indian history). A genuine empire taxes its subjects to fill the treasury back home. The Brits did this all over the world, including the US before we threw them out. Rome, both West and East, were empires. Islam became an imperial movement shortly after the death of Muhammad and continued thus until the fall of the Ottomans — centralized administrations taking booty and tax money from far-flung subjects. The US after World War II has not followed this pattern. Huge sums in US tax dollars flowed out to Europe and Japan, and huge sums are now flowing out to Iraq. Not imperial behavior.
By the way, I mean no special offense to the British. It is true that British-occupied areas have often done better after independence than have former colonies of some other European countries. An Indian friend points out to me that, despite what she calls the rape of her country, the British did bequeath India with what was at the time a great railway system, and more importantly, with a system of government that, with all its flaws, makes other countries in the area look very sad. India without the British occupation would not be the India we see today.
Belize [ a former British colony ], Nigeria [ another one ] have at least a well-educated citizenry compared to their neighbors. Canada, the US, Australia you name it .
[#s 12,13 ] – I think a better illustration of your point would be Spain and Portugal. A good test is where the respective countries involved are today. Would you live in a former Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian, or French colony anywhere today [ maybe Macao ]?
Katherine,
Pat Buchanan said it best: Americans make terrible imperialists. This is because America was founded as an anti-imperialist institution, based on the ideals of secession and national self-determination. We simply lack the legal and political structures to maintain an empire. So no matter how worthy the fight may be in the growing list of countries the neo-conservatives think we (actually, our young people) must be fighting in, long term it is not a fight that can be successfully maintained. We are printing money to pay for the current mess and that is not a sustainable process.
Also, the end result of imperial ventures is an influx of unassimilable minorities into the mother country. This is the boomerang effect. Pan-Hispanic nationalist gangs are already in the US military, and there will be growing ranks of Iraqi ex-paramilitarists emigrating to the US. Our future will see not only episodic terrorist attacks on US soil, but active insurgency movements. Note that this is the paradoxical result of shortsighted efforts to take the fight “over there.”
I have skimmed this article. It is leftist nonsense. If this man’s heart bleeds so for the Iraqis, then Britain can bloody well match our 160,000 troop/$4B a month commitment to the place. And if our “racism” so upsets him, I would likewise urge Britain to avail itself of the millions of unassimilable ethnic minorities currently in residence here.
I agree, Reactionary, that Americans make terrible imperialists. My point was that what we’re doing is not an imperial venture.
Do you find that the “pan-hispanic nationalist gangs” are the direct result of some previous “imperial” effort? And “neo-conservative is such a broad term, often misapplied. I, for instance, have always been a conservative.
I am reading Efraim Karsh’s “Islamic Imperialism: A History.” The book recounts the imperialism which has been an essential element of Islam since shortly after the death of Muhammad. This was imperialism in the classic sense of the ancient East Roman (Byzantine) and Sasanid (Iranian) empires which it overran and whose administrative systems it adopted.Too many analysts on the left and the right view all the current problems as only a reaction to what the US does, rather than arising from 1400-year-old trends within Islam itself.
# 16: You know, Britain has had at its peak 8,000 troops there. If I recall correctly over 150 have died. Rather than mocking another nation’s effort, in which it has been shoulder to shoulder with the United States, would not mutual respect be more appropriate? As for bleeding for the Iraqis, it is the Iraqis are bleeding. The US and the UK precipitated the collapse of one of the few secular governments in the Middle East. The result is that a ruthless dictatorship has been replaced with carnage. As this is a Christian blog, I would remind readers that the Christian minority in Iraq (around 10% of the population, some of them still speaking Aramaic the language of Christ himself) as a result of our efforts has been exposed to kidnap, extortion and ethnic cleansing. Many have had to flee. Hardly something for us to boast about. There is much that I do not agree with in the article, but to dismiss it as leftist nonsense is surely to avoid the point that we have a debacle here and need to come to grips with it.
Katherine,
The infiltration of MS-13 and the La Raza and Aztlan movements has resulted from the US government’s deliberate effort to expand its economic base, a quasi-imperial venture. The US is behaving like an empire, by engrafting distinct nations (i.e., nationalities) into what has historically been a distinct Anglo-Saxon nation in its own right. The fate of all empires has been to devolve into their constituent nations.
Re: “neo-conservatives,” the phrase is aptly applied to the school of self-styled conservatives who agitate for a larger national security state and armed export of secular democracy abroad (this is not just Wilsonian, it is downright Trotskyist.) Historically, the school of political philosophy that described itself as “conservative” would be shocked to know that title is now claimed by people who urge deficit spending to engage in overseas campaigns to promote secular democracy. This is also why I am more than a little annoyed at this Brit’s sneering attitude. Apparently, he likes democracy only when he agrees with the majority. When the US tires of bearing the white man’s burden in the lands of the former British empire, he reveals his anti-populist true colors.
TerryTee,
I agree with most of your sentiments, but Britain has a much greater capacity for involvement in Iraq than we presently do. It has not done so because the British people are overwhelmingly opposed to any increased involvement in this mess. So for the third time in the past 100 years, we see again that the British will always be willing to fight to the last drop of American blood. We are cleaning up yet another mess left by the British in their attempts to defeat rival empires. People are wrong to call this “World War IV.” It’s actually the aftermath of World War I.
Reactionary, about the only thing I can agree with you about is that many of the problems we are facing today are still the aftermath of WWI.
Katherine,
The Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns can only be described as quasi-imperial ventures. The threats supposedly faced by the US state, the Saddam regime and the Taliban regime, have been deposed. What is in place now are two client governments that apparently do not enjoy enough popular support to risk us leaving. They are client-states, colonies, but without the economic benefit to the mother country of colonies.
You know, if you trace all problems back to the poor old Brits it really is evading issues of responsibility. As for fighting to the last drop of American blood: I have the deepest respect for the sacrifices of US men and women. I have on this blog quite some time ago counselled my sillier fellow-countrymen to go to the USAF cemetery outside Cambridge and look at the 6000 graves there of men who came to help defend us against Nazy tyranny. And yet: I have to remind reactionary that the US entered the war against Japan on December 10th 1941 and if memory serves me correctly, not against Germany; Germany then declared war on the United States. Until then the US kept its distance as Britain and the Empire fought on and Pearl Harbor was the result. But I hate this point-scoring. Really, we should be supporting each other. I can understand irritation at this article-writer’s tone of condescension but that does not mean that he is completely wrong. And let’s not pursue the tit-for-tat otherwise we risk elf wrath for going off-subject.
First, the guy who wrote the piece is an American living and writing in Britain.
Reactionary: Aztlan is a movement put out by MeCHa [ LA mayor Tony Villar aka Antonio Villareigosa, was the head of MeCHA at UCLA ], the Ford Foundation and the Mexican government [ through US PR firms ] to spread the word in US grammar, secondary schools and colleges that the southwestern part of the US is actually a part of Mexico which was taken by the US in the 1800’s. Not true. It was purchased by the US. MS-13 is a Salvadorean gang made up of former illegal aliens from that country who have been kicked out of the US and returned yet again illegally. It is the sanctuary policies practiced by individual US cities which has prevented a stronger response, although LAPD has been effective in dealing with MS-13. The US is not “engrafting distinct nations ” – it has a long history of people assimilating into it. However, many of the current newcomers do not wish to do so and the liberals cater to this. There are 125 languages represented in the LA school system.
Today’s news suggests that those setting public education policy in the UK are minimizing Winston Churchill in favor of global warming.
Juandeveras,
My hypothesis is that assimilation into the dominant culture (Anglo-Saxon, in the case of the US) happens when the new arrivals find they must do so in order to avoid social isolation and advance their ecnonomic prospects. When ethnic groups arrive in numbers sufficient to set up a parallell nation on the very soil of the host country, and when there are shelves of laws available for the new arrivals to beat their hosts over the head with, then assimilation will not occur.
Reactionary: Amen
Your hypothesis occurs, in the US, when Democrats are in charge – as they were for many years in the latter part of the 20th C. – they also controlled the media [ NBC,CBS,ABC,CNN, major papers ], the ACLU [ which is a shell of its former self ] – they were largely responsible for our leaving Vietnam and the subsequent blood bath in Cambodia – say Jane Fonda – even though we won most of the battles in that war. Vietnam was a Democrat war. I think the Immigration “vote” by the public recently will be a symbolic initiation of a new day in this land. The Democrat-“led” Congress has a popularity rating lower than GWB.
Juandeveras,
The biggest proponents of mass immigration are Republicans and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. If you think otherwise, you have been hiding under a rock the past 7 years.
Reactionary:
I assume you are writing from the UK, because there is a certain disconnect here. Most illegrants [ my word ], particularly of the Hispanic variety from south of the border, and that’s a majority [ 80% ], are known to vote Democratic – that’s a given. I read the WSJ daily and would submit that their editorial policy on immigration would support business interests and fair play [ ie legal immigration done properly ].
The WSJ policy on immigration as suggested by Peter Dupont on 06/27/07 entitled “Security First”:
1. Secure border
2. No reforms until border secure
3. Tamper-proof ID
4. Merit-based evaluation
5. Eliminate “visa lottery”
Reactionary:
Here’s how Mexico views illegal immigration:
1. No bilingual education in the schools.
2. No special ballots for elections.
3. All gov’t business in Spanish.
4. Foreigners will never have right to vote – ever.
5. Foreigners will never hold political office.
6. Foreigners will not burden the taxpayers.
7. No welfare, food stamps, health care, or any other gov’t assistance.
8. Foreigners can invest as long as the minimum is 40,000 times the minimum wage.
9. Foreigners can buy land but options are restricted.
10. Waterfront land only for natural born citizens.
11. Any violation you will be forced to leave country.
12. If you enter illegally you will be hunted down and sent to jail.
Juan,
I write from the US and am very engaged in US politics. Jorge Bush and Congressional Republicans, notably Sen. John McCain, have been relentless in attempting to cram amnesty down the electorate’s throat. Border Patrol rank and file report a complete lack of support from their higher-ups for their operations. The WSJ (not Pete DuPont) is staunchly in favor of the president’s policies.
Mr. Reactionary: Well, you can see how Mr. McCain is doing in the polls. I do not think he will be a viable candidate much longer. So much for what his wing of Republicans is promoting. Mr. DuPont was stating the WSJ POV. Suggest you read. What does “complete lack of support” mean ? Where are your cites ? There has been substantial beefing up along the border, which has become a war zone at a higher level than before. The incarceration of the two officers was questionable, but the US Atty. handling the matter, interviewed last night, staed that the facts support the result – we weren’t there. Please provide cites for your assertions.
[url=http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040107-3.html]President Bush proposes new temporary worker program[/url]
[url=http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/rbartley/?id=95000738]Robert Bartley, WSJ editor emeritus: Open NAFTA borders? Why not? Immigration is what made this country great.[/url]
Mr. R. – Is that a quotation ?”
Juandeveras,
The first link is to the White House press release. The second is to the WSJ’s online Opinion Journal. The superimposed text is the title of the source document, taken directly from the source. If you would like to learn more about the incredible disconnect between the Republican leadership and the people of the US on immigration, visit vdare.com. The only explanation I have is that there are HUGE amounts of money being deployed in favor of open borders, and it ain’t being put up by Democratic welfare queens and hippies. Search “Sierra Club” at vdare.com to get an idea of this.
The huge amounts of money being deployed for open borders [ Sierra Club, La Raza, Ford Found’n etc ]
is liberal money not Republican – think Moeon.org people.
Juandeveras,
You are sadly mistaken on this. I grant you that multi-cult leftists are in favor of open borders, but virtually the entire Republican leadership, including the president, is in favor of open borders as well. Large, multi-national corporations and the government itself benefit greatly from this artificial expansion of the economic base.
fortunately, enough Republicans heard the outcry and voted against the so-called immigration bill.
Establ’ing a temporary worker program is not a code word for open borders. The term “borders” as relate to NAFTA refers to trade only. The suggestion that immigration “made this country great” has nothiing to do with “open borders”.
Juandeveras,
“Temporary worker progam” means “window of opportunity to make anchor babies.” Again, you are terribly naive on this issue.
Reactionary: Apparently you like to speak as if you know what you are talking about and like to suggest that those who do not necessarily agree, such as myself, are “terribly naive”, “sadly mistaken”, et cetera. You referred me to a website you like called Vdare, which is rather hysterical. You are one who has referred in an earlier comment to Iraq and Afghanistan as “client states”. I would suggest that the term should be reserved for countries such as former eastern European Russian satellites such as Poland. I would never suggest either Iraq or Afghanistan would be in such a category vis a vis the US. A little humility would be nice, Mr. R.