Amber

The Political Left’s Support for Totalitarianism

July 3, 2009 | america, american ideals, democracy

The political left has a proud record on some issues. Its main claim to fame is the unionization of the working class, a hard fought battle which was, in many cases, necessary. It has a reputation of championing the cause of workers, the ‘underclass,’ defined as those who live at an economic level that is below the median income of the rest of society, and ‘minorities,’ defined, basically, as those of a different culture than the mainstream who also belong to the underclass.

 In fact, though, if one examines these positions carefully, one can detect a basic, underlying theme, which changes the benevolent image of the left in a dramatic way. Unionism is, basically, anti-Capitalist. Sure, it changes the living standard of the worker, in the short term, but it forces a wage scale upon the business that has no real relationship to the realities of the market. Sure, someone has to be an advocate for those who do not have the resources to fight for themselves in a more and more complex society, but this is not where the Left focuses its energies; its main focus is attempting to siphon off capital from society to give to people who do not contribute to society in any way that justifies this capital.

 In fact, the Left is totalitarian. It is the best equivalent, today of anarchist, totalitarian movements that have always plagued society. It parades itself as the champion of the underrepresented, and appeals to politically naïve young college students and adults who can see people being hurt, and want quick answers to help them, but it takes these positions simply to gain the support of these people. They are a ready pool of votes that can be appealed to with simplistic answers, and the left has a self-interest in never improving their position in life. Look at Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez is rapidly dismantling the economy of the country, with the support of the poor, to form a Communist State.

 What I say, above, is not radical. It is history. If one looks at the antecedents of the modern left, today, one can go back to the Russian Revolution, and the many Socialist and anarchist elements fermenting beneath the surface of the Russian Revolution. When the Bolsheviks took control of Russian, murdering the Czar, his wife and his children, they established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and unleashed a reign of terror upon the world that was to last 80 years, killing many tens of thousands of its own citizens of its own people.

 That has to be the logical, natural and inevitable result of the ideology of the Left, for they do not believe people will do what they think is best for them; they do not believe in Democracy. In the United States, they look to the courts to gain their issues, because they cannot get them past Congress. They believe they know what is best, and are not willing to let people decide for themselves. They are totalitarians.

 There is no megalomaniacal mass-murderer that the Left has not supported, no Democracy that it has supported.

• The Nation supported Lenin, and still supports the enemies of the west today.
• The dramatist Maxim Gorky was in Russia, cheering on the Lenin killing, and later cheering on the Stalin killing. He called for the extermination of Stalin’s enemies “like lice”. He supported the gulag system, and glorified the use of innocents as slave labour.
• The Guardian supported Stalin, and sacked the brave Malcolm Muggeridge for telling the West about the genocidal Ukrainian Famine (when perhaps 7 million people were deliberately starved to death by Stalin).
• The New York Times supported Stalin, and denied the Ukrainian Famine was happening
• George Bernard Shaw (and here) despised democracy, supported Lenin, Stalin and the Soviet purges, and denied the Ukrainian Famine happened. He also supported Hitler, and denied the Holocaust happened
• The Daily Mail, under Lord Rothermere, supported Hitler, Nazi Germany, Mussolini and British fascism in the 1930s
• The writer and critic John Middleton Murry, editor of the pacifist Peace News, said in 1940, as Britain fought desperately for its survival against genocidal Nazi Germany: “Personally I don’t believe that a Hitlerian Europe would be quite so terrible as most people believe it would be.”
• The pacifist Vera Brittain complained about the publicity given to the gas chambers when they were discovered in 1945. She said they were being publicised: “partly, at least, in order to divert attention from the havoc produced in German cities by allied obliteration bombing.”

I could go on, but one can see the pattern, here. Today it is the Leftist politicians and intellectuals, such as Jimmy Carter, and Noam Chomsky, who are the most fervent supporters of the homicidal terrorist organizations spawned by radical Islam, and the most fervent opponents of our attempts to defend ourselves against Islam.

 If one can see this pattern, one can understand much of what is going on in politics, today. While it might be that many Democratic leaders are sincere in their positions, they are controlled, at present, by far-left organizations, such as Moveon.org and la Raza,  which are not friends of Democracy. Too often we, as Conservatives, try to argue with them on a rational basis, assuming that we all want what is best for us and our country…when, in fact, we are arguing against people who want to destroy us almost as much as our more fervent enemies. They might not even know it themselves, as they are being manipulated, but we cannot assume their good intentions. They do not trust Democracy. They do not like Capitalism. They want a totalitarian State that they feel will be benevolent, under principles they establish.

W e can tolerate ‘democrats’ and anarchists, under normal circumstances, but circumstances are rarely ‘normal.’ We are always under attack by those who envy the sweat of our labor, and wish to take what we have worked for, here in the United States. While in our system, everyone has a right to an opinion, we cannot ever forget that some of those people with an opinion are not our friends, and are not simply ‘political opponents’ in a Democratic system, they are fascists who want to bring out system down by using the system.

 We have a right, in America, to have opinions, even idiotic opinions. In fact, it is our strength that we allow whacko opinions….sometimes they turn out to be right.

 I am not suggesting we round them up the Left, and put them into camps, but we, as Conservatives, have to hammer the point that these people are not our friends, not friends of our system, our heritage, our people. They might say they ‘love’ America, by the America they love is not the America that exists, but the America they want to be…and that is what we have to fight.

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The Dearth of Conservative Leadership

June 30, 2009 | Uncategorized

I have always said that Liberals do not win National elections; it is Conservatives who lose. The American people will vote for a Conservative over a Liberal if the Conservative is truely a Conservative, representing values and positions that reflect an American perspective.

This is most evident in the last five Presidential elections. In each of those elections, Republicans have nominated a weak Conservative…Bill Clinton won two elections over George Bush and Bob Dole. George W. Bush won two elections over two VERY weak Liberal candidates. Barry Soetoro won his election over what can only be termed a very weak Conservative, John McCain.

Strong Conservatives win elections…and our job, as Conservatives, is to find those strong candidates and support them, not only as President but, even more importantly, in the House and Senate. We each have strong influence on the House race, and our imput on the Senate races are important.

The 2010 election is crucial to our future as a nation. Obama’s ruinous economic policies are going to come into full fruition next year, and the economy is very likely going to be in a nose dive. The country will be ready, by November, 2010, for a major change. We have the opportunity to turn Congress completely around, but we cannot do this without the presence of strong candidates running. Everyone out there is important. Become involved…now, not later! Finding the candidates who best represent the values that built this great country is not something to be left to the last moment. We need to have them in PLACE in time for the nominating conventions.

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Michael Jackson RIP

June 27, 2009 | america, music

I have been asked to comment on Michael Jackson, and feel I should say something. I have never been a Michael Jackson ‘fan.’ I admire his skills and showmanship, but his music, IMO, did not extend into the ‘deathless’ category that I value in art. I doubt if, in 25 years, people will be playing his songs. I could be wrong.

His life and death was tragic. He was one of those children who never got to live. He was a superstar at an early age, his father was a bastard, pushing his career above everything else, and what resulted was a person who lived within a bubble, little different from the original ‘ Bubble boy.’ His development as a human being, and even an artist, was stunted, and he became a caricature of himself. There are stories, whether true or not I do not know, about his spending his life trying to look like Elizabeth Taylor, and about his imagined dying like Elvis Presley. Did he see any value in himself? That I do not know, either.

As such, his death does not seem so much a tragedy to me as it does a relief. The evidence seems to be that he died of a medically induced drug overdose; the doctor simply pushed him over the top, and he got his wish of an Elvis-type of immortality. He was working on a ‘comeback tour,’ and there were doubts as to whether he could perform up to his old standards…and maybe it is best he died when he did. I can’t imagine him getting old happily.

So, goodbye, Michael. I hope you are singing well where you are.

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No False Choice in Iran; America’s shame.

June 24, 2009 | iran

Fred Barnes trashes Obama’s indecision on Iran:

“Rejecting “false choices” is a favorite rhetorical device of President Obama. His speeches are littered with examples. A half-dozen times, he’s repudiated “the false choice between our security and our ideals.” He’s dismissed “the false choice between sound science and moral values.” He’s not only disposed of “the false choice between securing this nation and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars,” he’s laid to rest the clash between those who’d “conserve our resources” and those who’d “profit from these natural resources.”

But confronted by a popular revolt in Iran, Obama has succumbed to a false choice. Either support the democratic forces in Iran aligned against the rigged presidential election or preserve his chance to negotiate with the Ahmadinejad regime for a nuclear arms deal–one or the other. The president thinks he’s stuck with a dilemma. He’s not. The two options aren’t mutually exclusive. The choice is indeed false.

To escape his predicament, Obama has sought neutrality between a discredited regime and democratic protesters. This actually helps the regime, since President Ahmadinejad and the mullahs don’t need Obama’s support. The protesters do. In effect, Obama has tilted in favor of the regime. The result is personal shame (for Obama) and policy shame (for the United States).

The president should know better. In dealing with dictators, honey is rarely more effective than vinegar. Obama’s respectful overtures to Iran’s leaders evoked only angry recriminations against America and no sign of willingness to settle differences on nuclear arms or anything else.”

Obama’s inexperience and naivetie is shown no better than his reaction to what is happening in Iran. If he really cared about he Iranian people, about Iranian Democracy, about the spread of freedom in the world, a few words of support and a spine shown against the Iranian Mullahs would have gone an awful long way…but, as it stands, the Mullahs had Obama’s number, and felt no compunction about perpetuating a brutal crackdown on the forces of freedom that will go down in history along with Tiananmen Square. He has no more shame left, but the shame on the shoulders of our country might take much more blood to expunge; experience has shown that the longer madmen have to build up their strength, the longer it takes to beat them down.

From Michael Barone:

But he clearly hasn’t abandoned his policy of seeking the good opinion of tyrants. He didn’t even rescind the State Department’s invitations of Iranian diplomats to attend U.S. embassy Fourth of July celebrations (halal hot dogs, anyone?). If Bush refused to entertain the emissaries of the Iranian theocrats, it must be right to do the opposite.

But even anonymous State Department officials are saying that the chances are dismal for fruitful negotiations with Ahmadinejad or the tyrant Obama insists on calling “the Supreme Leader” by Obama’s deadline — something that seemed obvious to me and many others well before June 12.

A regime of tyrants dedicated to hatred of America, Britain and Israel is not going to be persuaded to abandon a central goal by even the most dazzling display of adolescent charm

Obama is a leftist, and the left has rarely, if ever supported freedom and democracy in the world; there is no Democracy the Left has ever supported and no maniacal dictator the left has not supported. The blood flowing in Baharesten Square, in Central Tehran, is on the hands of the American people for the support they still show this President. We should all feel ashamed of our timidity tonight.

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The Iranian Question; There is a Question???

June 22, 2009 | Middle East, iran

After a week of watching, posting, reading, thinking…I’m apalled at my countrymen (and women).

More accurately, I am thoroughly disgusted. The ‘why” of my disgust should be as transparent as Obama’s promise regarding his administration.

Any contention that our government should remain silent about what is currently happening in Iran is appalling. If Obama is sincere about how he wishes America to be viewed by the world, he should have come out with nothing less than condemnation of the Iranian rulers.

America is the example, for the rest of the world, of freedom, liberty and an environment where people may come from anywhere else on the planet to escape oppression. We have, for the better part of our existence, striven towards that end.

We can stand by and do nothing about the stiving of the people of Iraq for greater freedom, or we can do something. What that something is does not matter as much as showing the world that we applaud and support the people of Iran. We don’t need to intervene militarily. We do, however, need to use every means possible to tell Iran and its people that we abhor the treatment of their citizens by their own government, as well as the disrespect that government for the freedom of people everywhere else in the world. We can tell them that their treatment of women is unacceptable; their treatment of gays is dispicable; their killing civilians is nothing less than murder…and those pulling the trigger will, one day, be held accountable; that killing your fellow citizens on orders from your leaders is a crime.

President Obama’s  argument against speaking our beliefs to the Iranian people, that we need to ‘establish a dialogue with the government of Iran, is pathetic.  We do NOT need to have a dialog with murderers. We need to tell them that THEY need to change if they want a dialog. They need to let theor people speak freely, let them protest peacefully and accept whatever consequences come about as a result of those freedoms.

THEN and ONLY THEN will we “dialog” with Iran.

If we abandon our principles and beliefs in order to be liked by murderers, we are less, as a people, than they are. President Obama has said on many occasions that we need to put ourselves in the shoes of others………………..

Our country’s leaders and citizens have lost the courage to even speak the truth freely.  Under this administration, we have lost the courage to stand up for our own principles. If we do not stand for the people of Iran, we have betrayed them, and ourselves.

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We Are at War With Islam

June 17, 2009 | Middle East, iran

In his June 4th speech, in Cairo, to the Arab world, President Obama reiterated what he has said before, that “In Ankara, I made clear that America is not — and never will be — at war with Islam.” Such a statement reminds me of similar statements by pacifists and cowards that it takes two to make a war. Certainly that is wrong; it only takes one to initiate a conflict, and Islam certainly has done so with the United States. WE might not be at war with Islam, but Islam is certainly at war with us, and the sooner we realize this, the better off we shall be. The President is either naive, ignorant or deliberately being obtuse.

Far from being a ‘religion of peace,” Islam is a religion born of and spread by violence; one of the first acts of Mohammed, after the famous “battle of the trench” was to massacre the Jews who were his allies. The Koran has many specific versus urging its supporters to kill those who do not believe in Islam; Surah 9:5 says, specifically, “fight and slay the pagans (or infidels or unbelievers) wherever you find them.” There is no time in its history where Islam has not tried to expand its influence by force and initimdation. There is no place in the world, today, where Islam is not in conflict with its neighbors.

The latest is Iran.

Sunni/Shi’ite cooperation. “Obama: Ahmadinejad and Mousavi not very different,” by Sabina Amidi for the Jerusalem Post, June 15:

[...] On Tuesday two protesters told The Jerusalem Post that Palestinian Hamas members are helping the Iranian authorities crush street protests in support of Mousavi.

They made their allegations as rioting on a scale unseen in Iran for nearly a decade continued in the wake of the elections and the allegations that the results were falsified. The protests have now spread from Teheran to other major cities….

“The most important thing that I believe people outside of Iran should be aware of,” the young man went on, “is the participation of Palestinian forces in these riots.”

Another protester, who spoke as he carried a kitchen knife in one hand and a stone in the other, also cited the presence of Hamas in Teheran.

On Monday, he said, “my brother had his ribs beaten in by those Palestinian animals. Taking our people’s money is not enough, they are thirsty for our blood too.”

It was ironic, this man said, that the victorious Ahmadinejad “tells us to pray for the young Palestinians, suffering at the hands of Israel.” His hope, he added, was that Israel would “come to its senses” and ruthlessly deal with the Palestinians….

There is revolution brewing in Iran, and the radical forces know it. Michael Ledeen says essentially the same thing.

The regime is massing two Revolutionary Guards divisions for an assault on the dissidents–something like twenty thousand soldiers from outside Tehran–and the Mousavi people don’t want to give them time to organize and prepare their attacks. No doubt there are all kinds of secret meetings going on, as the various military, militia, religious and political leaders try to read the chicken entrails and guess their destiny.

The President should be supporting and encouraging these actions by the people of Iran, instead of standing by and watching the people being slaughtered, as we did with the Hungarian revolt of 1956. Instead, he continues to try to be ‘friends’ with our principle enemy in the world, today.

Additional Readings:

Platitudes and naivete: Obama’s Cairo speech by Robert Spencer
15 Hard Questions about the Cairo Speech by Walid Phares
The Cairo disaster
America’s first Muslim president?

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A Minnesota Story

June 14, 2009 | Travel, minnesota

I was up in North Minnesota, in the Iron Range, this weekend, camping…and had a DELIGHTFUL afternoon talking to locals at a Church fair. The Church was a small church…and, believe it or not, was labeled the Brinston Finnish Congregational Church. Now, if you know anything about Church history, you will know that a Finnish Congregational Church is a non-sequitor…the Congregationalists were an outgrowth of the split in New England between them and the Unitarians over the divinity of Christ. It has NOTHING to do with Finland…so, how did the church get its name?

No one seems to know. I talked to the pastor, an elderly man, who has been pastor for over 30 years, and is in his late 80’s, and he doesn’t know…in fact, he is Norwegian. When he immigrated, here, they made a mistake and spelled his name as Rimmi (A Finnish name) instead of Rimme…so that is how he got the job in the Church, though he spoke not a word of Finnish. His first job was to change the language of the service from Finnish to English, so he could GIVE the service…LOL…this is the kind of story that is rather typical of the North Woods of Minnesota, a place unique unto itself….

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Angels and Demons; Physics vs. Metaphysics

May 17, 2009 | Uncategorized

Having  just watched Ron Howard’s excellent adaptation of Dan Brown’s book “Angels and Demons,” I was very impressed by the way Howard expanded upon the theme of the conflict between Science and Religion…and why that conflict is not so much a conflict as a difference in world views.

There was a time when there was no conflict between science and religion in the popular mind of the West. It was accepted, at least on the surface, by everyone that the Universe was created by and ruled by God(s), and science did not exist, as we know it. With the rise of rationalism, and the introduction of mathematical concepts into philosophy in the 17th century by Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza, we see the beginnings of the separation of science and religion. If the world can be described in mathematical terms, we do not need God.

 I am always taken aback when someone intelligent amakes an absolute statement such as there is no God. What they are saying, of course, is  that we live in a rational Universe, one in which there could not be anything super-natural, such as a supreme being who created the Universe out of nothing. This statement implies that we understand the Universe enough to make the statement that it is a rational universe, and that is an assumption, an article of faith as blind as the article of faith of someone who believes in a supreme being. The best that can be said is we do not know what we do not know.

 The fact is, both science and religion explain the origins of the Universe by an act of faith; either by a big bang, or by the hand of an eternal God. Neither one can prove that beginning…but they begin an entire and complete explanation of everything else starting from that article of faith. Neither one is provable, and both have problems, dealing with the concept of infinity. What happened before the Big Bang? Where did God come from, and why did he create this universe at the time and place he did?

 To suggest that we live in a rational universe implies that everything can be explained and described Theoretically, if we had a big enough computer, we could, theoretically, track every particle in the Universe and predict the future…but we KNOW that this is impossible. One of the basic principles of Physics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, states quite clearly that we can either know the position, or the momentum (speed) of a particle, but not both. We cannot know that a particular particle exists in one place and is moving towards another. The principle theory that governs our physics, Quantum mechanics, relies on the idea that the particles that make up the Universe can only be understood as probability vectors. The Universe, as far as we know now, is not rational, it is chaotic. We can predict certain events on a large scale, if they are simple and repeating, but there are far many more events that we cannot predict.

 More importantly, our level of understanding of the mathematics of the Universe, the physics of the Universe, is nowhere near perfected. We have developed two systems of physics, Newtonian physics, which describes the movement of large bodies, such as cars, rocks and pebbles, and Quantum physics, which describes the movement of small bodies, quarks, electrons, pi-mesons, etc. The problem is the Universe cannot have two systems of physics. There has to be one, and we cannot reconcile Newtonian and Quantum physics…thus, we do not even have the tools, at the moment, necessary to describe the Universe. We are at the ‘blind man and the elephant’ stage of physics, where we can feel a large, round body, can invent the tools to explore this body, and say that an elephant is like a tree trunk. We CANNOT see the side of the elephant, the tail, the trunk, etc. We can only describe what we can see, and what we can see is bounded by those tools we use to see them. We did not know radiation existed until we actually invented the tools to detect it.

 Scientists work by using their eyes; a blind scientist is almost totally incapable of performing scientific experiments. He or she has to be able to see the data to interpret it…but what does that say about our other senses? Most spiritual people claim to work by detecting other forms of energy, using other senses. Scientists dispute this, because this phenomenon cannot be detected by scientific methods, but that is sort of the point, isn’t it? These phenomenons are not in the realm of science, they are in the realm of, for a better wording, ‘the spirit.’ Certainly, insects and animals detect the world by senses we don’t understand

 I accept that Science can describe and predict much of the physical world, and has brought us many advantages. We live longer, are able to communicate over the internet, are going to the moon and can watch movies whenever we want. I am grateful for all of that. I also accept that we have only worked with the scientific method for two hundred years, or so, and are very much in our infancy with respect to truly knowing and understanding reality.

 Let us approach this ‘logic’ from a different direction. Instead of suggesting that, since our logic cannot encompass the thought of worlds outside of our logical frame of reference, they do not exist, is it not just as logical and reasonable to suggest that we do not truly understand reality, and that the Universe might be incomprehensible to our current level of understanding? That science is a way of describing one aspect of reality and, say, Buddhism a way of describing another? That Christianity makes one aspect of reality clearer for those people who adopt that way of thinking, whereas Shinto makes a different aspect of reality clear? And, perhaps, we are not really capable of understanding the totality of reality, yet?

 I say yet, because understanding takes time, and often requires prior understanding; we gain knowledge through our ability to use previous understandings to come up with new understandings. It is rare to make jumps of understanding, while skipping intermediate steps. For instance, our understanding of the world of Quantum mechanics would have been impossible without previous discoveries in mathematics and physics; it is hardly likely that Archimedes, the Greek inventor, would have dreamed up Quantum Physics. We needed to go through a revolution in Physics to get to where we are, now. It is inconceivable that we would not have future revolutions in our knowledge of the physical universe as new discoveries force us to invent new branches of physics.

 Arthur C. Clark, in his book “Childhood’s End” wrote of a future time when 2,000 children evolved into a state of expanded consciousness and left the Earth to join a greater consciousness beyond our experience. The rest of the Earth was destroyed when they left, because the purpose of Earthly evolution had been achieved. Is it not possible that our consciousness is evolving…and we have far more to learn about the functionings of the universe than we know now? And that where we are, now, is part of a wonderful adventure that extends into infinity?

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Torture

April 24, 2009 | politics, war

Merriam Webster defines torture as: ” the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure”

Note the qualifiers…”to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure.”

Note that none of these definitions have anything to do with the legtimate military use of ANY method used specficially to gain information from prisoners. This entire debate over waterboarding has had just that ’surreal’ aspect to it that makes my head swim. Nitpicking over wheter waterboarding is or is not ‘torture’ is meaningless. In the context of legitimate military goals, waterboarding is not torture. In the context of a sadistic individual who seeks nothing more than the causing of pain, it IS torture.

The waterboarding used by the U.S. military is not torture. Neither is pulling out fingernails, if the purpose of using it was to gain legtimate military goals. Both ARE torture if there is no good reason for using either method of coercian.

Now, if a person wants to argue that pulling fingernails is ineffective in gaining information, and should be stopped, THAT is a legitimate argument…and I am sure the CIA would love to see the data to prove that. To suggest, however, that the CIA cannot use that method if the experience of the CIA has been that it IS effective is detrimental to the safety of our country.

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Hubris

April 16, 2009 | america, democracy

I wanted to start this by writing why I love America, and what it is about the nation that gives me hope that we can persevere in this time of war. This turned into a more difficult exercise than I had anticipated…because, while there is much about America that I love, there is much that I admire to a far lesser extent. America is so large, so diverse, in both land form, people and culture, that it is very hard to grasp, and that is always the problem when one writes about America. One cannot generalize. America is just about anything to everyone, whatever you want it to be, and, often, not at all what you would like it to be. It depends on your perspective. One has to be able to define and understand the basic ’spirit’ of America before one can understand if America has lost the intestinal fortitude it takes to see this war out.

When I say that I ‘love America,’ what I am referring to is this image of America in my mind…America’s ‘spirit,’ my idea of what represents ‘good character,’ what I admire in a people and a culture. I admire the ‘focused aggression’ America has shown in achieving its goals. From the beginning, the people of this country have grown up with a sense of ownership of the land, a sense of possession of whatever is over the next hill, that it is ‘ours,’ for the taking, and never mind who was there first. Of course, this had unfortunate consequences for those who actually WERE here before the Europeans….but that is sort of the point.

Europeans were among the toughest, meanest, probably the cruelest, but also the most competent race this world has ever known. That character is derived, to a very large extent, from the Scandinavian heritage of the Normans who conquered much of Europe, even as far South as Italy, before spreading throughout the world. European culture has dominated the world as soon as the technology to dominate the world was invented, and that is because it was so ruthless and because what it did was so effective. No Mr. Nice Guy, here, Europeans simply have bowled over the competition and, today, it is European technology, culture and even language which are the lingua franca all over the world. Somewhere in the 19th century, this aggression seems to have funneled to the United States, from Europe, as the rise of the United States ties in almost precisely with the decline of Europe.

There are, of course, many who would find this quality, the ability to ignore the slaughter thousands of others to attain its goals, a less than admirable characteristic for a people, and there is some truth to that. European history is full of instances of horrific massacre, rape and torture, of millions of people, from its earlier ages, and there are few cultures that can match the Europeans in the numbers who have died for the furtherance of goals. Yet, this is the quality that I think of when I say that I ‘love America,’ this fixity of focus, and straight determination to achieve a goal, no matter what the cost. If less than admirable, in many ways, the horrors were horrors of our national youth, and not considered horrible at the time, while the glories of our national growth were glories of our adolescence. It is the quality which brought the United States through eight years of a hopeless revolutionary war against Britain, to claim our freedom, settled the middle and West of the country within a period of a hundred years, through the horrors and triumphs of WWI and WWII, and took us to the moon. Americans have a feeling we can do anything we set our minds to, and it is hard not to admire that cockiness. History loves a success, and very often ignores the means of that success.

One has to wonder, though, whether that spirit exists today, and there is where I begin to quibble about how far my love for America extends. It would be hard to imagine the people who successfully helped fight off the Germans, and who successfully fought off the Japanese, both to final victory, quibbling over whether or not we have the right to question prisoners caught on a battlefield. While there would have been some, I am sure, who might have questioned whether or not prisoners caught on the battlefield have the right to trial by jury, according to our Constitution, the vast majority of Americans would have looked at a person who suggested such as being a crazy person. The Germans and Japanese were our enemies, they were trying to kill us, and they were lucky that we were so kindhearted as to give them decent food, housing and contact with the Red Cross. It is within our national character to do so, but there are few who objected to the lack of Japanese prisoners, or the summary executions which occurred, on occasion, against Germans. It was a war to the death, and we intended the enemy to be the ones who died. We knew that stark choice. We obviously do not know it today.

The question arises, then, what has changed. I am sure a sociologist can write lengthy papers on the differences between the WWII generation and the generation today, but I do not think that is necessary. There is one salient difference between the populace of the country prior to the end of WWII, and that today; we are far better off, economically, as a people, today, than we were ever before. Prior to the turn of the 20th century, most Americans were rural, involved in agriculture. Prior to the end of WWII, most were factory workers, and much of the Middle Class was building was destroyed by the depression.

We have not had a bad economic time since the end of WWII. The growth of personal wealth has been steady, and even factory workers earn enough money to live a very middle-class lifestyle. We are prosperous, content, and few of us feel any real danger from outside sources. It is very hard for people to knuckle down and give the kinds of sacrifices necessary to conduct and win a war, when they are living a relatively prosperous life, with no apparent danger in sight. This was bin Laden’s big mistake, with regards to 9/11, as brilliant as it was in execution. If he had continued attacking American interests, abroad, and not attacked the United States, directly, he would still have his training camps in Afghanistan. Instead, he brought Americans face to face with the type of war that needs to be fought, and Americans supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, we have not had an attack on the Continental United States for five years, and people are forgetting…and support for the war is falling.

The American People can rise to the challenge necessary to win this war. They need, however, leadership to do so, and we are not getting it from the top. Among the many mistakes the administration has made in this war is its lack of attention to keeping the American people focused on the threats they have to face. As with the Johnson Administration, during the Vietnam War, the Bush administration seems to have felt that maintaining prosperity and not scaring the American public will maintain support for the war. Instead, the American public does not feel connected to the war, except for the growing list of body bags coming home. There is no venue available for people to get involved in helping to win this war. There are no ‘fireside chats’ with the President, explaining what is happening in the war, no recycling drives, no ‘support the troops’ programs, except for those developed ad hoc among the public…the administration has made no effort to rally the public, and get them involved in supporting the war, and it shows. Maybe we do not need the scrap metal, or the recycled goods, but the programs should have been instituted, anyway, so people feel that they are a part of the effort.

One must look at the spirit of America the same way a mother loves her child. Like a child, Americans can be the best people in the entire world, if they are given a chance. They have the attention span of a gnat, if not reminded, continuously, of what they should be doing…and they can do real harm, if poorly led. Perhaps, that almost childlike ability to be as good as one can be, and also do bad, even for good reasons, if told what one has to do, is a reason to have hope that we shall not only survive, but triumph. To quote Winston Churchill, “Americans always do the right thing…after trying everthing else, first.”

© 2006 Steve Haas, All Rights Reserved.

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