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Politics: A Frighteningly Distorted Worldview
by John Breen
As the election returns come in, it appears that Ned Lamont, the anti-war millionaire whose candidacy was sponsored by such people as Markos Moulitsas and George Soros, will defeat Senator Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary. The Democratic line will be that the dove’s nomination is proof that supporting immediate withdrawal is a winning electoral strategy, while Republicans will claim that there is no room in the Democratic party for dissent. Increasingly, conservatives are baffled by what they perceive as leftist capitulationism. There is a widening divide between the worldviews of the two groups, and the main question is why.
I believe the major problem is that today’s liberals have lost the ability to be practical, while Republicans are utterly so. The major evidence for this is the left-wing support of and argument for policies that would make sense were the world a vastly different place. Anti-war politicians argue that Bush has angered too many of our allies with his aggressive foreign policy; in 2004, John Kerry ran on the idea that America is stronger when her alliances are stronger.
The problem with this is that, like us, nations such as France and Germany, whom we have undoubtedly angered by many of our actions, use foreign policy to further their own interests. Sadly, these nations have concluded that their interests are furthered by aligning themselves with the interests of nations and organizations that are openly hostile to the United States. Excellent examples of this abound. There is proof now that Russia was training Iraqi operatives up to the day before the United States began military operations against Hussein’s regime. Germany and France both opposed the war; both also had extensive business dealings with that nation. The United Nations refused to validate the war; we now know that a great many United Nations officials, including Kofi Annan’s own son, illicitly reaped incredible profits from the Oil For Food program, the largest financial scandal in the history of the world, to the direct detriment of Iraq’s citizens.
Strong alliances are based on solidarity of purpose and on mutual goodwill; the statements of many prominent government officials in supposedly allied nations belie the existence of either. Democrats insist on gaining the support of those who have made clear their unwillingness to take meaningful steps to oppose those who wish us ill; this position is illogical and impractical, and all the more frightening when one considers that these same people believe themselves to be qualified to handle our nation’s security.
Were this the only liberal transgression against the laws of reality, they could be forgiven. Who among us does not wish to have strong alliances with those on whose support we have so often counted? Unfortunately, their disregard for reality runs much deeper than that. The current situation in Israel is a perfect example. Liberals want an immediate cease-fire and negotiation between the two sides, as has been standard practice in the Mideast for decades.
The problems with this argument ought to be obvious. Peace negotiation is only possible when both sides negotiate in good faith, when both sides abide by the terms of the agreements made, and when both sides are committed to achieving a lasting peace. Unfortunately, none of these are true in this situation: one of Hezbollah’s stated goals is the destruction of the state of Israel; the organization has been arming itself to prepare for their recently launched offensive for more than a decade, through many different negotiations and peace deals; the organization has shown time and again its disregard for any and all peace deals that have been made.
These things can also be said, to one degree or another, about Iran, Syria, Hamas, Fatah, and Saddam’s Iraq. We cannot reasonably hope, we cannot logically believe, that negotiation alone will accomplish anything when dealing with such people. Because they will not compromise, because they insist on Israel’s destruction and even on our destruction, we must either take steps to neutralize this threat, using methods up to and including military conflict, or wait until these threats become serious. The fact that one of our major political parties believes otherwise is, frankly, terrifying.
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2 comments:
I'm going to write a larger post about some of the issues raised in your comment, T, but I want to address the "cowboy foreign policy" issue in a comment here. I'm not sure what it means to have a "cowboy foreign policy," but I see it as a term used to shut down thought about actual goings-on, especially since it's designed specifically to be a subjective term for something one hasn't really objectively defined. I've never heard a Republican party official suggest that we simply attack anyone we think might try to injure us, although Republicans are nearly united in the idea that force must be an option. The term "cowboy foreign policy," I believe, ignores months of attempts to convince allies to join us in Iraq--a largely successful effort, considering the size of our coalition there, but with a few notably corrupt exceptions. It also ignores some twelve years of efforts to deal with Iraq peacefully--an ultimately unsuccessful effort.
In the end, rather than do our best to find a moderate way between the two parties, rather than reduce the beliefs and actions of either side to caricatures, we must look at the problem, discover the solution, and support those who have that solution. One of our two parties simply lacks a fundamental understanding of the problem; if one of the two must hold power, we surely must give power to the one that has proved it understands the great crisis of our times. That party is the Republican Party.
I'm not sure it's quite as easy as all that to say that to say that a two-party system in particular makes freedom and diversity of thought difficult. Among my conservative friends at MSU and even in my own immediate family we have differences of political opinion in many areas. Of course, we all tend to think quite a bit more about government anyway.
I think, however, that that is the point. In most societies, the majority of people don't think too much about politics--and that's just how it should be in a free nation, in which the government isn't supposed to be a large part of our everyday lives, except in wartime. I think a lot of the polarization we see results not from a political system, but from living in a country with two vastly different subcultures: one consisting of lower to middle class workers living in America's interior, away from the coasts and from foreign influence and ideas, highly religious and nationalistic; the other consisting generally of upper middle and upper class men and women living on the coasts and in more constant contact with foreign cultures, more secular and cosmopolitan. The first is hard America, Bush's America; the second is soft America, that of John Kerry.
I think the fact that almost every democratic society has ended up forming two major political blocs is also significant: Republican and Democrat in America, Labor and Tory in England, Liberal and Conservative in Canada, CDU and--I think--SDP in Germany. Even in ancient Rome, you had the Populares (e.g. Caesar, Pompey, Antony) and the Optimates (e.g. Cicero and Cato). Likewise, in ancient Athens there were the Democrats and the Oligarchs. In America our laws and electoral practices make a two-party system natural, but even in places with hundreds of parties, two blocs generally take shape.
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