TOBY PETZOLD

It’s no mystery to me, but a guest poster at Andrew Sullivan’s blog observes:

Anti-totalitarianism was once an animating feature of the Democratic Party, and the American left in general. It was FDR who led the United States against Fascism, Harry Truman who aided anti-communists fighting in Turkey and Greece and John F. Kennedy who stated that the United States “would pay any price, bear any burden” to defend freedom abroad. The American labor movement played a crucial role in fighting communism (both domestically and internationally), with the AFL-CIO’s Lane Kirkland, the “Champion of American Labor,” at the helm.

What has happened to this spirit? That’s a question I ask today, in reference to Bayard Rustin, one of the most enigmatic, independent-minded, consistent–yet barely remembered–heroes of 20th century liberalism (he also happened to be openly gay, an aspect of Rustin’s life that Andrew examined here). A social democrat to the end, he joined other liberals (many of whom would eventually become neo-conservatives) in supporting Scoop Jackson for president in 1976, formed the Coalition for a Democratic Majority to fight the McGovernite wing of the party and was a founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger. He was also a strong supporter of Israel and one of the few black American leaders to warn of the dangers that a Zimbabwe led by Robert Mugabe would bring to bear.

Liberals and anti-war Leftists are not united or motivated by any belief in the power of Americanism or in the country that created it, but only by partisan hatred and their inability to deal with their recent electoral failures (and I would certainly include 2006 in that, which was heralded by the disgusting whores in Big Media as a “Democratic mandate,” but which was never going to be anything of the kind). Thus, when the only thing that matters is attacking the other party, it is no surprise that the Democrats’ rhetoric is usually indistinguishable from that of the al-Qaedists, Ahmadinejad, and his Shiite proxies. The Democrats find themselves allied with totalitarians and followers of sharia —too stupid to realize that they are supporting anti-democratic ideological zealots.

Just like when they were servicing Chairman Mao and Uncle Ho.

And Fidel and Che.

Stalin, too.

The Moon will save the human race—

Were loonies beaten off their path—

The unthrown stone remains in place—

Through orbitary aftermath.

A blast unguarded —global fire—

Here’s thirty pieces, you fucking liars—

Now go and reckon what you did

When you did nothing but blame the Yid.

Thanks to the equally indispensable Charles Johnson, have a listen to our former ambassador to the United Nations (at this link at Little Green Footballs).

It is nine or so minutes of John Bolton utterly, unambiguously, and remorselessly kicking the ass of some neo-hippie BBC Radio reporter. Bolton is almost literary in his succinction.

You cannot miss this.

Do you think it’s possible that we’ll find out twenty years from now that George W. Bush actually commissioned Nancy Pelosi to go to visit Assad in Damascus and nuzzle his scrotality and leave some pellets in the tip jar?

It’s not too unthinkable —considering that any extended coverage by Big Media of such an act of seeming treachery would have been unlikely in almost all events.

You should read this interesting farewell to Jacques Chiraq by Anne Applebaum over at Slate. Of the jug-eared proboscan’s legacy, Applebaum writes:

As I say, it’s a very important legacy: One of consistent scorn for the Anglo-American world in general and the English language in particular, of suspicion of Central Europe and profound disinterest in the wave of democratic transformation that swept the world in the 1980s and 1990s, of preference for the Arab and African dictators who had been, and remained, clients of France. In his later years, Chirac constantly searched, in almost all international conflicts, for novel ways of opposing the United States. All along, he did his best to protect France from the rapidly changing global economy.

It was, in other words, the legacy of a man who was deeply conservative, almost Brezhnevite in his view of the world - so much so that the word most often used to describe his political beliefs is “stagnation.”

I will always remember one thing about this faithless and deeply cynical man: that he stood, like the disgusting Villepin, as an obstruction to the invasion and liberation of Iraq so as to buy his Saddamite friends and their Ba’athist apparatchiks in Syria the time they needed to prepare against our military. When Chiraq finally kicks the bucket, I will probably hoot.

Of course, Applebaum also writes that Chiraq was right about Iraq for the wrong reasons. And she may as well have, too. Because that’s what makes reading History so interesting: there’s all those missed guesses.

All that carefulness in what we wish for.

All those lives that death allowed.

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Yes, the new religion of the post-Westerner is neither the Enlightenment nor Christianity, but the gospel of the Path of Least Resistance — one that must lead inevitably to gratification rather than sacrifice.

Once one understands this new creed, then all the surreal present at last makes sense: life in the contemporary West is so good, so free, so undemanding, that we will pay, say, and suffer almost anything to enjoy its uninterrupted continuance — and accordingly avoid almost any principled act that might endanger it.

It is important to keep on trying —however confused they become— to distinguish between liberal and Leftist; Dhimmi and Democrat.

Because, these days, they all seem like ignorant weasel bastards to me.

Can you imagine a secret klaverning somewhere in this country —convened maybe a week or a month ago— where a small accretion of Leftist filth began chattering amongst its selves about what it will take to make Nancy Pellucid the President of the United States?

The answer was and remains very simple and feasible: the deaths of two men.

We are ignorant, spoiled children if we believe that we are too far removed or insulated from the possibilities that proceed from disasters to let something like an assault on the Executive determine our fate as a nation.

The Speaker of the House is a goddamned danger to this country and the world in general. She is the instrument of a certain segment of this society that wants only to undermine the necessity of our mission in the Muslim Middle East. She is a defeatist and a disgrace. She is unquestionably a friend to our enemies.

I think the President should go on TV as soon as possible and declare that the Speaker of the House does not hold the authority to conduct the foreign policy of the United States and does not speak for this Government abroad. Bush needs to be absolutely explicit about that.

Because what this woman has done is issued an invitation to assassination.

Syria was the signal.

I suggest that those who care about our country take Pellucid at her word and deed.

Thanks to Jim Hoft, I came across this report from IRINNews.org, which is a propaganda arm of the United Nations. (The standard disclaimer at the tops of their reports is not to be missed, either: “This report does not necessarily reflect the view of the United Nations.”)

But I’m not so sure about that. This report is about how “pro-Taliban militants” have taken up bombing girls’ schools in western Pakistan because the schools’ administrators do not require these little girls to wear the veil.

What makes this report so interesting is that it never once, despite its length and purported subject, directly names the perpetrators of these acts of terrorism. One of the photo captions references ”pro-Taliban militants” and, in the text of the report itself, there is a daringly judgemental “militant extremists” thrown in, but this dispatch from the UN Ministry of Some Information does not name names, except to scapegoat. It takes nine or so paragraphs to even come to this passive-voice account:

Over the past two months, at least two schools in the area have been bombed. They include the Government Girls’ High School at Akharwal in Darra Adam Khel, which suffered damage after a bomb attack at the end of November and the under-construction Girls’ Degree College Sheraki, whose boundary wall was damaged in another bomb attack.

What the hell do “militant extremists” care about women wearing burqas? Oh, maybe it’s because they’re Muslims? Well, then, one might expect that this piece of information would be relevant to an understanding of the rationale of these brave childkillers. But does that word even appear in this report? No references to Islam or Muslims or the Koran? Nope. None of the above.

So where does the fault lie? With the repressive and psychotic ummah of Peshawar? No way.

My guess? The answer lies somewhere in the world of Faye Resnick George W. Bush.

It’s something like an historical imperative:

A retired priest committed suicide by setting himself on fire in a German monastery in protest at the spread of Islam and the Protestant Church’s inability to contain it.

Roland Weisselberg, 73, poured a can of petrol over his head and set light to himself in the grounds of the Augustine monastery in the eastern city of Erfurt, where Martin Luther spent six years as a monk at the beginning of the 16th century.

Witnesses said that Weisselberg climbed into a building site next to the monastery church, where a Reformation Day service was being held. He shouted “Jesus and Oskar” before the flames engulfed him. The latter name was an apparent reference to Oskar Brüsewitz, a priest who burnt himself in 1976 in protest against the Communist regime in East Germany. Monastery staff tried to put out the flames and Weisselberg was still conscious as a nun prayed with him before he was taken to hospital. He died a day later, on Wednesday.

My reaction to reading this story was to have expected it.

I hear Paris is on the verge of another meltdown.

Enjoy the ride, backstabbers. Just make sure you don’t let them smash the Nike of Samothrace.