Redstate

nt

Sorry, sloppy writing. I should have made this distinction. You are right that Turkey is stable and somewhat pro western. But Turkey is also not an Arab nation and has a long history of stable governments dating back to the Roman Empire. Perhaps a monarchy in Iraq is an answer, though how you go about uniting that country without genocide seems a difficult question. I don't know enough about the history of Indonesia to compare it to what we have to work with in Iraq, but it seems like a completely different set of circumstances. The question in my mind remains, how do you unite and stabilize a country like Iraq in the short term without instituting some kind of Muslim dictatorship in the likeness of Iran?

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

With a question - from the standpoint of United States interests, who would you rather have running Iran: the Shah or Ayatollah Khomeini?

"We could find a speck of dust and scribble down our life stories..." - The Refreshments

That's an easy one, but how about this: what if Jimmy Carter had kept the Shah in power and then heavily pressured him to enable democratic reform in Iran in the 70s? Might that stand us in even better stead now?

"I'm kind of old-fashioned. I like to engage my brain before my mouth." Donald Rumsfeld

Part of his point was that a pro-American puppet would be resisted/overthrown by the domestic population. If you recall, that's exactly what happened to the Shah.

Had the US allowed democracy early on, the would have ended up with Mossedegh(sp?) instead of the ayatollah. Instead they supported a pro-American strongmen which only created resentiment and eventually led to a hostile takeover by an American enemy.

Did the Shah stay in power? How many times are we willing to return to Iraq to keep our strong man in power? The Shah had a power infrastructure behind him and was still toppled. Who ever you plan to install in power wouldn't even have that. If the shah fell, what makes you think this strong man wouldn't? I understand your point, and from the standpoint of the US the shah is preferable. I'm just saying its unrealistic to think you can make that work.

International Affairs is just Political Science with an accent.

The Shah fell through the spectacular incompetence of Jimmuh Carter. He could have stayed in power, but that would have involved the kind of difficult choice a man such as Carter could never bring himself to make.

I might note here that it's possible that such an arrangement is just not possible - but if we operate from the premises that any nondemocratic government friendly to the United States would not stand, what in the world would lead us to believe that any democratically elected government that is friendly to the United States to stand?

I have a much longer post, that I will put up next Wednesday, about what probably ought to be done from a strategic standpoint, worldwide - but the burden of this post is merely that democracy is not the necessary solution to this particular problem - and in fact may aggravate it.

"We could find a speck of dust and scribble down our life stories..." - The Refreshments

...as we learned last Tuesday.

"I'm kind of old-fashioned. I like to engage my brain before my mouth." Donald Rumsfeld

Of course, when I say "aggravate," I mean from the perspective of encouraging Islamism.

"We could find a speck of dust and scribble down our life stories..." - The Refreshments

Leon, because the Shah was in power because we followed your proposal. Just like Somoza was in power in Nicaragua. Duvalier in Haiti. Trujillo in the Dom Rep.

Our history is full of the folly of expediency where we propped up various dictators in the hope that they would be friendly to our interests and somewhat benign to their people though that was clearly a secondary concern.

The real question you should ask are we better off in Iran for engineering the deposing of Mossadegh in favor of the Shah? Isn't Khomeini really our creation because we created the very reason he became a political force: a friendly dictator.

But look what followed the Shah - when the popular uprising got ahold of him, we were left instead with the Khomeini, who was the product of the popular movement of his country. I understand that generelly propping up a dictator is at best a band-aid over a gash that requires stitches, but Haiti is a very different country from any that is currently in the Middle East right now.

So the Shah was a band-aid. He was better than what came behind.

"We could find a speck of dust and scribble down our life stories..." - The Refreshments

Korea - You do remember the Korean government which, along with the U.S., successfully opposed the North and the Chinese was non-democratic until the 90's? Right? I would call Korea a success. Wouldn't you?

In the region of the Middle East, we have Jordan, Egypt, Morrocco, and Algeria that are non-democratic but with pro-American governments. Would we be better off with these governments gone, and in their place the Muslim Brotherhood as the governing force?

Latin America also has examples of supporting strongmen working. Are you saying that support for Pinochet was wrong? Chile has the best economy in Latin America. What about Argentina? Should the U.S. have backed the communists instead of the right-wing dictator?

Should the U.S. have intervened with the Brits in the 1950's to re-install the Shah?

No. That was a mistake. Sometimes the backing of right-wing dictators has been a mistake. Sometimes it has been good policy.

That means the right course of action requires a judgment call, not vain platitudes. Iraq may need a dictator to stabilize the situation. That may work where Democracy fails.

The expediency you so decry has worked in multiple cases. It has failed in others. That doesn't automatically preclude supporting an authoritarian regime as a possible answer.

A US friendly dictator is a bit of an oxymoron in the middle east. Even if they start out that way they rarely stay that way. Leon brought up the point that the middle east has only elected terrorists to represent them, groups antithetical to our purposes. If this is so how can we expect a dictator friendly to US purposes to be installed?

I don't believe Leon actually proposed a friendly dictator, but in any case I will insist on this:

We absolutely MUST consider the possibility that there is no "solution," in political terms, for what threatens us from the Islamic world. This goes back to my oft-repeated point that Islam and the West have been at war for over a thousand years; that nothing, so far, has proven effective at removing the temptation of Muslims toward Jihad. There may be no solution, folks, except the obvious one of keeping them out, of reducing as far as possible the Muslim influence on our policy; and of maintaining the strictest vigilance of any military power from the Islamic world that could move against us en mass.

___________
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

thought experiment: what if the belief that all of the existential tensions of the human condition, inclusive of those seemingly endemic to the Islamic world, are problems to be solved were analogized with the technocratic faith of liberals, modernizers, and Jacobins down through the ages that the application of reason to the affairs of men will engender progress?

I believe that the results would be instructive. At a minimum, we would be led to the realization that the congenital American optimism is an all fit with the fact of just having enemies.

My harp is turned to mourning, and my organ shall speak with the voice of them that weep. Spare me, O Lord, for my days are truly as nothing.

I intended to say - and I believe I did say - that elections on the Arabian Peninsula have produced terrorist governments - I count Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts further east to be animals of a different stripe, with different motivations. I submit that the matter in Iraq has not yet been settled, and that absent our presence there, a group of similar odiousness might well come to power. So the question must be asked, are we willing to stay in Iraq indefinitely in order to prop up a government which is at least not facially allied with interests that are hostile to us? And if so, how do we avoid the perception that the new government is simply a redux of the Shah?

"We could find a speck of dust and scribble down our life stories..." - The Refreshments

democracy is no magic bullet. It's a mess. It can be frustrating and demoralizing and horribly inefficient.

The problem, as I see it, is not that democracy is inefficient, but that it can be horribly efficient -- at giving legitimacy and power to popular passion, or merely factional passion. And what if the most organized passion in Islamic lands is Jihad? What then?

Democracy becomes not mere "not a magic bullet," but a bullet aimed at the head of the infidel.

_____________
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Democracy requires belief in democracy. It requires the willingness to abide by the result of a vote, and to seek change via another vote. Democracy doesn't work if you don't use it, and if you don't believe in it, you won't try. If what you understand about politics is that power comes from the barrel of a gun, you're not likely to give voting a chance- it simply won't make any sense to you.

History demonstrates that revolutions occur in the context of rising expectations- that is, not when things are hopeless, but rather when the background is one of hope. In other words, this sort of stupidity (like getting your gun out and deciding to mete out some justice) is to be expected when the lid under which you've lived for a couple generations is suddenly taken off. It's just another symptom of the underlying problem: these people haven't been responsible for their country, and don't know how. They've been victims of it instead.

I suspect that the real failure we've discovered in our sojourn in Iraq is not any lack of military capability on our own part- it is that we failed completely to understand the extent to which Iraqis came to fear and hate each other under Saddam, or that once a glimmer of hope was shown to them that things might get better, that the first thing they'd do is have a collective tantrum.

> It requires the willingness to abide by the result of a vote

Which is tough for a minority like the Sunnis which used to rule by force. It's tough for the Shiite majority to be gracious winners and give much power to the Sunnis, who slaughtered them by the tens of thousands and who have fought a rebellion against the government since day 1.

That really is the key that since day 1 the Sunnis have never accepted being an minority in a democracy. Instead they launched a civil war against the Shiites and the Shiite majority government. It was inevitable that the Shiites started to fight back, and unless there is a deal it is inevitable that there is a full scale civil war.

The reality too is that the Kurds only accept democracy, if they accept it at all, by being 99% independent, and the Shiites would not accept a democracy which gave the Sunnis too much power, like if there were constitutional amendments.

George Bush is still President and Commander-in-Chief, not a Prime Minister. It would be a betrayal of his office to turn those responsibilities over to Congress -- and he (and the Republicans) would still be held responsible for the outcome. Following your suggestion would be to act like a 3-year old.

I thought we agreed not to Al-Sadr? I don't know the details but it happened when his men and he were trapped, fighting in that cemetary etc, then Grand Ayatollah Sistani came back. Sistani negotiated peace, and talked about public marches if we didn't stop fighting. It seemed clear that in exchange for Sadr retreating to Sadr City and leaving Sistani's area alone, that Sistani gave Al-Sadr his protection.

If that holds, then killing Al-Sadr is not an option. We'd need to convince Sistani.

> When we leave, they're going to fight among themselves for dominance.

That's a key point. Some have said that we should put a million troops on the ground to pacify Iraq. But eventually we'd have to leave anyway, at which point they'd resume fighting.

It's their country and eventually they'll decide how they want to live.

Sophist, you make a vigorous argument -- there can be no doubt about that. The unapologetic imperialist has a certain appeal.

But your difficulties are immense. What Christian, for example, can follow you in your bold assertion that the American way of life is "the true state of being for all people everywhere"? A great many may be a bit reluctant to say a society which countenances hundreds of thousands of abortions every year, which is on the cusp of affirming once again, in law, that human beings are be treated as property (for research purposes), is the true state of being for all men.

And can there be any doubt that, even if this astounding project of total cultural transformation were agreed upon, bitter dispute would soon arise as to what elements are actually to be included? For many of our formative years, for example, American capitalism had a distinctly mercentilist hue -- our free traders were the agrarians of the South. Or again, is religious tolerance as our Liberals understand it really an authentic part of our tradition?

You may well be right in saying that a much more heavy-handed occupation and colonization would have avoided many of the problems we now face. I'm inclined to say you say. But do you really think there was the will for such an undertaking?

In short, and with all due respect for the vigorous ideas you advance, your thinking on this seems tinctured by a dangerous strain of utopianism.

_______________
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

may be to blame to some extent.

The main thrust is simply to vigorously agree with Mark Steyn: What is killing the West, and by extension killing us, is not our lack of ability, but our lack of confidence. Is not Liberalism at its core an essential and fundamental lack of self-confidence? Multiculturalism, political-correctness, knee-jerk victim worship, nanny-statism, obsession with "safety" at the cost of liberty... all of these are symptoms of the deeper problem: the lack of confidence that our way is indeed the right way, and the best way.

And can there be any doubt that, even if this astounding project of total cultural transformation were agreed upon, bitter dispute would soon arise as to what elements are actually to be included? For many of our formative years, for example, American capitalism had a distinctly mercentilist hue -- our free traders were the agrarians of the South. Or again, is religious tolerance as our Liberals understand it really an authentic part of our tradition?

Frankly, you're right to note that a bitter dispute would arise. The Left and their cohorts are ever-quick to point out the racism, the bad imperialism, the sexism, the slavery of our past, genocide of the Indians, and so on, while the Right is quick to point out abortion, the pornographic pop culture, the deterioration of the family and its value, and so forth. But that is the real war then -- not the actual bullets and colonial policing we're engaged in now in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the war over Who We Are and What That Means. Either we will acquire the Will, the confidence in ourselves and in our own judgments (flawed and human they may be) or we will not. Al Qaeda, Islamists, nuclear Iran, jihadis by the millions -- none of these things can defeat the United States. We are the pinnacle of hyperpower that human history has produced. We can only defeat ourselves. So the war then is here in New York, and LA, and Chicago, and Knoxville, and every little hamlet and village right here in the United States -- not in the mountains of Kandahar or the streets of Fallujah. I say, bring it on -- let's get to it already.

Here's how I see things now. No matter what its flaw, our Anglo-American tradition constantly evolving and growing as it may be, is superior to the Wahhabi-Arab tradition, or the Bureaucratic-Warlord tradition of the Far East, or the Tribal-African tradition of the African continent, or any other tradition men have ever dreamed up. It is objectively superior by any objective measure of human well-being. Let us judge the tree by its fruits, and then not shirk back from pronouncing our particular bush to be good, and not only good, but superior.

I think you may be drawing a bit too much inference from the "true state of being for all men everywhere". Nonetheless, I will say that I don't believe Christian fatalism -- some variant of the "not this world, but the next" -- is part of the American tradition either.

What is the alternative, after all? Fortress America? I know this is your proposal -- alienate the Muslims, make sure they can't come here to spread their ideological virus, and draw a steel curtain around the U.S. That way lies deterioration and defeat not just for us, but for the whole world. A Eurabia that spends all of its time beheading gays and Jews and extracting jyzia out of infidels would essentially stop globla trade in its tracks. Russia would have to go out in a paroxysm of last-ditch fury, while China would run rampant over its sphere of dominance to relieve the pressures on its 1.5 billion people. I'm sorry, but that way lies millions, if not tens of millions, of corpses. And a sad, sad legacy that would be of the American Empire.

-TS

"What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?" - Justice Antonin Scalia

I am glad to see your articulate keypad trumpeting this line. I don't know whether you recall it or not but months ago, in the context of conversations about American culture, I was also trying to make the point to you that this failure of confidence has seeped into the Western mindset so deeply that it is unconsciously common to both liberals and conservatives.

The Utopian trap can and should be avoided by realizing that our species is engaged in progress toward what is right and true. Our culture is not there but is comparatively closer.

Last spring I realized that I think imperialism on our part would be a good thing. Much transformative dialogue would seem to be necessary before such a strategy could be practically be applied to Iraq.

I agree with you that a core element of Liberalism is a failure of confidence. But here in your argument I see, frankly, much of the same thing. For example, you lament that we "lack of confidence that our way is indeed the right way, and the best way." This too is Liberalism: this universalism which hinges our prosperity or even survival on the broadness of our appeal. Unless our tradition is universally good, it is bad.

But in fact, for a people to really have the confidence you seek, they must discover, not that their way is "the right way, and the best way" for everyone, but more modesty, and more solidly, that their way is their way, and worth keeping because it is theirs.

I think this universalism is simply contrary to human nature. Men come to love particular things. They may harbor thoughts that their particular things are probably good for others too, but what really moves them to action is the threat that their things may be destroyed. Their confidence is in their nearness.

The problem with Liberal universalism, even of this robust sort, is that it subtlely teaches contempt for one's own. A man feels that he must be driven by some higher purpose, some revised crusade. He is ashamed that, upon examination, what really motivates him is love of his neighbors -- his real, actual neighbors -- and his home. It teaches that it is not enough to be a patriot; one must be an ideologue too.

I do believe in the essential goodness of the American tradition; I do believe in its superiority to most any other that has been conceived. But before all that I believe in its goodness and superiority for us. I have great difficulty crediting your belief in an objective criterion for judging the quality of traditions -- at least one that is accessible to us, much less that could be agreed upon. Certainly I believe in a transcendent order of justice, and in a Judge, but how civilizations will be weighed is an extraordinarily difficult question. To put the matter controversially: which society will be judged harsher, the Old South, with its terrible sin of slavery, or today's America, with its terrible sin of abortion. That sort of question is beyond my pay grade.

As for Fortress America, I do not advocate something so harsh. What I advocate seems right obvious too me: that we resist the Jihad where it is closest and most dangerous first; and since discerning who among the Muslims is or is not an enemy has proven pretty much impossible, we have act with broad strokes.

Here is another thing, and a huge one: what do really confident societies do when confronted by internal threats? Think about it. Just the sort of thing that would horrify right-Liberals like yourself and Steyn. Reflect on how, say, America handled subversive movements in her midst back when she did have more of that confidence. Lincoln tossed Northern secessionists in prison and threw away the key; Jefferson Davis hanged Unionists in East Tennessee (a fact the despisers of Lincoln tend to forget); Wilson launched the "Palmer raids" against leftists all over the country; John Adams signed the Sedition Act; etc., etc. Or reflect more broadly on the West in its more confident days. Consider the gentle hand of the Spanish against the Moriscos. Were not the Crusades one of the few examples of confident resistance against Islam?

It seems to me that people pining for civilizational confidence would not like it if they lived to see it. A confident America -- confident, let us say, in the "objective superiority" of her tradition -- might outlaw mosque-building, remove Islam from the protection of Free Exercise, or, as I have advocated, simply remove jihad from any legal protection. After all, how did we treat the Mormons?

So again I say that the right-Liberalism of benevolent empire is tinctured with utopianism.

________________
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

if it is best expressed in reticence.

But in fact, for a people to really have the confidence you seek, they must discover, not that their way is "the right way, and the best way" for everyone, but more modesty, and more solidly, that their way is their way, and worth keeping because it is theirs.

I just don't see how this is either confidence or will. It seems a very peculiar sort of confidence in the rightness of one's way to refuse to impose it on others. It strikes me as a moral relativism of a sort -- perhaps not as pernicious as the Liberal variety born of self-hate, but certainly not expressing that What We Believe Is True.

If your neighbor is molesting his 12 year old daughter and boasting of it, claiming it is some sort of tradition in his family, you do not shrug and say, "Well, their way is their way, and worth keeping because it is theirs, just like my way is my way and worth keeping because it is mine." You have him arrested and you put a stop to that evil "his way".

To do otherwise is to cut your neighbor off from common identity, from "community" if you will.

Does it make a difference whether you do it to your neighbor, or we the United States do so to our global neighbors?

If 9/11 proves anything, if SARS proves anything, it is that in the modern (post-modern?) world, there is no such thing as "over there". What's going on in the caves of Afghanistan, or the madrassas of Kashmir, or the rural farm of a Chinese chicken farmer in Xian, has immediate and direct bearing on us living here in ease and comfort.

We could not disengage even if we wanted to.

Besides, why would we want to disengage?

The problem with Liberal universalism, even of this robust sort, is that it subtly teaches contempt for one's own. A man feels that he must be driven by some higher purpose, some revised crusade. He is ashamed that, upon examination, what really motivates him is love of his neighbors -- his real, actual neighbors -- and his home. It teaches that it is not enough to be a patriot; one must be an ideologue too.

And on this, I could not disagree with more. It reminds me of the crystal clear difference between the evangelical Presbyterian congregations I've attended in my youth and the liberal UCC congregations I go to now. The former, believing that he has found the ultimate truth, the ultimate good, can't wait to share it with others. There is no discernible contempt for one's own in that expression of religious confidence -- to find self-contempt there, one must perhaps be a trained literary theorist expert in the ways of subtlety and nuance. In contrast, you have the Christians who profess the Good News, who profess the faith, and yet wouldn't dream of having a conversation with a neighbor about it. Why, it wouldn't be polite! Why, that would be embarrassing! Now, that attitude, I believe, is in fact dipped in the waters of self-contempt, as if the Christian in question is saying to himself, "I can't believe I actually believe this claptrap, and yet...."

If we believe that what we have is in fact good and true, why would we be so reticent to push it on others? Do we really doubt that girls would rather not be raped for the crime of appearing in public without a full burqa? Do we really believe that people would rather be excluded from society, from prosperity, from fairness, from justice, and from life itself for the crime of having been born a Jew?

As to objective measures... fine, we can agree that one day we'll all be judged by the Eternal. Until that time, however, we can fully look at measures like economic prosperity, lack of fear, equality between the sexes, presence of fairness and justice, infant mortality, production of scientific discoveries, production of works of art, percentage of children going hungry, whatever you wish. By every measure, our tradition and our culture is superior to that of the enemy.

Your equating the Slave South with the Abortion America is something I can understand; however, let me say this in response, Paul: Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Let's not forget our imperfections, but let's not get so caught up in it that we fail to combat evil in our time, enervated not from fear but from guilt.

Finally, as to the consequences of a confident America...

It seems to me that people pining for civilizational confidence would not like it if they lived to see it. A confident America -- confident, let us say, in the "objective superiority" of her tradition -- might outlaw mosque-building, remove Islam from the protection of Free Exercise, or, as I have advocated, simply remove jihad from any legal protection.

Believe you me -- if I'm going to take the probably extreme position that what we need is more rather than less American imperialism, I'm not going to blink at the possibility of outlawing jihad within our borders and territories under our control. If that is what it takes for victory, then that is what it takes. As we conservatives are so fond of saying, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Better that mosques are outlawed by the United States of America today, than to have churches outlawed by the Islamic Republic of United States tomorrow.

What else is Will and Confidence, if not that?

-TS

"What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?" - Justice Antonin Scalia

I'm very glad to hear this --

Better that mosques are outlawed by the United States of America today, than to have churches outlawed by the Islamic Republic of United States tomorrow.

-- so glad, indeed, that I am almost prepared to drop our other disagreements in the service of a common cause.

Almost.

Let me remind you, however, that what you have advocated is not that we "talk up" our tradition, teach it, praise it, recommend it -- but that we impose it. Let me remind you, also, that we hardly teach this tradition even to ourselves. It is a controversial matter in the public and higher education circles of this country, whether there is anything but dishonor, oppression and avarice in American history; often what is actually celebrated from it are the aberrations. Schoolchildren hardly even read our founding documents anymore, much less study them, or learn to hold them in reverence. American sins are taught as more noteworthy than American achievements.

The "what if your neighbor is molesting his daughter and calling it a solemn tradition" point is, with all due respect, a bunch of hooey. It was me who affirmed obligations to one's neighbors, after all. I certainly do believe there is a difference between my actual neighbors, and the "global neighbors" of my country, a mere abstraction.

I worry, also, that you have infused America with a kind of religious character; otherwise your comparison to the evangelical Presbyterians and the UCCers holds no water. America is not the Good News. She is my country, a particular part of creation, which God declared good. No doubt her particular goodness is worth celebrating, worth teaching, worth counselling emulation; but her goodness is not dependent upon her universality.

Here is how the insistence on American catholicity breeds contempt: it links goodness indelibly with greatness. If we lose this war, if in three generations America is no longer strong but feeble and broken, how can she still claim any affection from the universalists? Under the spell of this teaching, weak and subjugated countries cannot really have patriots, can they?

And in truth, America is feeble. Her confidence is shattered, as we have been discussing. And part of the reason this is so, part of the reason you look for a confidence that is fading every day, is that several generations of sophisticated Liberals have been teaching her sons that she is good only because she embodies something universal, but that her particular character is rather unlovely, even detestable.

________________
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Paul,

I think we may still have disagreements vis-a-vis the whole "meaning of American identity" issue as it pertains to legal immigrants and whatnot, but in this, I assure you there are few if any disagreements.

Let me remind you, however, that what you have advocated is not that we "talk up" our tradition, teach it, praise it, recommend it -- but that we impose it. Let me remind you, also, that we hardly teach this tradition even to ourselves. It is a controversial matter in the public and higher education circles of this country, whether there is anything but dishonor, oppression and avarice in American history; often what is actually celebrated from it are the aberrations. Schoolchildren hardly even read our founding documents anymore, much less study them, or learn to hold them in reverence. American sins are taught as more noteworthy than American achievements.

First, as it comes to the "talk up" vs. "impose it" distinction, I apologize for the hazy writing -- but I was still thinking of my proposal for imperialism in Iraq and elsewhere. In a situation where we have committed force of arms, then I do now believe that we should go the whole hog and impose our values. The blood that we have spilled and the treasure we have spent demand that we not play to a draw, but go for victory. Iraq in retrospect should have been a campaign where we ought to have cared far more about the "American street" and far less about the "Arab street" if you will. Rather than rushing the Iraqis to elections and installing al-Maliki-the-Shia-who-may-be-fomenting-civil-war, we ought to have installed various American administrators, American viceroys, and what-have-you until the entire country was pacified.

Where we have not done so, then of course we should promote our value and our traditions, and "talk it up" instead. Where American "madrassas" and American "mosques" and American "charities" will do the job, then we should go with that of course.

As to your point about our current educational/cultural edifice seeing only dishonor and sin... what can I say except to say that such lack of confidence is surely sign of our enervation? That the True War is to be fought in our society, right here at home, rather than in the streets of Fallujah? Where I think we still have hope is that the American people, I believe, still love their country more than they despise it. The American Elite... may not. The grandees of our media organizations, the sophisticates of Hollywood and New York City, the intellectuals of Cambridge and Berkeley, and the technocrats of Foggy Bottom may all be obsessed about how terrible the United States is, but I believe that we can start to change course.

If nothing else, the Republican Party should rightly come about now and work to reinvigorate the American soul. That whatever our faults, whatever our historical crimes, whatever our imperfections, our way is still the right way, and it ought to be taught, praised, and promoted -- and yes, where we have sent our military, ought to be imposed. In a sense, this may be what it means to be a conservative in the post 9/11 era.

The "what if your neighbor is molesting his daughter and calling it a solemn tradition" point is, with all due respect, a bunch of hooey. It was me who affirmed obligations to one's neighbors, after all. I certainly do believe there is a difference between my actual neighbors, and the "global neighbors" of my country, a mere abstraction.

I knew that you were going to respond this way, and I thought about expanding the original but a few paragraphs. :) Might as well do so now.

In all seriousness, if you've lived in New York or San Francisco or Boston for any period of time, you would know that "actual neighbor" is equally an abstraction. I've lived in NYC for seven years without knowing the first thing about my "actual neighbors". What makes someone a neighbor is that you choose to interact with them, that you choose to care about them, and that you choose to include them in your "communion" if you will (and vice versa), thereby creating community with them. If you simply ignore each other, then they are no "neighbor" of yours, whether they live 10 feet from you or a mile down the road.

My view now is that the United States has too long behaved like the NYC resident who scrupulously goes out of his way to avoid contact with his "actual neighbors". Mexico is no abstraction; our neglect of their corrupt ways is no abstraction -- it results in tens of millions of their citizens streaming north in contravention of our laws and our borders. Afghanistan under the Taliban was no abstraction; our neglect of what was going on there resulted in the WTC being brought down and thousands of our citizens dead.

And just like the NYC resident who tried so hard to ignore his "actual neighbors", only to find out that should said "actual neighbor" set fire to his apartment, his own apartment would also burn down... we are finding that when the virus of Wahabbism infects our "global neighbors", we suffer as well.

Finally, your point about weak and subjugated countries having real patriots is well-made. However, I suppose the way I would respond is not that weak countries cannot have patriots, but that whether weak countries have patriots or not doesn't matter. There may be staunch patriots of Lichtenstein, but... who cares? Those partisans of the Sioux Nation could be admired for their affection, but they will have no impact on world affairs one way or another -- except perhaps as cute historico-cultural artifacts who keep interesting Native American dances and arts alive.

I agree that America is feeble; but I argue that our confidence isn't "shattered" so much as it has been "poisoned". America is rather like a King Theoden, reduced to feeble weakness by the whisperings of a Wormtongue and his Big Government programs infantilizing us. There is hope yet, because there must be hope yet. Otherwise, the dark night will descend upon us and right soon.

As Ronald Reagan proved, all the intellectual whisperings of Liberals cannot stand up to simple common sense and that "naive" optimism so natural to the American character. If the conservative project means anything at all, does it not mean this attempt to bring America to its senses, to reawaken it to not only its greatness but to its purpose in the world?

I worry, Paul, that your approach of "let me be proud of America because she is mine" will ultimately end up making us the global equivalent of the Amish -- a cute cultural Disneyland who love their traditions and their ways because they are "theirs", yet irrelevant in every respect, whose role in the world is to be visited from time to time by the tourists from the various Islamic Republics.

I hope that isn't the case; I believe that we agree far far more than we disagree. I am no longer depressed, no longer angry, no longer in denial -- things are what they are. I accept the world we live in as it is. I accept that we're not perfect, that we have much to regret, much to be ashamed of, much to improve upon. I accept that we're good, that our way of life is a better way of life for everyone, that given the choice between living in America and living anywhere else, millions upon millions of people will choose to live here because of the freedom and opportunity available here. I accept that many of our own people, too inured to privilege and unable to accept the gift of being an American, want to spend an eternity flagellating themselves and us with them. Yet I cannot go on feeling bad about slavery, about Jim Crow, about the Native Americans, and all that, because I can't afford the luxury. Because I accept our hyperpower for what it is: a great gift and a great responsibility all at once. I accept that we must act now, right now, in this and not the next world.

If we stumble, the world goes into the long darkness, and we go with it.

-TS

"What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?" - Justice Antonin Scalia

I'm going to post a diary so we can continue this debate elsewhere.

Great Tolkein reference, by the way.

___________
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

As I have been following intensely but biting my tongue so as not to intrude on what I have for some time felt to be a dialogue of essential necessity to understanding our way forward.
John E.