The Hate-America Crowd, Part I

This is the first in a multipart series on America-Haters.

The amount of animosity - sometimes just plain hate - emanating from people who are upset that George W. Bush won the presidency in November is unbelievable. Yet as you dig deeper into what these people actually say and how they express themselves, you begin to understand that they just don't hate President Bush or the Republicans, they hate the United States itself, and wish to see it brought down.

Many don't wish the nation to be destroyed, merely humbled and forced to play a more subservient role in the world. Others make no bones about wishing to destroy the very essence of our freedom and personal liberty, end all forms of capitalist commerce, and establish a strict socialist or communist form of government. Others simply want to gain political power for themselves and their associates, and continue to exercise it without restraint - a form of tyranny that most citizens shouldn't tolerate.

Spewing hate, venom, and frequently outright fabrications has become a major cottage industry in the United States. The Internet appears to be the medium of choice. There, too, can be found the majority of those attempting to counter the lies, slurs, insults, and erronious information being dumped on anyone and everyone that has a computer and modem. The following examples were downloaded from the Internet yesterday, and reflect only a tiny part of what's being presented - from every side - on a regular basis.
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Bush vs. Clark's kooks
by Brent Bozell
January 27, 2005

Turning reality upside down is easy when you live in the world of people like actress Janeane Garofalo, who proclaimed on MSNBC just hours after the inauguration festivities: "George W. Bush is unelectable, in my opinion." This isn't dissent. It's beyond denial. Welcome to liberal dementia.

Dictionary definition: Dementia: 1 : a condition of deteriorated mentality often with emotional apathy, 2 : MADNESS, INSANITY (a fanaticism bordering on dementia).
George Bush was inaugurated - I.E., took the oath of office as President - before these words were uttered. Dementia is one guess, another would be clueless, with a very large helping of denial of reality. When you live in a fantasy world such as Janeane Garofalo, reality has no meaning. Of course, neither does Garofalo's fantasy world for the rest of us.

More...

"Left-leaning" is hardly an accurate description for the exotic socialists like International ANSWER, described by the Post as simply "an anti-war, anti-racism coalition." Their call to protest the inauguration wildly stated our president "is determined to maintain U.S. occupation and aggression against Cuba, Haiti, Afghanistan, Korea, the Philippines, Sudan, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Colombia and other countries."
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The Post story excluded the itty-bitty fact that the coalition's leader, Ramsey Clark, signed up on Dec. 29 as part of the legal defense team for Saddam Hussein.

If you go to the International ANSWER website, you learn quickly that this is merely another socialist/communist front group. Here's their agenda: Bring the Troops Home Now (from everywhere, not just Iraq); End Colonial Occupation from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti & Everywhere, Stop the threats against Iran & Cuba, Health Care, Education, Housing, and a Job at a Living Wage Must be a Right!

In other words, establish a "socialist worker's paradise". Why not? After all, these people are a direct descendant of the Worker's World Party, another Communist front organization. They insist that the United States stop treating terrorists and dictators as terrorists and dictators, and remove ourselves from the world. Our actions in Iraq are "colonial occupation", and our attempt to encourage the spread of democracy is "abhorrent". We shouldn't station troops in Korea or Western Europe, and we shouldn't interfere in the forceful imposition of Communist governments anywhere in the world. Also, capitalism and competition are bad, and everyone must be GIVEN a job at a "living wage", whether they're actually qualified for it or not, or whether they actually perform a useful function in society or not. Pravda under the old Soviet Union couldn't have said it better.

Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark has never met a dictatorial government he didn't like, or an American government he did, including the government under President Lyndon Johnson, where he served. Clark is an avowed socialist, and his defense of Saddam Hussein is par for the course. Bozell again:

Wouldn't it be fair to conclude this pro-Saddam lobby is anti-American, not anti-war? Shouldn't this lobby have to contend with press questions about its agenda? Try to find a Washington Post story on Ramsey Clark's newest job. There isn't one. The same omission occurred in the New York Times.

It's a well-known fact that most newspapers rank from "somewhat-liberal" to "extremely liberal". In this context, "liberal" can be interpreted as anti-Republican, anti-capitalist, anti-military, and anti-liberty. Only socialism, prefereably European-style socialism, is worth praising or emulating. Back to Bozell:

The morning after the inauguration, New York Times reporter Michael Janofsky issued a very kind article about demonstrators "reveling" in the protests, reporting on Clark as merely an "antiwar figure" who was merely LBJ's attorney general -- not a tyrant's best legal friend. Janofsky quoted Clark rambling to assembled protesters about how impeaching Bush "now is essential to the integrity of the U.S. government and the people of the United States."

The American people can't have willingly elected a Republican president, and it's up to the left to ensure he's not recognized as "legitimate". The threat of impeachment isn't over the President's actions so much as over which party he belongs to. We saw all too well how the Democrats feel about presidential misbehavior in the impeachment trial of William Jefferson Clinton. Unfortunately, the left, including the Democratic Party, feel that unless they win, the election was a fraud, the elected shouldn't serve, and the people must have been hoodwinked into voting for someone other than their friends. There's no room in their minds for differences of opinion and the idea that the people would actually prefer someone else over their moonbat choices. This is evident not only in our own elections, but in the left's reaction to elections in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Another installment, another author:

In Davos, Part I
by Jay Nordlinger
January 27, 2005, 7:44 a.m.

Friends, I'm writing you from Davos, Switzerland... ...In the past, I've described Davos as "the pages of the New York Times come to life," or, I think, CNN come to life. The answer to "Who's here?" is "pretty much everybody." Heads of state, foreign ministers, financial wizards, captains of industry, intellectuals, artists, blah, blah, blah. The phrase "international community" is one of the emptiest in our vocabulary. Except here: Here, it makes perfect sense (for better or worse); it is, indeed, manifested.

I will not inflict long lists on you, but I will not forswear list-making altogether. As for business leaders, I will mention Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and Carly Fiorina. Think of someone else, and chances are I can find him for you.

Heads of government? Allawi, Blair, Erdogan (of Turkey), Howard (thank heaven he was reelected), Karamanlis (Greece), Klaus, Kwasniewski, "Lula," Mbeki, Obasanjo (the impressive Nigerian), Saakashvili (from Georgia, as the "vili" will tell you), Schroeder, Yushchenko. And can you count Prince Albert, our Grace's son? Let's do.

Americans are here, but no one at the level of the vice president or secretary of state. (Cheney was present last year, Powell the year before.) We have Elaine Chao — the labor secretary — and a slew of officeholders: Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Bill Richardson; Orrin Hatch, Bill Frist, John McCain, Chris Shays, Bill Owens. And Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco. (He hasn't performed any wedding ceremonies, that I've noticed.) And ex-pols, such as Al Gore and Phil Gramm. The roster is Left-heavy, but there are some righties — à la Gramm, and Steve Forbes — about.

Did I mention Bill Clinton? I guess not, but you don't have to. He seems to be Davos's favorite American, as Shimon Peres is the designated Israeli.
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George Soros is making the rounds, and Mohamed ElBaradei (the arms inspector — or putative arms inspector), and "Abu Mazen," and David Stern, the commissioner of the National Basketball Association. (I'm being totally random here.) I'll tell you this, too: I saw a name-plate on a dais, "Prince." I assumed it was some royal. It turned out to be Charles O. Prince, CEO of Citigroup, USA. But mine had been a reasonable assumption.
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The presidents of Harvard and Yale and other schools (to the extent there are other schools), and media panjandrums (the Howard Stringers), and writers such as Carlos Fuentes and Nadine Gordimer, and I love seeing the name Chief Arvol Looking Horse, and I also love seeing the name Robert Trent Jones Jr. — the golf-course architect — and I'm very excited about George Kell, but he turns out to be "Executive Head of the Global Compact Office, The United Nations, New York." Not the old Detroit Tigers third baseman.
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There is a group here known as Young Global Leaders, of whom I will mention only two: Sergey Brin of Google, and our own Bret Stephens... ...Oh, yes, another Young Global Leader: Lily Habash, out of the prime minister's office in the Palestinian Authority (member of the family of George Habash). I sit next to her one afternoon.
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Should I say something about the panels here at Davos? Okay, just a few remarks...

One dinner is called "Why Rich Countries Can't Buy Happiness."
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Another panel takes on the small-bore question of "What Makes Us Human?" Then we have "Redefining Success" — one can well imagine the directions of that redefinition.

Here's a nice title, for a panel on social investing: "Strengthening the Visible Hand." Another nice title, for a nanotechnology session: "Learning to Think Small."

A dinner on "Can Artists Still Change the World?" (Still?) features Prince Albert, Carole Bouquet, Peter Gabriel, and Chris Tucker. Later that night is a "Nobel Nightcap," which gives us, among others, Nadine Gordimer and Elie Wiesel.

A panel is titled "Middle East 2020: Island of Wealth and Opportunity." From their mouth to ... Another panel asks, "Why Can't Europe Create Jobs?" That strikes me as admirably — and refreshingly — forthright.

Another cute title: "Living a Little Too Large" (the panel is on obesity). (And it includes an official from Nestlé.) And how about "Hate's New Medium," which refers to the Internet? Maybe, but there's a lot of love and humanity and enlightenment through that medium, too.

A dinner is headlined, "Can the English Language's Monopoly Be Broken?" Forgive my loud sighing (shades of Al Gore in the first 2000 debate). If there has to be a lingua franca — and there must — the world could do worse than to have it English. But we've discussed this many, many times.

I'll end with another good title: "Putting the 'Non-' Back into Non-Proliferation."

The theme of this year's Annual Meeting is Taking Responsibility for Tough Choices. To this end, a magazine is published, and its contents tell the tale. On Geopolitics & Security, we have articles by: Kofi Annan, Paul Martin, Javier Solana. We have an interview with Richard Holbrooke. We have further articles by Hanan Ashrawi . . . well, you get the idea.

The lead article on Economics & Finance is by Mikhail Gorbachev. Another one is by Sen. Jon Corzine, the zillionaire socialist (an amazingly common phenomenon these days).

On Culture & Values we have Lula da Silva, Rashid Khalidi ... A luncheon featuring Sharon Stone and Richard Gere.
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The luncheon topic is AIDS, and when Sharon — we're on a first-name basis — rises to speak, she gets a serious, actress-about-to-address-something-grave look on her face. She gathers herself. Then she makes the most charming prefatory remarks you've ever heard: "It's good to be here with all you smarty-pants. I don't have your education, and probably not your world experience, although I have a certain experience. But . . ." A masterly downplaying of expectations. Right out of the Speaker's Handbook, page 1.

The gist of her remarks is that AIDS is readily solvable, but that "greed and arrogance stop us." We — we richies — simply don't want to spend enough, simply don't care enough. We are stingy and callous. (No mention is made of the Bush administration's remarkable efforts in Africa — efforts that the most knowledgeable and fair-minded can't help hailing.) Finishing up, the actress says, "If we just stopped arrogantly killing people all over the world, and channeled the money into AIDS, we would have a solution."

I imagine that "arrogantly killing people" is an allusion to the War on Terror. And I think for a minute about that phrase, "arrogantly killing people." It seems to me that two experts in arrogantly killing people were the Taliban and the Saddam Hussein regime. I think of Iraq's mass graves, the gassing of all those innocents, the putting of men into industrial shredders, feet-first (so that the torturers could hear the screaming). I think of the routineness of rape, and the cutting out of tongues for dissent, and the children's prisons.

And the Taliban? I'll say it again: There are people in this world — I suspect many of them are here in Davos — who would rather homosexuals be crushed to death by stone walls, bulldozed onto them by decree of sharia, than that they be freed by George W. Bush and the U.S. military.

But "arrogantly killing people": That sums up, better than anything I have heard, the ignorant or malicious Left's view of U.S. operations — operations designed precisely to keep bad people from arrogantly killing people.

The world gathers at Davos, and talks. And talks. And talks. Yet not much gets said that has any bearing on the real world. The topics discussed make sense only to the left. The real hard decisions aren't even brought to the table - international trade, disaster response, terrorism, totalitarian governments, genocide, health problems OTHER than AIDS (and the world has plenty). There's no discussion of graft and corruption and what role it plays in keeping others from achieving a higher standard of living. There's no discussion on how to improve living and working conditions in the "third world". The primary purpose of this love-fest is to heap scorn on the United States, and to a lesser degree, other democratic, successful countries. No one wants to admit that individual freedom is a key ingredient to success - and that includes many of the attendees from nations that experience such freedoms for themselves.

"Why Can't Europe Create Jobs?" can be very simply answered: because it punishes those that create them with high taxes, high costs for the European social welfare state, and makes it impossible to compete in a free market. End the sicialist welfare, reduce taxes, and acknowledge that achievement should be rewarded, not punished, and there will be an explosion of jobs in Europe. Of course, European governments won't do this, because it's against the nature of the welfare state they've created, and which perpetuates their government power. The same is true for many of the other problems being discussed: the answers are simple, but go against the ardent beliefs of those in power. The best way to end poverty is to allow people to create and keep wealth. It requires protection by the state of the right to get and own personal and real property, and to keep a lion's share of daily earnings. It requires entrepreneural freedom, which requires personal freedom. Even in Western Europe, personal freedom is subordinate to the State, society, and culture. Elsewhere, personal freedom is even more restricted, and personal productivity is often punished. The result is poverty and economic stagnation, and a lot of hot air from the people most responsible for that stagnation.

AIDS is a problem with two parts: unrestricted, unprotected sex (with multiple partners, inside and outside traditional marriage, heterosexual and homosexual, without considering the possibilities of infection or transmission of sexually transmitted diseases), and poverty. It's no secret that AIDS is most prevelant among the poor of Africa and Asia, where both custom and society are permissive of sexual practicies. This area is also the one with the least personal freedom, low education, and other problems, including disease. No amount of money can prevent the spread of AIDS in such a political and social setting. The only sure way of preventing AIDS is abstinence and/or fidelity in marriage. The left is against both ideas.

Sharon Stone's disingenuous and blatantly stupid statment, "If we just stopped arrogantly killing people all over the world, and channeled the money into AIDS, we would have a solution" shows why the arrogant left is part of the problem. I'm sure she means the "arrogant killing" by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq, not the genocide in Darfur, the murder of whites and opposition members in Zimbabwe, the murder of Christians in Egypt,Iraq, and elsewhere. I'm sure she means not spending money on weapons and armaments for our self-defense, and the defense of our allies. I'm sure she means the blatant giving as much money to African and Asian nations as they want, regardless of the success or failure of their "AIDS" treatment plans. The left always has all the answers - it's just that usually, they have little or nothing to do with the (very real) problems.

End Part I