johnb
07-26-2004, 11:55 AM
Just a few interesting comments regarding the war on terror. As usual, the leftist (Michael Kinsley) is wrong. Like most leftists he does not and cannot understand why anyone would ever volunteer for military service.
"When you're asking young people to disrupt their lives and risk dying for their country, that burden ought to be spread across society, not concentrated among those desperate enough to volunteer."
Michael Kinsley - Washington Post
"In 2004, French audiences flocking to Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 to laugh at the stupidity and weakness of their rivals are subconsciously participating in a gambit of equal desperation: the notion that if George Bush's reelection can be prevented by a John Kerry victory, that the liberal project which had been thrown off the rails by the September 11 attacks can somehow be set in motion again and the world restored to its proper course..The truly terrifying thing about the American sword is that it is genuinely two-edged. The front edge consists of military power unparalleled in human history. Yet it is the weaker side; the back edge consists of a system with an an uncanny ability to absorb almost any sort of human, scientific and engineering potential and convert it into unimaginable wealth. The front edge is used but to ward; but it is the back edge that truly destroys rival societies. Osama Bin Laden struck New York first of all and the Pentagon only as a secondary target. The McDonald's hamburger is hated by the French elite more ardently than any Nazi SS division. Both fear the back edge more than the front."
Wretchard - The Belmont Club
"We underestimated homegrown opposition to the war. Thus we saw little reason to confront it intellectually or morally. Assuming few here could identify with fascism, gender apartheid, terrorism, and intolerance, we forgot that forty years of postcolonial studies, multiculturalism, cultural relativism, and aristocratic pacifism in our schools and public discourse had imbued a real mistrust of the United States that was far stronger than any ideological revulsion to Islamic fascism. Shrill Deanism morphed into conspiratorial Moorism and finally ended up as the canonical outrage of the Democratic Party."
Victor Davis Hanson
"When you're asking young people to disrupt their lives and risk dying for their country, that burden ought to be spread across society, not concentrated among those desperate enough to volunteer."
Michael Kinsley - Washington Post
"In 2004, French audiences flocking to Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 to laugh at the stupidity and weakness of their rivals are subconsciously participating in a gambit of equal desperation: the notion that if George Bush's reelection can be prevented by a John Kerry victory, that the liberal project which had been thrown off the rails by the September 11 attacks can somehow be set in motion again and the world restored to its proper course..The truly terrifying thing about the American sword is that it is genuinely two-edged. The front edge consists of military power unparalleled in human history. Yet it is the weaker side; the back edge consists of a system with an an uncanny ability to absorb almost any sort of human, scientific and engineering potential and convert it into unimaginable wealth. The front edge is used but to ward; but it is the back edge that truly destroys rival societies. Osama Bin Laden struck New York first of all and the Pentagon only as a secondary target. The McDonald's hamburger is hated by the French elite more ardently than any Nazi SS division. Both fear the back edge more than the front."
Wretchard - The Belmont Club
"We underestimated homegrown opposition to the war. Thus we saw little reason to confront it intellectually or morally. Assuming few here could identify with fascism, gender apartheid, terrorism, and intolerance, we forgot that forty years of postcolonial studies, multiculturalism, cultural relativism, and aristocratic pacifism in our schools and public discourse had imbued a real mistrust of the United States that was far stronger than any ideological revulsion to Islamic fascism. Shrill Deanism morphed into conspiratorial Moorism and finally ended up as the canonical outrage of the Democratic Party."
Victor Davis Hanson