I defy anyone to find anything in a modern newspaper as bracing or blunt – or as long, for that matter – as this much-discussed Mark Steyn piece on the decline of the West. I’ve felt the same things for the last few years, and it’s not out of some grim censorious distaste for eyebrow rings and wardrobe malfunctions. I do not worry about libertinism. I worry about libertines who think the greatest threat to the imminent Utopia is a Wal-Mart exec who refuses to stock a CD because the lyrics celebrate shooting cops in the head, or who think that uptight repressed Christers are six inches and five days away from replacing the Constitution with the plot of “A Handmaiden’s Tale.” The people who make a religion of environmentalism (I read “State of Fear” over the vacation break, and I can see why it horrified so many; it simply wasn’t helpful. While I don’t doubt that Crichton votes Dem – I just have a feeling – it was cruel & delightful fun to read a novel where George Soros Sees The Light, and Ted Danson is eaten by cannibals), the people who consider themselves enlightened but believe all sorts of pseudo-scientific nonsense (no pesticides for us! We only eat vegetables nutured by donkey offal), the people who regard the entire modern world as a giant horrid Cancer Machine designed by callous top-hatted industrialists. My father is 80 years old, healthy as an ox, Zorba-strong, and he’s been breathing petroleum fumes since 1952. They see threats and perils everywhere except where there are, you know, threats and perils.
As he says, the Left sees only today and the crises they see coming tomorrow; and ignores yesterday. They truly don't understand why our troops fight in faraway places:
Yesterday began on 9/12, when people were upset about something or other, and acted rashly for peculiar reasons. Ever since then we’ve been piddling ourselves over imagined threats, when the real threats to our freedom are quite clear.
What will it take for the Left to see a real threat to our society? Will it take an al Qaeda suicide bomber blasting a women's studies department in some Blue college enclave? Will that be peril enough? How on Earth can the enviro-Left panic over a melting glacier yet shrug over the dreams and plans of jihadis to slaughter us in the millions?
I sometimes feel guilty for ranting about "the Left." I don't want it confused with "Democrats" or even "liberals." This is true even when I sometimes use the other terms. I have respect for Democrats and liberals--really--though on many things I will disagree. But the hard Left is another matter. They ignore what they claim are their ideals of freedom, liberty, women's rights, and gay advocacy to side with jihadis who would shred the Left's ideals in a second and who make no secret about their intentions. But the Left and the jihadis share a higher ideal--they both hate George Bush's America. That the enemy hates America regardless of who is in the White House is irrelevant to the Left right now. And the Left is taking over the national Democratic Party making it all but guaranteed, it seems, that the country will not trust the likes of Teddy Kennedy at the wheel.
And as a further explanation, I have contempt for the Right that opposes the Iraq War, too. But if I rarely comment on them and instead focus on the Left, it is because our press marginalizes the Right and places them outside of polite company while the press celebrates and embraces the Left's views.
So there. A rant and an explanation. You can still consider me a knucke-dragger if you wish. I simply don't care. There are bigger perils to worry about out there.
