Amazing really that the agenda of the Left emanates mostly from academic/intellectual/media activists who should at least have their facts and basic assumptions correct. This is rarely the case. Listen to the autopsies of the recent election. Unrepentant and defiant, Democrat Party pundits pick through the rubble of their spectacular defeat with a righteous certitude that they were correct and the voters wrong—most notably certain voters. The kids let us down, they say, or women or minorities. After flogging their own crew, they inevitably retreat into the refuge of scoundrels and simply conclude that the people who voted for Bush are crude and stupid. This is followed by the manifesto to fight on, without stopping for a moment and thinking through the real truth that their doctrines are out of touch with reality.
Doctrines need data to survive. The problem with Democrat leadership is that it has relied on 30- to 40-year-old issues without thinking that at some point they need facts to support them. Racism, knee-jerk anti-war rhetoric, extreme environmentalism, world socialism, feminism, gay rights, youth power—these are certainly the politics of the past. Yet they were right up front during the Kerry campaign.
Not only were they stale issues, the facts to support them just weren’t there. The real jolt is to learn the facts weren’t there to start with. Take racism: it is hard for Americans to become outraged when blatant acts of race violence or unfair treatment due to skin color are a rarity today in an era that has known 30 years of busing, affirmative action, entitlements and set-aside programs.
Or cogitate about the anti-war movement. Iraq is not Vietnam, yet the parallels were trotted out hourly during the presidential campaign to take a few laps whenever a TV camera appeared. When the propagandists for the Left ran out of arguments, up would pop George Bush’s record on the environment, with special emphasis on his refusal to drag the US into the esoteric and unenforceable protocols of the Kyoto Treaty. In the wake of the Western free market victory over the brutal regime of the Soviet Union, it’s ridiculous to tout the virtues of one-world government. Yet the cuddling up to the villains of the European Union was brandished about as necessary if the US is to survive in the world today. George Bush, the critics cried, has alienated France and Germany. So what? The EU is an ersatz Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, requiring member states to subsume their sovereignty to the greater good of the super-state. Whether Brussels or Moscow, it’s still the same thing and we are wise to keep them out of our affairs—but watch our backs all the time.
Feminism is no longer taken seriously except on college campuses where “women’s studies” carry on a political agenda but without serious scholastic respect. Gay rights are important to a vast minority, meaning that while the issue of same-sex marriage was run up to the top of the media flag pole, it only affects less than two percent of the population. And then there is the youth vote. The problem here is that the young today don’t enjoy the statistical clout of the boomers. Even if they came out from behind their earphones and actually went to the polls, there aren’t enough of them to make a difference.
DAMNED LIES
The reality of the numbers has eluded the Left from the beginning. Simply examining the political agenda since the 1960s will demonstrate that the facts have never made much difference to the activists.
A typical lie from the period was John Kerry’s assertion in 1971 that the United States military, from the White House on down to the soldiers in the rice paddies, was engaged in atrocities in Vietnam as a matter of policy. Another Big Lie comprised the basis of the environmental movement. In 1968, Paul Erlich and crew predicted that over-population would destroy the earth in 30 years, setting off the demented and continuing belief that mankind is a murderer. Ask young people who have been exposed to this tripe in school. Their
self-esteem as humans has been nearly extinguished in the aftermath while deer are now the number one killer on American highways. Alligators, wolves, foxes... can now roam the suburbs as our collective guilt about the environment and what mankind has done to it overcomes common sense.
Not only were Erlich and his henchmen wrong, they have set off what could be a catastrophe in the Western bloc. Europe is dying due to under-population. So is Japan. Productivity is falling and the crisis is looming. Without robust population growth, there are not enough workers to pay the taxes to support the larger older segment of their populations. The US is still growing and will hit 422 million in 50 years. But if the charlatans who keep pushing population growth scare tactics continue to have sway, we can literally see our economy dying by the end of the 21st century.
THE NUMBERS DIDN’T LIE
There is another statistical lie making the rounds, one that is incessantly forced on our consciousness and that could have cost the Democrats the election. It is trumpeted from the campuses as part of the new anti-Western creed of multiculturalism and shows up in the press constantly: White Americans—meaning those of European descent—are a minority and need to realize that their institutions are no longer valid in the brave new world of racial diversity. And though it may be in 100 years, it’s not true today.
Despite the misleading headlines about the growth of minorities, most notably those of Central and Latin American origin, today in the US over 75 percent of citizens are European descended. And they voted in the 2004 election. Had the Democrat strategists done their math, they may have won by addressing their campaign to this reality. But they always prefer to believe propaganda over facts.
NOTES FROM LA-LA LAND
The pandemonium surrounding the death of Yasser Arafat hinted at, but did not spell out, who he really was. According to Ion Pacepa, the former chief of the Romanian secret intelligence apparat when it was still attached to the Soviet Union, Arafat was a KGB legend, invented from head to toe to act as an agent of sabotage against the US and its special relationship with Israel. This fact was verified to me by Oleg Kalugin, a KGB Major General and later head of Soviet counterintelligence: (“Yes Bernie, he was a client of ours”). Arafat, according to Pacepa, was paid as much as $200,000 per month from the mid-1960s by Moscow to undermine the stability of the Middle East with terrorist attacks and political machinations to destabilize the region. No wonder then that even his admirers admitted that he personally destroyed the opportunities for a Palestinian state after Israel twice agreed to all of his demands. He was a catalyst for chaos and the founder of modern terrorism in the region. Of course, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize—and so was Jimmy Carter for that matter, another miscreant of the latter half of the 20th Century.
•••
John Pope has them hopping over in Chapel Hill with his proposal to fund a program to study Western civilization. The politically correct fellow travelers on campus are claiming that there is no need for the gift. This is a lie. John Pope is trying to save UNC from its downward spiral as a respected university that began with the radical scholars dismantling the study of western culture (our culture) since the 1970s. The reason? According to the radicals, western values and culture are tainted by racism (slavery), chauvinism (women did not have equal status) and homophobia (they just assume that) and are therefore to be removed from the center of scholarship and put on an equal footing with the contributions of Gabon and New Guinea. I’d rather Mr. Pope’s money be spent dismantling the liberal arts curriculum and starting all over again.
•••
John Keegan, the Sandhurst professor who writes popular military history has exposed himself as a vain poltroon by writing a book denigrating the role of intelligence in warfare. Mr. Keegan missed the boat as espionage rose to the top of public interest since the collapse of the Soviet Union—most notably the Venona files.
As I am friends with the top intelligence historian, Dr. Christopher Andrew of Cambridge, I admit a bit of bias, especially as I am founder of the Raleigh International Spy Conference that focuses on the phenomenon of public interest in the clandestine world of spooks and traitors. But Keegan has really gone too far in his zeal to attack the importance of intelligence in order to cover up his embarrassment at having ignored its public appeal during his career.
In his introduction, Keegan makes largely invalid points and proceeds to mock the intelligence community with some rather superficial personal experiences. Then he does something disgraceful. He makes a veiled reference to KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, Chris Andrew’s collaborator on two famous books that finally exposed KGB activities in the West.
Says Keegan: “I do not wish to mention names. I would say however, that among those to whom I have been introduced during my on-off encounter with the world of espionage is one of the most celebrated traitors of the 20th century. He served the West, at great danger to himself, and is a fascinating and charming human being. About him, however, I SHARE THE FEELINGS OF MY WIFE, in whom burns the true fire of British patriotism. ‘I like him,’ she said, after our only meeting, ‘but I can’t suppress the knowledge that he betrayed his country. I would rather die than be a traitor.’”
What he and the Mrs. should die of is mortification for vanity and stupidity. Gordievsky didn’t betray a country; he worked quite bravely to help bring down the most brutal and murderous regime in history that enslaved the people of Russia and beyond. Hiding behind the skirts of his wife to criticize one of the great patriots of the 20th century, and in the process purposefully attempting to slander Chris Andrew, is egregious beyond description. John Keegan has sunk below contempt to cover up his own ineptitude.
•••
Suddenly we are fat, ten pounds heavier on average according to the minders who supply the litany of doomsday health bulletins that are a commonplace of our nanny state. And once again the wonks aren't looking at the data. Could it be that the increase in LBees is due to the reality that the largest segment of the population, the boomers, are developing midriff bulge? Boomers rule.
•••
The recent mayhem in the NBA involving thugs from the Indiana Pacers and the Detroit Pistons is hardly startling to anyone who has paid attention to the antics of the overpaid Amazons who walk all over our universities to get to the pros to make the big bucks. The NBA is a disgrace, with only a few teams going through the motions to pretend this is actually a sport.