President Bush and Emmanuel Goldstein
The Anchoress has a much needed perspective on President Bush. I am neither religious nor conservative, and yet I agree with the thrust of what she is saying wholeheartedly. He is as he always has been. Perhaps in twenty years we (as a society) will appreciate him the way we do Ronald Reagan now. It seems a rule of politics that conservatives are never accorded their due until they are safely beyond office.
This man has more strength of character than anyone who's occupied the White House since Truman, at least. It does not bother me that the source for this strength is christianity, any more than it bothers me that it was the source of Lincoln's strength, or Dr. Martin Luther King's. Yes, christianity has done a great deal of harm to the world, and many christians in this country do not understand the first amendment any better than the average atheist. Yet for every horrible action undertaken in the name of christianity, there are ten just as good as the one was bad, and this ratio is improving.
Compare and contrast this man's gentlemanly treatment of the press and his opposition, while they take every opportunity they can make or create to tar and feather him, a la the Two Minute Hate
(Hidden as most folks should be familiar with 1984)
Substitute left wing professors for the Thought Police, and the Legacy Media for the Ministry of Truth, and President Bush maps amazingly well into Emmanuel Goldstein.
One suggestion: Challenge anyone indulging in the ritual of the Two Minute Hate to come up with one good thing about President Bush. I'm as nasty a Clinton detractor as you can be, but I am rational enough to give him credit where credit is due, however few places those may be (Welfare Reform was largely due to him, to name one. Two: The Health Care Initiative, while severely flawed, was an intelligent and worthwhile thing to attempt. Three: However many people lost their lives in Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia, and Rwanda while he figured out that voters actually cared, he did eventually act. Four: He kept sanctions in place against Iraq. Can you imagine our current situation if he hadn't?)
I'm sure this rule has been articulated somewhere before, but if you can't say something good about a person, chances are you haven't really looked at their life (Hitler gave a lot of strength to the environmental movement in europe, and a lot of their wilderness areas date back to the Nazi era). Those who cannot come up with something good to say about a person, no matter how justified their antipathy, are not demonstrating anything characteristic of rational judgement. (I suspect that the reverse is also true)
Five and a half years into his presidency, President Bush has a list of accomplishments in the face of adversity that the vast majority of his predecessors would envy and all of them (except perhaps Mr. Carter, and we all know how much good he did our country as President, but he has done a lot of good through Habitat for Humanity) would respect. Creating a moral compromise on fetal tissue. Rescuing our morale from 9/11. Ably prosecuting the War On Terror. Standing firm in the face of domestic opposition bigger than anything since 1864. Negotiating a real alternative to Kyoto that maybe someone intends to, you know, actually adhere to. Stimulating our domestic economy with two tax cuts. I don't care for his spending and government growth, and I was hoping for more from him on immigration, but considering the policies Gore and Kerry have espoused, infinitely preferable. He has reached out across the aisle to his opposition more times than any other president in my memory, and had his shoes metaphorically spat upon more often than not, and still he keeps trying.
Indeed, barring some future failing of enormous magnitude, upon leaving office he will be able to hold his head high at being compared to any of his predecessors, saying something analogous to Theoden's final words in The Return of the King:
"I go to my fathers, in whose mighty company I shall not now feel ashamed"
For all the failures anyone has even accused him of, I cannot help but think how much worse the hands our presidency could have been in, how much worse it almost was.
And of course, the Inner Party has gotten at least as much mileage out of the real world Two Minute Hate as the fictional one did out of theirs.
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I don’t know about you, but I just can’t read enough about how the AP or other news outlets select exactly what parts of what quotes they want us to know about as they continue “framing” rather than reporting the news. For exa... Read More
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