No, what set me over the top was what is supposed to be the nation’s most influential conservative publication, the Wall Street Journal. In a series of articles and editorials, this once-proud bastion of Americanist values has become nothing but a shill for neoconservative empire-building.
Did you see their scolding of Haley Barbour last week? They were furious at the Mississippi Governor and potential Presidential candidate for not standing four-square behind our military action against the Gadhafi regime. What dastardly deed did Barbour commit? Let me quote what he said and you decided if the Journal editorialist was right in getting so outraged:
What are we doing in Libya? We have to be careful about getting into nation-building exercises, whether it’s in Libya or somewhere else. After all, we’ve been in Afghanistan 10 years.
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Does that make you want to stand up and shout treason?!? That seems to have been the reaction at the paper’s Wall Street offices. And they didn’t mind lecturing our lawmakers on what the “responsible” (their word, not mine) response to this crisis should be:
The goals of Republicans ought to be to prod Mr. Obama to push for a faster resolution that ends with the toppling of Gadhafi and his sons from power.
Excuse me, but may I ask why?
Why on earth should this country spend millions of dollars, risk hundreds of our servicemen’s lives and end up killing and maiming innocent women and children (and some adult men who admittedly aren’t so innocent) for “regime-change” in Libya? What the heck business is that of ours?
According to the Wall Street Journal, “the credibility of U.S. power is essential to maintaining our influence in [the] Middle East.”
I’m sorry, but this is the same sort of “make-the-world-safe-for-[our-version-of]-democracy” that led to the ruinous wars of the 20th Century. Have we learned nothing from the past?
According to our Founding Fathers and the Constitution they created, the only people who can order our men and women to go to war are the people’s representatives in the U.S. Congress. It is Congress, and only Congress, that has the duty, the right, and the legal obligation to make that decision.
Yet our President is more guided by what the moral lepers in the Arab League and the United Nations think than our elected representatives here at home.
Without a declaration of war, U.S. military actions in Libya are unconstitutional. Period. In a saner world, Congress would be drawing up the articles of Obama’s impeachment as you read this.
But no, that’s not what our empire-building elitists want. We’re supposed to be the policeman of the world. Or to quote that same odious Journal editorial again:
One reason to intervene in Libya is to show the Assads and Ahmadinejads that the West is willing and able to act against tyrants who slaughter their own people.
Oh, yeah? Then what about the genocide in Rwanda, which thus far has claimed the lives of more than one million innocent men, women, and children? Many thousands of these sad victims suffered the most bestial indignities, including repeated rape and massive torture, before they were slain. Have you heard Obama mutter one word of protest, or send one rifle or bullet, to assist any of the Africans there for whom he would be expected to feel some sympathy? What a bunch of lying hypocrites we have ruling over us!
And yet the Wall Street Journal editorialist has the unmitigated gall to chastise the Governor of Mississippi with these words:
Mr. Barbour’s glib resort to this trope of the isolationist left suggests he hasn’t thought very hard, if at all, about foreign policy.
So there you have it, folks. Unless you’re willing to support illegal military action, you’re some sort of boobus Americanus, to use H.L. Mencken’s favorite phrase. Well, count me among the people who haven’t yet bought the liberal-CFR line that war is peace, bad is good, wrong is right — and it is our solemn duty to use our money and our Marines to intervene in every country around the globe that doesn’t behave as we think it should.
This is madness. And it’s got to stop.
Say It in Song
Let’s try to end this grim account of an even grimmer story with a smile. I’m sure many of you remember The Kingston Trio. They were perhaps the most famous folk group of the ’50s and ’60s. I don’t think any of the original members are still performing today, but I believe there’s a group somewhere with the same name, singing all of their old hits.
Back in 1962, the trio (Bob Shane, Dave Guard, and Nick Reynolds) released a song that I thought was weird, even for those very weird times. Anyone remember “The Merry Minuet”? You can still find a performance on YouTube. The structure of the song was strange, too. After singing one line, the group then sort of hummed for a bit; then sang another line; then hummed some more.
Printing the lyrics won’t convey how funny this all sounded, but let me try. Here are the first eight lines of the song:
They’re rioting in Africa,
They’re starving in Spain;
There’s hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls;
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles,
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don’t like anybody very much!
I think it was Nick Reynolds who blurted out that last line. (But if I’m wrong, I’m sure an alert reader will correct me.) On the recording I have, much laughter followed that declaration.
Anyway, after describing all of the terrible things that were happening all over the world — and remember, folks, this was 49 years ago; isn’t it amazing how little has changed since 1962? — the trio ended on what purported to be a note of optimism:
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For man’s been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lucky day
Someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away!
More laughter followed that rather grim description of “some lucky day.” The song then ended with the following prediction:
They’re rioting in Africa,
There’s strife in Iran.
What nature doesn’t do to us
Will be done by our fellow man.
I’ll have more to say next week to “our fellow man” about the people who are misleading and betraying us. In the meantime, stand up for what you know in your heart is right, and condemn the illegal and dangerous course our President has set this country on, both at home and abroad.
Chip Wood was the first news editor of The Review of the News and also wrote for American Opinion, our two predecessor publications. He is now the geopolitical editor of Personal Liberty Digest, where his Straight Talk column appears weekly. This article first appeared in PersonalLiberty.com and has been reprinted with permission.
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