As offensive as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s recent
anti-Bush tirade at the United Nations was, his calling President
Bush “the devil” was a lot less offensive than modern American
liberals who attack our President on a daily basis.
When I watched Jon Stewart joke about Chavez’s outburst on
The Daily Show, I found myself relieved: for once, a
comedian was ridiculing the truly ridiculous — Chavez — instead
of taking endless cheap shots at Bush.
Of course, Bush got some ribbing from Stewart, too, but at least
Stewart did something other than endlessly pile on stale jokes
about our President’s inarticulateness without remotely considering
(to paraphrase Alexis de Tocqueville, a true — i.e.
classical—liberal), that being laconic is a minor limitation
compared to those of people who speak well and reason poorly.
Meanwhile, President Bush found himself with one of the
unlikeliest of all defenders: Charlie Rangel. “An attack on Bush is
an attack on all Americans,” the New York congressman said in a
news conference. “You do not come into my country, my congressional
district, and you do not condemn my president. If there is any
criticism of President Bush, it should be restricted to Americans,
whether they voted for him or not.”
While it was nice to see Rangel stick up for the President, his
comments sounded a bit like the older brother who says, “Nobody can
beat up my younger brother but me.”
Rangel may think it more appropriate for Americans to attack
their own President than for a foreign leader to do so, but in
reality, the reverse is true. Who is more despicable, a foreign
leader who slings vitriol at our President while enjoying our
city’s comforts (and something tells me this socialist demagogue
didn’t stay budget while in New York), or U.S. citizens who utterly
demonize our President while saying nary a word about the
terrorists who, in the most inhuman way imaginable, deliberately
murdered thousands of American civilians on September 11?
At a political comedy/discussion show I attended in downtown
Manhattan the other night, one “liberal” panelist, asked to comment
on Chavez’s remarks, said that while they may have been
over-the-top, she didn’t take them all that seriously and found the
entire episode “funny.”
Her comment sidestepped the issue, because while Chavez’s
behavior was indeed absurd and perhaps unintentionally funny, his
words were not intended as a joke — any more than are the words of
certain left-wingers in our own country who routinely refer to our
President as a “fascist,” an “idiot,” and a “terrorist” at a time
when U.S. citizens face unthinkable brutality at the hands of
genuine terrorists (whether those who fly planes into buildings in
our cities or those who bomb U.S. soldiers in Iraq).
It is one thing to criticize the President’s policies, but it is
another thing to vilify him the way modern liberals do. Left wing
vitriol is not limited to bomb throwers such as Cindy Sheehan and
Michael Moore. Whether it’s Jimmy Carter saying that President Bush
had brought “international disgrace” to America or Senate Minority
Leader Harry Reid calling Bush a “loser” and a “liar,” berating our
President has become the favorite pastime of Democrats.
One of the motives behind this name-calling is the hope that if
we demonize our own President, the real terrorists will leave us
alone. Or if our foreign policy refuses to confront evil, real
terrorists won’t attack us. But in reality, no contortion of logic
can dismiss that September 11 occurred before the Iraq war, and
George Bush did not create terrorism, nor will pretending we see
him as the moral equivalent of terrorists protect us.
Left-wingers constantly repeat that the U.S. “squandered the
goodwill” of the world after 9/11, but much of what they regarded
as goodwill was, in fact, pity for us because we were victims that
day. If being victims is the price of this so-called “goodwill,”
who needs it?
Sadly, Chavez didn’t say anything worse than things I’ve heard
numerous left-wing American citizens say — and seen them proclaim
on ubiquitous bumper stickers and T-shirts. Not one such
left-winger I’ve come across has acknowledged this, however.
The truth is that their insipid dismissal of Chavez’s comments
belies their discomfort in having a mirror held up to their own
ignorance. It seems never to cross their minds that perhaps foreign
leaders and malcontented individuals feel encouraged to attack
America because they see so many Americans attacking our country
from within. (I say malcontented individuals because it is they who
are anti-American. Everyone else in the world is trying to
immigrate here — something else the left-wing doesn’t seem to
notice.)
Of course, those who reach the conclusion that our President is
a “terrorist” and a “fascist” have every right to voice their
opinions, because this is America.
I wonder, though, whom they’d feel safer calling a terrorist to
his face — George Bush or Osama bin Laden?
