The American Spectator

Political Hay

Modern liberals measure "progress" not by the unfolding fulfillment of the natural moral law but by its elimination. Consequently, most of what is labeled "progress" is basically just regress, a return, under a glossier guise, to the practices of antiquity and pre-Christian paganism.

Pagans stuck the inconvenient elderly on snow drifts; moderns dehydrate them to death in hospitals. Pagans left unwanted babies to die on hilltops; moderns bury them in bins behind Planned Parenthood clinics. Pagans attended orgies, moderns attend "gay weddings."

In its deepening moral squalor, in its raw defiance of reality as God made it, the Brave New World is as barbaric as the old one. That Hillary Clinton and other architects of the Brave New World are now forced to grapple clumsily with piracy is somehow fitting. Their "new world order" is intrinsically disordered, a reckless ideological experiment that explodes in recurring currents of chaos, discontent, and lawlessness. Why not piracy too?

The recent gusher of globalist babble at the G-20 summit is exposed by the rise of piracy as a total sham. And the rise of piracy is one more proof of Dambisa Moyo's thesis in Dead Aid -- that ceaseless Western government-to-government handouts to Africa, which are just a new version of white colonialism, have frozen the continent in a helpless and horrid past. After a trillion dollars over sixty years, the only vivid display of entrepreneurial activity in Africa today is…piracy.

National Review noted this week that Bono's organization, One, is organizing a campaign of attacks against Moyo's book. Perhaps Bono can add pirates to his to-do list or maybe co-host a few Park Avenue parties for them with Al Sharpton.

But having already accepted de facto piracy by African governments -- most aid, Moyo observes, evaporates in corruption -- the engineers of the new world order aren't likely to win the "war on piracy" or even fight it. Besides, the pirates, as oppressed members of Islam, are pursuing a lifestyle worthy of respect, which they practice very conscientiously if not ecumenically, as in 2008 when the Somali pirates celebrated a Muslim feast in mid-ransom taking. As AP reported at the time:

"We are happy on the ship and we are celebrating Eid," pirate spokesman Sugule Ali told The Associated Press by satellite phone. "Nothing has changed." Ali did not say whether the ship's 21-member crew, which includes Ukrainians, Russians and Latvians, would be included in the feast that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. One crew member has died of an apparent heart attack.

In the giddy days of the campaign, one cheerleading journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mark Morford, speculated that Obama might be a "Lightworker" for the globe -- "that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet…"

This "new way of being on the planet" looks awfully familiar, a return to history's most dismal, farcical, and evil chapters with tyranny, decadence, and false religion. This week the new way of being on the planet resembled the 18th century -- pirates abroad, tax-revolting tea parties at home, and a president, acting like a king, who collected excessive taxes and hatched extreme plans (such as forcing doctors and nurses to perform abortions against their consciences) while his aides sputtered about "extremists."

George Washington was an extremist in George III's eyes, and maybe even a disgruntled military veteran too. But under the madness of King Obama, extremism in the defense of liberalism is no vice and the citizenry's attempt to moderate it no virtue.