Some Things Don't Change

Do you know what happened this week back in 1850, 157 years ago?

• California became a state.
• The State had no electricity.
• The State had no money.
• Almost everyone spoke Spanish.
• There were gunfights in the streets.

So basically, it was just like California is today, except the women had real breasts and the men didn't hold hands.

(H/T AJK)

Paul Krugman's 1933 Worldview

Since the LA Times fired Robert Sheer, I have marveled at Paul Krugman’s shameless skill to promote THE LEFT’s hallucinogenic logic.

In this week’s column, Krugman juxtaposes Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s urge not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror” during wartime, against what he calls “the Bushies” imaginary fear of non-existent Islamofascism during peacetime.

Krugman writes:

In America’s darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” But that was then.Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Although he implies that Roosevelt’s quote was made by a resolute wartime president, Krugman actually drew it from FDR’s first inaugural address on March 4th, 1933, a date that coincides with Hitler’s rise to power and American isolationism. Six years before the Nazi invasion of Poland and eight years before Pearl Harbor, FDR’s address never mentions Germany, Japan, Nazis, or rising fascism, focusing instead on the economy and social policy.

But failing regimes need men like Baghdad Bob and Paul Krugman, which may be why the New York Times hasn’t fired him yet.

Like FDR, George Bush inherited a struggling economy from his predecessor. But his administration’s record six years of economic growth never distracted thoughtful Americans from the growing threats that FDR ignored, but history now demands, that we confront.

Krugman writes:

Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”

Consider how different the world would be today if Poland, England, and the United States had taken such steps against the Nazi regime in 1933.

Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.”

Do I have to point out that none of this makes a bit of sense?

Like FDR’s Nazi enemy, Islam’s leadership doesn’t rely on sense.

For one thing, there isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t.

Fascism was also academic before Germany, Italy, and Japan redefined it.

One month after 9/11, NPR’s Scott Simon wrote of a famous debate held in 1933 by the Oxford Student Union whether it was moral for Britons to fight for king and country:

The exquisite intellects of that leading university reviewed the many ways in which British colonialism exploited and oppressed the world. They cited the ways in which vengeful demands made of Germany in the wake of World War I had helped to kindle nationalism and fascism. They saw no moral difference between Western colonialism and world fascism. The Oxford Union ended that debate with this famous proclamation: "Resolved, that we will in no circumstances fight for king and country."

(Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop) sent back the good news to Germany's new chancellor, Hitler: The West will not fight for its own survival. Its finest minds will justify a silent surrender.

In short, the best-educated young people of their time could not tell the difference between the deficiencies of their own nation, in which liberty and democracy were cornerstones, and a dictatorship founded on racism, tyranny and fear.

Krugman is one such man. He continues:

And Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 — in fact, the Iranian regime was quite helpful to the United States when it went after Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

Germany wasn’t directly hostile to the US or Europe in 1933 either. Hitler had no direct connection to Pearl Harbor, except to embolden the Japanese.

Beyond that, the claim that Iran is on the path to global domination is beyond ludicrous. Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in many ways, and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear weapons. But let’s have some perspective, please: we’re talking about a country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose military budget is roughly the same as Sweden’s.

Connecticut doesn’t call for the destruction of Israel or the United States. Connecticut doesn’t build and deliver missiles that kill innocent civilians or American soldiers. Connecticut doesn’t control trillions of dollars in oil reserves from which to fund terrorism, nor does it affect the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, the idea that bombing will bring the Iranian regime to its knees — and bombing is the only option, since we’ve run out of troops — is pure wishful thinking. Last year Israel tried to cripple Hezbollah with an air campaign, and ended up strengthening it instead. There’s every reason to believe that an attack on Iran would produce the same result, with the added effects of
endangering U.S. forces in Iraq and driving oil prices well into triple digits.

Krugman forgets the Israeli jets flew past 50 Russian-made Pantsyr S1E short-range air defense systems to bomb a suspected nuclear target in Syria last August. Iran uses the same system to protect its nuclear facilities. And although airstrikes may not interrupt Iran’s nuclear plans, they seemed to work well against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in 1981.

Mr. Podhoretz, in short, is engaging in what my relatives call crazy talk.

Why are we not surprised by the Krugman Family’s familiarity with crazy talk?

Yet he is being treated with respect by the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination. And Mr. Podhoretz’s rants are, if anything, saner than some of what we’ve been hearing from some of Mr. Giuliani’s rivals.

Which may explain why the ascendant Giuliani and Pohoretz enjoy far more respect than the incredibly shrinking New York Times.

Thus, in a recent campaign ad Mitt Romney asserted that America is in a struggle with people who aim “to unite the world under a single jihadist Caliphate. To do that they must collapse freedom-loving nations. Like us.” He doesn’t say exactly who these jihadists are, but presumably he’s referring to Al Qaeda — an organization that has certainly demonstrated its willingness and ability to kill innocent people, but has no chance of collapsing the United States, let alone taking over the world.

While Al Qaeda may not be able to collapse the Western World without Krugman's help, they’ve proven their willingness to make life painful for citizens throughout the world, as 9/11 and ordinary former Muslims like Aayan Ali Hirsi and Walid Shoebat can attest. With millions of Muslim children now begging to explode themselves to kill Jews and Americans for Allah, Iran’s mullahs don’t need large military complexes to erode a country’s will to protect itself. A tiny investment of bombers in Madrid affected Spain’s national elections, resulting in their military’s immediate departure from Iraq. Like termites, Islam’s viral fascists don’t require a centralized military complex to defeat the West – especially when so many pro-fascists like Krugman are willing to facilitate them.

And Mike Huckabee, whom reporters like to portray as a nice, reasonable guy, says that if Hillary Clinton is elected, “I’m not sure we’ll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country’s ever faced in Islamofascism.” Yep, a bunch of lightly armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power — which aren’t even allies — pose a greater danger than Hitler’s panzers or the Soviet nuclear arsenal ever did.

There were no panzers or nuclear arsenals in 1933 either. But if we consider that Muhammad Atta and his buddies killed thousands of Americans and caused billions of dollars in economic losses on one Tuesday using nothing more than our freedoms and technology against us, one can only imagine what someone like Atta would do with a nuclear device. What would Islam’s mullahs do with tanks when millions of Muslim mothers and children are begging to do the same?

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration adopted fear-mongering as a political strategy. Instead of treating the attack as what it was — an atrocity committed by a fundamentally weak, though ruthless adversary — the administration portrayed America as a nation under threat from every direction.

Most Americans have now regained their balance. But the Republican base, which lapped up the administration’s rhetoric about the axis of evil and the war on terror, remains infected by the fear the Bushies stirred up — perhaps because fear of terrorists maps so easily into the base’s older fears, including fear of dark-skinned people in general.

Like many Democrats, Krugman confuses behavior with skin color. Three thousand Americans didn’t die on 9/11 because hijackers were brown. As for Krugman’s contempt for dark-skinned people in general, America’s preoccupation with race should have ended after Republican volunteers made war against Democrats to free their slaves. Indeed, it is the Democrats who don’t think Iraqis are civilized enough to appreciate freedom, while Republicans and soldiers of all colors risk their lives to give the Iraqi people a chance to be as free as the German, Japanese, and the progeny of slaves are today.

And the base is looking for a candidate who shares this fear.

Just to be clear, Al Qaeda is a real threat, and so is the Iranian nuclear program. But neither of these threats frightens me as much as fear itself — the unreasoning
fear that has taken over one of America’s two great political parties.

Here's what Krugman could have quoted from FDR’s Final Inaugural Address:

And so today, in this year of war, 1945, we have learned lessons—at a fearful cost—and we shall profit by them.

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away.

We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger.

We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.

We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that "The only way to have a friend is to be one."

We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from conviction.

The Almighty God has blessed our land in many ways. He has given our people stout hearts and strong arms with which to strike mighty blows for freedom and truth. He has given to our country a faith which has become the hope of all peoples in an anguished world.

So we pray to Him now for the vision to see our way clearly—to see the way that leads to a better life for ourselves and for all our fellow men—to the achievement of

His will to peace on earth.

A far cry from the new president of 1933.