Why do they hate us? Who gives a damn?
Can’t think of a better way to acknowledge the Fourth right now than by excerpting this typically excellent article from Hitch, on polls and popularity:
A country that attempted to be in everybody’s good books would be quite paralyzed. The last time everybody said they liked the United States (or said that they said they liked the United States) was just after Sept. 11, when the nation was panicked and traumatized and trying to count its dead. Well, no thanks. This is too high a price to be paid for being popular.
Measurements of opinion are in any event static, and they assume passivity, and a consensus upon knowledge. If you had asked people in 2001 whether they thought it was likely that Afghans and Iraqis would be holding free elections in a couple of years (not that any polling group ever did even suggest such a question), I doubt you would have got a very good response. And how, in any case, could people have known enough to know what they were supposedly talking about?
If I was to interrupt this article every few sentences, asking you whether or not I was making a good impression on you, I hope and believe that you would think I was a servile jerk. Yet this is what our politicians are doing in every speech (most notably in the absurd recent debate on “flag-burning”) and this is apparently what we hire Karen Hughes to do in our public diplomacy.
Faced with a complete beast like the late Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been trying to kill us for several years, millions of Americans appear to believe that he only appeared in Iraq because in some way we made him upset. Well, even if this was true — which it is not — it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. (What would you say to a policy that made him contented, instead?).
Thus, for a Fourth of July message, I would suggest less masochism, more confidence on the American street, and less nervous reliance on paper majorities discovered by paper organizations.
Damn the torpedos, full steam ahead, and happy Fourth to all of you.
Update! Every good liberal knows that Thomas Jefferson once famously said “Treason is the highest form of patriotism.” Or was it “Liberalism is the highest form of patriotism”? Or maybe “Hating Halliburton and Shrubco with every last corpuscle and fiber of your atrophied vegan body is the highest form of patriotism”? Ah, well; I just can’t keep up with the Left’s ever-changing feelings toward the Founders, who as we know were all racist genocidal rich oppressors — when they weren’t opining on the crucial importance of working to undermine the government they had sacrificed so much to establish, that is. All that notwithstanding, Ace has come up with a wonderful way to practically demonstrate patriotic sentiment, at least when it comes to the Treasonous Left and their propaganda organs:
Scenes From the New Resistance: Liveblogging the protest at the AQIS’ (Al Qaeda Intelligence Service, ie, the NYT – ed) DC office.
Stop protesting, guys, and start following them around. Get pictures of whom they meet with.
Amen. Report on the reporters, watch the self-appointed “watchers.” Let’s see how “courageous” they are when their treason has to be committed in front of witnesses.
Updated update! Quite possibly the creepiest holiday tribute I’ve ever seen. But a damned fine Photoshop job. Then again, it would be, wouldn’t it?
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of the Taliban. Meantime the jihad has taken Somalia. Confidence in these events perhaps requires an accompanying shot of one's favorite.