Presidential Election 2004 Wrapup

I have tried talking with several Kerry supporters over the last few months and often come away wondering what motivates those people to be so different in their outlook.

The War on Terror
A former soldier rails at length about issues that seemed important to him from his bad experiences as a young soldier in the Middle East, but what I really hear is the typical complaining of an immature and inexperienced young man who found himself temporarily in unfamiliar and hostile surroundings without the proper historical perspective to understand it all.A public administrator who laments 1,000 American deaths in the toppling and rebuilding of two terror-supporting nations, but is curiously unmoved by the tens of thousands of victims found in Saddam’s mass graves.
"We didn’t bring any of them back to life with our deaths."
"No, but we prevented many thousands more."
"You don’t know that."
"And you don’t know that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow."

Some people seem completely unwilling to consider the fact that terrorism is a them-or-us proposition. They somehow believe you can have a productive negotiation with people who pump up their children and young men to murder us with promises of heaven as a whore house.
Some argue that there are past transgressions by the USA that could justify the 9/11 attacks on us, and that we have no right to retaliate. More generally, some think that terrorism can be legitimate and justified. The photos of the doomed, pleading innocents stranded at the windows of the WTC should be enough to silence that kind of stupidity.

Some continue to think that France and Germany would be important in the ground war against terror, despite our having over 100,000 of our troops in their countries to defend them (against what, I might ask, their moribund economies?); and despite their saying they will not help, no
matter who is the President of the USA.

Some ignore the complicity of the UN and nations like France, Russia, and Germany in the Oil-for-Food scandal that turns out to be the real reason for those counties' objections to our deposing Saddam. The thousands of mass graves and horrible mass tortures at Saddam’s command don’t matter to the corrupt UN.

Fabulist Accusations Against a Sitting President in Wartime
Some think it is perfectly alright for the media to manufacture falsehoods against a sitting president in wartime, as CBS did; and that it’s perfectly alright for their candidates to undermine America’s footing in this largely psychological War on Terror by falsely misrepresenting our purpose and success in this war – all with the fawning complicity of the MSM.

Some like to say the President lied about WMD, even though the UN, England, France, and Russia still say Saddam had WMD, even though Saddam acted like he had them, even though every intelligence agency in the world knew he had them.

Some say the President lied about there being an imminent threat and about the War on Terror being very short; ignoring the plain fact that he has said exactly the opposite and that he even explained his rationale for war in light of the threat being not yet imminent and the likelihood of the war being very, very long.

A retired school teacher raves on in the boorish, adolescent fashion of Michael Moore, only able to repeat the propagandist nonsense from media and union demagogues. I never hear a straight fact, accurate portrayal of historical reality, or honest assessment of policy from her. Just one misinformed rant after another.

Divisive Issues
Some think that when a small, but highly vocal coterie tries to undo the basic concept of marriage -- the natural building block of all societies, which has survived unchanged since pre-history -- then anyone who opposes them is creating a wedge issue that divides America, as if it wasn't this special-interest coterie that is driving the wedge it created for itself.

And so it is on many issues. Some call the President a divider, who has split the country and the world in two, as if the person who identifies a cancer and has the courage to fight it is somehow also responsible for the cancer. Yes, it’s natural to want to avoid the ugly truth; but sometimes it’s deadly.

Meanwhile, in typical hypocritical irony, the democrats start spreading rumors around college campuses that there will be a military draft, scare blacks with charges of voter intimidation, and claim that Republicans are depriving wheelchair users of the ability to walk. Then, to underscore their divisiveness, the losing leftists now threaten to secede from the union --a childishly impractical thing, of course; and so telling of who the real practitioners of divisiveness are.

Leftovers From 2000
Some still lament that Bush stole the 2000 election with the help of the SCOTUS, ignoring the fact that all the SCOTUS did was tell the Florida Supreme Court that they could not rewrite Florida’s election laws. Bush haters also happily ignore the fact that every recount of the Florida votes, even the recount done by the MSM, put Bush ahead. Granted, Bush’s rare oddity of an Electoral College win, despite having a second place finish in overall votes, is a bitter pill; but this is a Republic, and the states are sovereign entities. The Constitutional separation of the electorate from the electoral college was specifically intended to prevent the large states from overwhelming the smaller ones. So Bush was a legitimate President. He just didn’t have a majority in 2000; but then, neither did Clinton, who had only a plurality in each of the 3-way races he won.

Of course, if we all want to agree that Bush was selected, not elected, to his first term, then he could run for President again in 2008, since the Constitution states that a person can be elected twice! Not that I really believe that train of thought, but it’s useful for giving democrats the heebie jeebies.

Haters and Phonies
Speaking of mental illness, it seems a large number of "Prozac Progressives" (a term coined by Duane Speight, http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/responses.html?article_id=110005890 ) are sick with hate, and are seeking professional help for their post-election depression -- a depression brought on by having mostly hatred of Bush and little positive to vote for in Kerry. They have fallen into their own passionate negativity. Hatred really does eat people up.

The savage venom of Bush hatred generally makes it impossible to have an intelligent conversation with these people. Of course, just as Republican hate-Clinton tactics did nothing to defeat Clinton, hate-Bush tactics also fail to convince. This election seems to indicate that Democrats may have wanted to get even for what Republicans did to Clinton more than to win this election. Unfortunately, it was American prestige and the Office of The President that were damaged in both cases, more than Bush or Clinton. The demonization has to stop. Ideas really do matter, and too few of them got any attention in this election.

Predictably, now that Democrats have slipped even further from control of national government, Democrats are all asking themselves their "ultimate question" – "how can we change what we appear to be, so that we are seen as moral on social issues and strong on defense, without actually changing from our superior, cultured, self-righteous, benevolent, libertine, military-hating selves?" Naturally, they are unaware of their intellectual arrogance, somehow it masks itself from them -- once again proving the old saying that "they don't know what they don't know." It never occurs to them that their efforts to reinvent their image cannot work. The unwashed majority effortlessly sees them for what they are -- delusional intellocrats parading in the invisible cloth of naked ambition, while unable to see it themselves – or, in red state terms, the Democrats are phonies.

Post-Election -- Contempt Unmasked
Post-election analyses by liberal and leftist writers drip with arrogance, condescension, name-calling, and outright dismay. Having already accepted as dogma that Bush supporters must be either stupid or co-conspirators in the "big lie" (whatever that might be), no effort is ever made to see the root reasons for the ascendancy of conservative thought in America, and the liberal elite are unwilling to see that conservative views have value.

Others arrogantly dismiss Bush supporters as the bible thumping, gun toting issue of unwashed peasant stock, as if the straightforward truths of an uncomplicated life have little value compared to the polished relativism of the cultured elite. The angriest democrats seem to be those who have made politics their god, raving incoherently about the brainwashed voters who believe in a higher God than politics. It never occurs to them that by grouping religious believers and conservatives in general as bigots and imbeciles, the democrats divulge their own elitist bigotry. They are openly contemptuous toward conservatives, dismissive of conservative ideas, and intolerant of any fair analyses of the issues. In short, they are true bigots.

Liberalism, Socialism and the failed Democrat Platform
As for stupid, I wonder why the sneering Kerry backers never notice that modern conservatism makes a lot more practical sense than any of the failed and failing attempts at leftist governance throughout history. Prosperity requires growth; but the convergence of socialism, high taxes, and bigger government – wherever it happens -- is anti-growth and anti-freedom.

Many point to the ills of both capitalism and rampant consumerism; but rather than look for natural solutions within capitalism, they embrace radical socialist schemes such as ruinous employee entitlements, stiff restraints on enterprise, and draconian environmental policies. While it is easy to agree that workers should have good living standards and economic progress should not dehumanize mankind or destroy the environment, these things can only be achieved through economic growth along with technological progress that together permit more and more discretionary income to be spent on enriching our lives and keeping our environment clean.

Granted, Enrons happen, but the perpetrators are punished and new rules are added to stop new abuses. More important is the fact that even dishonest and greedy capitalists often fuel overall growth and prosperity. There are exceptions, of course, as in the case of commodity and currency speculators like Soros and Lay; but they are exceptions, whereas dishonest and bloated governments always decline in corruption, with few winners.

It never occurs to liberals and leftists that their constant social tinkering never surpasses the simple reality of natural law. A well-governed nation requires a well-bred populace with strong families and strong ethical convictions. On the other hand, a nation of libertines is ungovernable, except by a police state, which is a feature of the most socialist governments. Obviously, you have to intimidate and terrorize people to get them to accept the daily reality of socialism. That may be one reason why the leftists are such apologists for terrorism.

But there’s more. It seems to me that those who voted for Kerry have fallen prey to the siren’s call of victimhood and all it entails. They want to have their cake (big government) and eat it (prosperity), too, even though old Europe is proving this to be impossible . But, they are selfish and want someone else to do the heavy lifting by expanding government to make it a complete nanny state. They plan to pay for this by taxing "only the rich", secretly defined as the upper half of the population – a demography calculated to assure that the majority of the voters will pay no taxes, so the beneficiaries of government largess will have all the power and none of the responsibility. It’s government as perpetual-motion-machine, a fool’s bargain and completely unstable.

In addition, many Kerry supporters share a spinelessness that comes from years of creeping moral relativism. One needs no backbone if one stands for nothing. I once asked a Massachusetts liberal how she could put up with Ted Kennedy as her Senator, given his long history of womanizing and worse. Her answer was simply, "Because he’s one of us." For leftists, that’s enough; and that says everything about the low level of their moral courage.

Too Close, Actually
It amazes me that the election had Kerry so close, given how unlikable he is, his history of dishonest self-aggrandizement, his laziness as a senator, and his outright acts of treason that very likely led to a dishonorable discharge that the MSM allowed him to keep secret. Indeed, some analysts allow that the left-leaning MSM was worth a 5 -15 point advantage to Kerry. By suppressing good news and always accentuating the bad news, real and manufactured, against Republicans, the MSM kept Kerry close to Bush, even at the end by manipulating the exit polls to give Kerry voters a psychological lift. Given these facts, it isn’t so amazing that the vote was close, after all.

So, I will not lambaste the manipulated and uninformed electorate for being stupid and unworthy. That’s the liberal angle these days, now that they’ve been widely beaten again. Rather, I am just glad that, despite having been brainwashed for years by liberal public schools and the left-leaning MSM, the electorate still managed to get it mostly right.

It strikes me as terribly worrisome, though, that the amalgamation of selfish victims groups, special interest groups, America haters, appeasers, pacifists, angry leftists, truly weird street demonstrators, and public sector unions -- also known as the core of the Democrat party -- managed to make the election so close. I am only happy that it wasn't as close as last time.

Nevertheless, conservatives must not rest. We have more work to do in effectively countering the MSM and in wresting the schools away from leftists.