Editorial 4.11, January 2003, by Mark G. Simpson

A Change for the Right
© 2003 by Mark G. Simpson

When Deirdre offered me the "Personal Biases Expounded Here" slot in the special year-end double issue of The Ester Republic, my initial feeling that it was a dubious honor was soon outweighed by the opportunity that presented itself. "What a great way to end (and start) the year," I thought, "I can change the paradigm, elevate the debate, and focus thoughts on what really matters to Americans and Esteroids." At least for some, anyway.

As we all know, the contributions to this great idea of a rag are mostly soooooo September 10 that it is often difficult to read. It is like something from a temporal rift, or like seeing Carrot Top in a TV commercial, where you think, "What? Are you still here? Why?" It’s because much of Leftish (I think calling it "Liberal" does a disservice to the term) discourse has become so irrelevant in the current light of day. Their once fashionable Anti-Israeli, Pro-Arab stance has shown them to be supporters of dictatorial, religiously intolerant, misogynist regimes. (There are more freely elected Arabs serving in Israel's Knesset than are serving in legislative bodies in the rest of the Arab world combined. Of the twenty-two "active armed conflicts" currently under way around the world, twenty of them involve Wahhabist Muslims unable to get along with their neighbors.) The divisive bleeding-heart victimology often propagated by the Left has become hollow as the fall of the Twin Towers reminded us all of what victims really are. To their consternation and horror, the carefully hyphenated-Americans the Left has created over the last couple of decades are now, once again, suddenly, just Americans. Except for in these pages, (and perhaps The Nation and The New Republic), even the wounds caused by the most divisive election in the last century and a half have been healed. In a poll taken about two months after 9/11, nearly half of Gore voters rated themselves either somewhat or very relieved that George W. Bush was our president.

By the way, I’m still waiting to find out whether our president is a moronic clown prince, or the evil mastermind of a dark conspiracy to enrich himself and his oil buddies through enslaving the world’s underprivileged. The ardent Lefties found in these pages somehow bring themselves to argue both without batting an eye.

You see, political discourse in post 9/11 America can be summed up as follows: Conservatives, patiently waiting for common sense to break out, are like the helpful neighbor who looks over the back fence and, shaking his head bemusedly, says "Gee, Fred, that sure seems like a worthy goal, but wouldn’t it be better/easier/less expensive/more honest/fresher smelling if you did it this way?" Now picture a Lefty at the same fence, not looking over it, but rather with his back to it, shouting hysterically at the rest of the neighborhood, "Fred’s got his evil cabal going again! He’s shredding the Constitution and starving the children and laying waste to the land and....and.....and the sky is falling too!"

I hope that this use of the Republic’s banner space will be like a breath of fresh air. I promise that it will be completely free of worshipful references to infamous America haters like Chomsky and Said. You will not find even one not-so-subtle swipe at the current administration, as is so often inserted into seemingly unrelated stories, anecdotes and witty travelogues. There will be no gratuitous advice from EU-niks about how France or Germany or [insert your favorite anklebiting European nation here] really does it right, and how much better America would be if we would only emulate them.

Here then, shamelessly ripped off and altered from an article by a guy named Daniel Flynn, is something you would never expect to see in the pages of the Ester Republic.

Ten Reasons Why Thinking Americans Should Love Their Country

10. Entertainment - The movies the world watches, the television shows they tune into, and the music they listen to are, for the most part, produced in the United States. We export more than 25 times more movies and television shows than we consume from abroad. This makes America "the most culturally potent nation in the world." Even Saddam Hussein reportedly watches American-made movies.

9. Immigration - During the hundred years ending in the 1920s, a majority of the world's immigrants came to one country: the United States. Today, the U.S. takes in more immigrants than at any point in its history. Yet, the Left portrays America as a bastion of xenophobia and bigotry. Just as those who complain about "oppression" in the U.S. would never entertain the idea of living anywhere else, the people around the world we allegedly oppress flock to come here. This contradiction between popular leftist theory and real-world practice illustrates just how delusional the central tenets of leftist thought really are.

8. Technology - Nothing disproves the leftist mantra that "all cultures are equal" more than technology does. Americans have given the world motion pictures, the telephone, the television, the computer, the Internet, the airplane, the VCR, and a host of other machines and devices that have vastly improved the quality of life on the planet. Ironically, the terrorists who hate the U.S. give America a tacit endorsement every time they turn on a light, escape the heat through air conditioning, monitor their exploits on television or the Internet, or communicate via telephone.

7. Creating Wealth - America is the sun around which the world economy revolves. The typical creator of wealth in the world is an American. Foreigners benefit from buying better products from American companies and working better jobs manufacturing such products in their countries. Take America's $9 trillion economy out of the picture, and the economic well being of the rest of the world nose-dives.

6. Generosity - With great wealth comes great generosity. In 2000, Americans gave more than $200 billion in charity, dwarfing the amount donated elsewhere. Last year, our government distributed more than $20 billion to 130 countries. Though we usually ignore it, no one would blame us if we became angry with foreign beneficiaries who return our favor by burning U.S. flags and chanting "Death to America."

5. Human Achievement - Americans have stretched the bounds of the possible. The first transatlantic flight, putting a man on the moon, breaking the speed of sound, constructing the Hoover Dam, and building the Panama Canal serve as testimony to American courage and ingenuity. It wasn't Danes or Bolivians or Iranians or Koreans who achieved these feats. It was Americans. This is significant.

4. Enlightened Power - The Soviet Empire ruled over Eastern Europe. The Ottoman Empire claimed dominion over vast stretches of the Islamic world. The Empire of the Sun sought dominion over the Orient. The American Empire rules...only Americans. America is an historical curiosity. It is the most powerful country in the world, yet it eschews imperialism. Instead, it has used its military might to liberate. The world is a better place because America, and not some other country, is the sole superpower.

3. Medicine - Will Nigerian doctors make the blind see? Will Cambodians cure AIDS? Will Pakistanis eradicate cancer? The answer is probably not. Why? Because non-Westerners have had no discernable impact on modern medicine. This year, like forty-five of the last sixty, an American won a share of the Nobel Prize in the field of medicine. Americans cured polio and tuberculosis, developed vaccines for hepatitis B and yellow fever, pioneered modern chemotherapy, and produced the CAT scan and MRI. What's there to hate about that?

2. Democracy - Leftists harp that American democracy is tainted because not everyone possessed the right to vote at the Founding. Denial of the vote in the 18th century, however, was universal. What made America unique was not that some people could not vote, but that anybody could. More than 215 years after the Constitutional Convention, most people on the planet still do not have a right to vote. Every Arab country, more than three-fourths of African nations, and many of the most populous nations in the Orient still deny their citizens the right to choose their own leaders. Despite the continued rejection by many foreign leaders, the ideals of the American Founding became contagious. Our example served to topple regimes far from our shores. Pro-democracy activists don't quote the founding documents of Saudi Arabia or appropriate the cultural symbols of China. They cite passages from the Declaration of Independence and hoist replicas of the Statue of Liberty.

1. Freedom - America has shined as a beacon of freedom in an unfree world for more than two centuries. To this day, most people living outside our borders reside in countries where the private practice of journalism (like this newspaper) is illegal and where the state is the dominant banker. Americans can say anything they want, worship any god they choose, and associate with any motley crew around. Our legacy is not slave chains, Wounded Knee, and the murder of James Byrd, but American GIs liberating a Nazi death camp, an immigrant's first glance of Lady Liberty's torch, and Ronald Reagan exhorting the Soviets, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" If nothing else, America means freedom. What country in the history of the world boasts such an impressive record of bettering the lot of all of humanity? The answer is no country. "Americans need to face the truth about themselves," Jeanne Kirkpatrick once remarked, "no matter how pleasant it is."

Mark G. Simpson is a 24-year Ester resident. He is thinking of offering a 12-step program for recovering Leftists. He does not beat his cat.

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