May 06, 2004

A Slave Mentality

One thing bothers me about the Argus' otherwise great article on the events in Ajaria (Go Saakashvili!) and that's this small snippet:


Say what you will about the Bush administration. Tell me it's all about oil. Tell me it's a plot to substitute fine Georgian wine with Coke. Tell me Saakashvili, a US-trained lawyer, was groomed for this role by the CIA.

I don't care.

Bottom line: half a million people are free tonight that weren't free this morning. Why? The Bush administration, the State Department in particular, did a fantastic job of sticking to its values and convincing Russia to stand by our side to bring freedom to Ajaria.

If that's unilateralism and cynical manipulation in pursuit of profits, pass it on down, I want some more.

This is conceding the intellectual and moral high ground, letting them define the terms when they really have no right and no credibility in doing so. The left that smears the Bush administration with all sorts of libels including blood for oil, can lose everything in terms of bottom lines and factual analysis, but if we still grant them the right to define the terms and agree that even theoretically they're the moral force and freedom was won through cynical manipulation they will hang on and undermine all our victories.

Not only are the pessimistic, anti-Bush left wrong on the facts, they are wrong on the morals, the intellectual foundations, and are incredibly rotten from top to bottom in their own cynical manipulation of public discourse. And the decent left lets them get away with it.

This is the hangover dating back from the New Deal domination of national politics in the US. Not only were they in charge but they were the bright shining light of Camelot and the Great Society. The resisters weren't just wrong, they were disreputable, lesser men and women and such attitudes were internalized on both sides of the political spectrum. This is not quite a slave mentality on the part of the right but it's the next closest thing to one.

Posted by TMLutas at May 6, 2004 01:41 PM