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Whitaker's Current Articles May 3, 2003
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Fun Quote:
Q: Who gives out Iraqi credit cards?
A: The Dinars Club
Compromising
With Insanity is Insanity
Conservatives and sometimes liberals like to say that America's
foreign policy should be dictated by America's national interests.
But the first thing you notice is that America is the only country
in the world that pays little or no attention to its own
self-interest.
South Korea hates our guts. The only time we get any response
from South Korea is when we threaten to pull our 35,000 troops out.
We get nothing out of keeping our troops there. In fact,
as long as those troops are there South Korea, Japan and China will
look on North Korea as our problem.
Our interest dictates that we make South Korea and Japan pay plenty
for our troops being there or we pull them out.
Making them pay to keep us there would be a better strategy, too.
Japan, South Korea and China can have an effect on North Korea, but
they don't bother. American troops are in South Korea, so it's
our problem. That could be fatal attitude.
So why, in the name of sanity, would a rational country never even
seriously consider pulling out troops out?
Well, the problem here is that liberals would pull all troops out of
everywhere when they threaten Communist countries like North Korea.
Meanwhile, however much they mouth the words "national self-interest",
respectable conservatives
have to compromise with liberals to stay respectable. So
Bush ends up begging
the liberals to LET us keep troops in South Korea South
Korea sees how to blackmail us, so Bush ends up
begging them to please let us keep our troops there
because they know we are desperate.
National self-interest would the best possible policy for a person
who was genuinely interest in our self-interest. But we
cannot consider that because we must compromise with liberals.
In other words our foreign policy represents a compromise between
American self-interest and a compromise with liberals who hate America.
They really do, though no respectable conservative
would say "liberals hate America." Conservatives say
that liberals "Blame
America first." If someone said "Blame Jews first", don't you
think conservatives would say they were anti-Semitic?
But to be a respectable conservative you have to insist that
liberals are patriotic.
Meanwhile, back on earth, liberals are anti-American and anti-white..
So we have a compromise between those who hate us and those who
claim to be in favor of our national self-interest, as any rational
country is. So we get a sick foreign policy.
This is what is called compromise. This is what is called
listening to both sides. This is what is considered
moderate and adult.
Meanwhile back in the real world giving liberals half of the
national dialogue is exactly like negotiating with terrorists.
An Example of the Above
Sometimes dealing with crazy people makes me feel a little crazy.
So let me outline the present situation for you:
1) America has serious economic problems;
2) Everybody agrees that a reduction in the price of oil would be
as good for the American economy as any tax cut;
3) What keeps the price of oil high is a cartel called OPEC,
which everyone agrees is pure blackmail;
4) We have just liberated Iraq from a tyranny at a high cost in
money and a cost in lives;
5) We can't have a tax cut because we have to pay for that war,
which we claim was salvation for Iraq; and
6) To rebuild Iraq at our own expense. Meanwhile
7) Iraq has the second largest oil reserves on earth.
Isn't there a very obvious solution here?
The reason we don't do what a rational country would do is
because liberals accuse us of "fighting the war for oil." We
have to compromise with liberals, which means they may forgive us for the Iraq war if the whole burden of that war in lives and money
falls on America and we continue to allow OPEC blackmail.
Compromising with insanity is insanity.
Wouldn't Everybody Hate Us if We Told Liberals
to go to Hell?
If you say that moderation is stupid you will
be told that you are not being Wise and Practical. You
will be told that "Politics is the art of the possible" and that
compromise is what politics is all about. You will be told
that while amateurs like you demand a move to the right, all the
experts agree that victory lies in the middle of the road.
Well, the third biggest publisher on earth
published one of my books on politics. That is about the only
qualification you need to be a political expert, and I have a lot
more qualifications than that, a whole lifetime's worth.
Let me tell you once again that moderation does
not work politically. In the real Congress, there are very,
very few people who are really elected to that body who are not on
the right or on the left. In presidential elections in
our generation, every moderate Republican lost and Reagan won twice.
The only elected moderate was Bush, Senior, and he was elected as
Reagan's successor and defeated when he ran on his own in 1992.
You will see an example of the reason that
moderation loses if you look at the two articles above.
Let me ask you a political question:
Would Bush get more votes if he continues to
worry about liberals who would accuse him of "fighting the war for
oil," or would he win if he said "We liberated the Iraqis, but they
should pay at the least the monetary cost of their own liberation by
helping us undercut OPEC.
In fact, I wouldn't even insist they break OPEC
completely. Australia and Britain produce their own oil, so I
think OPEC should be left free to blackmail Europe. Britain
and Australia produce their own oil and we deserve a big break on
our oil imports.
Would Bush get more votes if he made sure Iraq
got OPEC prices from Americans for its oil or if would he do
better if he used Iraq to break OPEC and give us an economic boom
and tax cuts?
A moderate is not in the middle of any real
political road. A moderate's politics comes from
compromising between conservative politicians and the liberal elite.
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