BY JAMES TARANTO
Monday, June 20, 2005 4:04 p.m.
Tied Up in Nots
The Austin American-Statesman reports on DemocracyFest 2005, "a three-day convention of progressive politics that is one part kvetch and two parts prep," which drew 900 Democratic activists to Texas' capital. "The festival aims to engage the grass roots in a nonelection year and to improve the electability--to borrow a commonly heard word in 2004--of the progressive wing of the party." One participant explains the strategy:
"We've got to establish the message of the Democratic Party: that we're not against America, that we're not immoral people," Sandra Brown, a committed Democrat from Galveston County, said.
"Democrats: We're not against America! We're not immoral!" Does this sound like a winning message?
A Sorry Senator
Sen. Dick Durbin, under fire for likening American servicemen to Nazis, issued a statement Friday:
I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood. I sincerely regret if what I said caused anyone to misunderstand my true feelings: our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration and total support.
Like Trent Lott 2 1/2 years ago, Durbin is trying to appease his critics by offering what looks vaguely like an apology but actually isn't. This is something that trips up politicians all the time. Nonpoliticians too--remember Peter Bart?
As we asked when we wrote about the Bart kerfuffle back in 2001, does anyone really believe Durbin's original statement didn't reflect his "true feelings"? If it didn't, why doesn't he apologize for it unconditionally?
There's been talk of an effort to censure Durbin, but The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol says a more appropriate outcome would be what happened to Lott--namely, the loss of his Senate leadership post.
Speaking of Lott, last Monday he took the Senate floor during a debate on a symbolic antilynching resolution--which passed on voice vote and had some 80 co-sponsors, Lott not among them--and gave a short speech (link in PDF).
"Mr. President, I would like to state my support for the nomination of Thomas B. Griffith to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit," Lott began--and he proceeded to say not a word about the antilynching resolution. This seems awfully crass given Lott's own troubled history on racial matters.
Is Durbin Aiding the Enemy?
Mark Steyn argues that Dick Durbin's slanders are worse than indecent, that they actually harm American interests:
If you close Gitmo tomorrow, the world's anti-Americans will look around and within 48 hours alight on something else for Gulag of the Week.
And this is where it's time to question Durbin's patriotism. As [Sen. Pat] Leahy implicitly acknowledges, Guantanamo is about "image" and "perception"--about how others see America. If this one small camp of a few hundred people has "drained the world's good will," whose fault is that?
The senator from Illinois' comparisons are as tired as they're grotesque. They add nothing useful to the debate. But around the planet, folks naturally figure that, if only 100 people out of nearly 300 million get to be senators, the position must be a big deal. Hence, headlines in the Arab world like "U.S. Senator Stands By Nazi Remark." That's al-Jazeera, where the senator from al-Inois is now a big hero--for slandering his own country, for confirming the lurid propaganda of his country's enemies. Yes, folks, American soldiers are Nazis and American prison camps are gulags: don't take our word for it, Senator Bigshot says so.
But there's a problem with this argument. Steyn rightly rejects the contention by Durbin, Leahy & Co. that by not coddling terrorists, America is inflaming the enemy. But if closing Guantanamo would not appease would-be terrorists, what makes Steyn think that they would be appeased if politicians refrained from lunatic exaggerations like Durbin's? (Indeed, one could argue that such exaggerations, if believed, may have a deterrent effect.)
Anti-Americanism is not a rational response to America's faults but a form of bigotry. Trying to appease it is futile. "If you are part of the wrong group, nothing you do is right anyway!" observes Gloria Steinem. "So you might as well do what you [obscenity deleted] well please, you know! I mean, there's no way of behaving in order to get approval. . . . If you do that, you've given the approver all the power."
"This isn't a Republican vs Democrat thing," Steyn writes; "it's about senior Democrats who are so over-invested in their hatred of a passing administration that they've signed on to the nuttiest slurs of the lunatic fringe." But that is a Republican vs. Democrat thing, is it not? Blogger "Grim" offers a much more optimistic take on all this:
The political sniping between Blue and Red, left and right, is not warfare. It is politics; and I think it is no nastier now than it was in the 1990s. As far as the GWOT [global war on terror] goes, then, here is the important fact: we are fighting it entirely in the enemy's society. Our own society is not changed by the war; if anything, society is reverting to pre-9/11 mores.
We're a bit less sanguine than this; it strikes us that there is a real danger of complacency or defeatism, the latter of which could prove self-fulfilling. (In the same essay, Grim makes a compelling case against defeatism vis-à-vis Iraq.) And "pre-9/11 mores" include the lack of vigilance that gave us 9/11. At the same time, let's not get carried away: Durbin's remarks are a lot less dangerous than they are offensive. |
