You will think this is a shill job for Donald Trump. Sorry. I did that last June when he first announced for president. So where's my prize?
This time we're just using Trump to make a point that's about equal parts troubling and interesting.
During the last week in April, Donald Trump made a teleprompter address on foreign policy. Naturally there ensued both criticism and praise. If I'm wrong about this next claim, I'll be grateful. So far as I could track it, those commentators who like Trump liked the speech. And those who don't like Trump trashed the speech. But here was an even more sinister serpent slithering around in there. Some pundits who didn't like the speech should have liked it based on their previous stance on some of the issues Trump raised. And with very little digging it became apparent those cohorts were personal victims of Trump's early habit of carrying on like an insult comic.
America has found reason to question its tobacco industry and its pharmaceutical industry and others. And when thought leaders feel about a speech like they feel about the speaker, doubt falls upon our whole opinion industry!
It pains me viscerally to cite the one media superstar I admire above all, namely Charles Krauthammer. I revere his intellect and the way he deploys it in defense of freedom and quality conservatism. I've often said that Krauthammer's mind is so sharp and vital he shouldn't be allowed to think during takeoff and landing. Krauthammer unleashed an assault on the Trump address which hilariously concludes that Trump is really recommending America continue the disastrous policies of Obama-Clinton, but for different reasons. Trump, according to Krauthammer, says, "Continue the inexorable Obama-Clinton retreat, though for reasons of national self-interest rather than national self-doubt."
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I'm wondering if Krauthammer would have been so unsparingly unkind to Trump's address if Trump early on hadn't dismissed Krauthammer as "overrated." I must also wonder if Trump really knew much about Charles Krauthammer when he hurled that insult, or if it mattered. "Insult the Biggies!" seemed to be Trump's MO at that time, and Krauthammer was far from the only outstanding thinker taking that kind of theretofore-unheard-of mortar fire from a candidate.
Among the contradictions Krauthammer raises is Trump's aversion to waging war on the one hand and, on the other, shame-on-America for not doing more to help the Mideast Christians being murdered by Muslim extremists. It seems to me there's a lot of "broadband" between doing nothing to help Christians survive Islamic slaughter and actually going to war. And as a proud Krauthammer fan, I can promise you that Charles knows every molecule of that broadband better than anyone else alive! Charles could stand up and ad-lib essays that deserve to become books on the futile efforts of American Jews to have Roosevelt order the bombing of the rail links to Auschwitz, and on the utter failure of the Evian Conference to find sanctuary for German Jews elsewhere around the world. Charles knows what the Eisenhower administration did, short of war, to help the survivors of the Hungarian uprising in October 1956. Charles Krauthammer could continue, without notes, to talk about means short of war including, but not limited to, protected sanctuaries for threatened non-Muslims, no-fly zones, arming the Christian defenders and resettling threatened populations in their own part of the planet.
If Trump had been under the "discipline" he is today, he'd never have committed the foul act of insulting the brightest intellect in the American firmament. And, if Trump had not leveled such an insult, Krauthammer wouldn't have found nearly as much to dislike in Trump's speech!
I liked it. I think I understood what he was trying to say, even if parts of it were unskillfully crafted or unclear. I think Krauthammer understands Trump's meaning, too. The real story is why it took so long for a major candidate to bring us back to the obvious policy plateau America has fallen from.
We don't look for war. If war comes, we fight it to win. Western civilization and American values are really just fancy ways to say ordinary human decency. Too bad our "gallant Soviet allies" remained where their troops conquered. We restored the legitimate governments of the lands we liberated and asked only enough land to bury our dead. We should treat our allies noticeably better than our enemies. We need leadership smart enough to tell the difference.
We can all imagine Ronald Reagan saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Can anybody imagine Barack Obama saying, "Islamic extremists, leave these Christians alone"? Scrape away the diseased notion that other countries are doing us a favor by letting us station troops on their territory to defend them. Collective security does not mean "We secure, they collect!" The NATO members must pay their dues. And every potential aggressor must learn, "An Attack on One is an Attack on All!"
And let Reagan's words not be forgotten: "Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong."
Media wishing to interview Barry Farber, please contact [email protected].
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