Liberals have an extraordinary talent for denying reality. Viewed
within the context of private lives, such character flaws are often
amusing. The nutty professor, the mad scientist, the eccentric
billionaire; these and the less extreme Walter Mitty fantasies that
frequently reside within the human psyche have provided friends and
neighbors with countless hours of harmless entertainment.
Harmless fun, however, can quickly turn deadly serious. The drunk who
sincerely believes he can fly — and steps off the top of a building —
or into the driver’s seat of an automobile. The fraternity hazing that
takes an ugly and violent turn, leaving a young man or woman injured, or
worse, snuffing out a promising future, and a family’s hopes and dreams.
The child who watches thousands of hours of modern-day cops and robbers
on television, only to steal a gun and act out the drug lord’s fantasy
in his schoolyard, gunning down his classmates.
In each case, action is the key that unlocks the mind’s amusing
unreality and lets it step through the doorway into an unsuspecting
world. Hollywood liberals, especially, would disagree with the firearm
example. “Children,” they would reply contemptuously, “know perfectly
well the difference between television and real life.”
Pity us that the same cannot be said of their older brothers and
sisters in Washington. The Economist, a publication old enough to know
better, editorialized (16 May 1998) on India’s recent nuclear tests:
… whether going nuclear serves or harms India’s interests will
depend on the punishment imposed from abroad. If the world’s efforts to
limit nuclear proliferation are to have a chance of success, India needs
to pay a heavy price. …
The editorial went on to suggest punishments for India’s “flagrant
disregard of the world’s anti-testing norm. …” (Perhaps a “norm” is
what we have without a treaty?) Punishment would include cancellation of
President Clinton’s upcoming visit, and, of course, economic sanctions.
The editorial then closed by urging America’s Senate to ratify the
nuclear test-ban treaty.
When pressed, liberals always run for the unreality of paper security
agreements. How such agreements might bind nations like India, which has
never signed or supported a nuclear test-ban treaty, is never made
clear.
What makes the drunk at the party dangerous, and the liberal in
Washington deadly, is a more serious character flaw: an abiding belief
in one’s own infallibility, coupled with the necessity of forcing their
views on the rest of mankind, while preaching “tolerance.”
“Uncle Joe,” as liberals at the time were fond of calling Joseph
Stalin, Russia’s bloody dictator, understood them pretty well. He had
this to say about paper diplomatic agreements:
Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooden iron
(Peter’s Quotations, Bantam Books, 1977).
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury) is the temperature at which paper
agreements burn. America should thank India for injecting a dose of
reality into the mindset of Washington liberals.
