It’s not often you see an opponent sufficiently obliging to stand before the cameras and say things like, “Empathize with thine enemies. Feel their pain. See them as human beings. Understand their motives. That’s the new, revolutionary, progressive pathway to peace.”
It’s not often you see a candidate who has a major party’s nomination in her purse take a Bangalore torpedo, insert it un-lubricated into the large intestine of her candidacy, and then stand back and smilingly behold the destruction of that candidacy. But Hillary Clinton has done exactly that via her early December speech at Georgetown University.
There are several reasons you haven’t heard much about all this. One reason is Hillary is incapable of turning major media against her. Another reason is many of us whose ever-ready instincts are poised to pounce on self-destruction of this magnitude had a hard time believing our ears. Thomas Lifson, the intellectually formidable, literarily gifted and humanitarian skipper of the ever-more-popular AmericanThinker.com, gently theorized that Hillary’s medical problems earlier this year had, perhaps, affected her mind. There’s a nasty way to say that. Lifson charitably avoided it. I, however, can impute no other explanation to this cosmic a blunder.
In our North Carolina high school, the emblematic perfect girlfriend was a blond, blue-eyed nymphomaniac whose daddy owned a liquor store. This self-targeting by Hillary Clinton is certainly the political hit-man’s equivalent of that kind of attractiveness. Where do we start? I’ll offer up the protein of empathy. Adolf Hitler, still sizzling from a truly harsh and unjust Versailles Treaty ending World War I, saw his talented Germanic countrymen penned up in too little territory (“Lebensraum!“) while less adept peoples to the east had so much more than they needed. The Jewish issue, at first, was just to keep passions high. Hitler wanted them out before he wanted them exterminated. Hitler also saw a hot issue in the ingathering of all the German-speaking people – Austrians and those in the western, Sudetenland, part of a post-World-War-I confection called Czechoslovakia.
Does any of this “empathy” call for one fewer bomb unloaded upon Nazi Germany? Not by my reckoning.
The Japanese were another “talented” people strung out across four major islands with far too few resources. And across just a little bit of water Japan cast covetous eyes upon China, Korea, Manchuria and all of Asia while America kept slapping Japan around with sanctions and denying Japan her “rightful eminence.”
Does any of that lessen the criminality of Japan’s aggression, or cause you to agree to settle it all over conference tables, which we were in the act of doing as Pearl Harbor was being bombed? The answer from here is definitely not, and that includes Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Hillary Clinton spent eight years as first lady and almost made it to the White House herself. She served in the Senate and spent four years as secretary of state. How could anybody (especially with that many cubic miles of “Watch your language!” experience) possibly – as President Nixon famously said – “give them a sword”? How could she possibly offer forth a concept as calculated to incense as our being so intellectually and philosophically kind to our enemies? You’re screaming at me now that she didn’t counsel “kindness” to our enemies. Look, Pal, in politics it’s not what is; it’s what your opponents can make of what is. And what Hillary’s opponents can make of this, as others have observed, is a campaign commercial showing the prelude to an ISIS beheading while Hillary’s plaintive wail implores us to be more “understanding” of our enemies!
One aspect of American exceptionalism frequently overlooked is the preponderance of America’s landing on the “right,” the moral side. We can argue the morality of World War I, but not World War II. Nor Korea. Nor America’s trying to prevent totalitarian takeover of Vietnam as the British did in Malaysia, not to mention America’s blocking Soviet takeover during the Cold War.
I’m quitting here, for reasons of compassion, humanitarianism and dread of the sight of blood. At this point I feel like the officer, gaunt and brusque, who signs the execution orders but makes sure he can get to a cocktail lounge before the firing squad does its work. Sorry. I can’t bear to envision what happens when Thomas Lifson and Amercan Thinker’s contributing writers (like my friend Stu Tarlowe, who back in 2008 had a “Run, Hillary, Run!” sticker on his front bumper!) win acclaim from the vast majority of Americans of both parties and all demographics.
You see, Hillary, when your adversaries usher Iran into nuclear capability, reconstitute the Soviet Union and take Iraqi cities Americans died for and gave back, while America lies inert with a stupid smile on its face, they’ve used “Smart-Power” on you! Maybe a better message is “Look over thine enemy’s shoulder and copy his notes!”
Pity Hillary’s allies, reduced to explaining that Hillary’s only mistake was in choice of words, and that what was supposed to have been said was benign, non-controversial and uplifting.
Yeah, yeah, sure, uh-huh. And there are a lot of husbands and fathers out there who merely wanted to have a good time, but didn’t know how to phrase the question.
Media wishing to interview Barry Farber, please contact [email protected].
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