Both sides have always criticized one another, but it seems to me that it became a professional sport with the Clintons. Every criticism became a right-wing conspiracy. It's only escalated from there. I recently figured out that I am a neocon (I always assumed it was just another liberal insult for conservative until I actually heard the definition) with a more liberal social attitude. (I firmly believe in gay marriage and am pro-choice.) I'm frankly sick to death of the way liberals portray anyone who disagrees with them, especially those of us in "flyover land," as Neanderthals, racists, poorly educated rednecks or Christian fanatics. There are fanatics on both sides, and they all deserve condemnation, but liberals refuse to look in their own mirror. What Sean Hannity is doing is exactly the same as what Al Franken is doing. I think they're both nuts.
I'm not sure the war has been fought in the most effective manner, and I don't believe that our military took into account the outside forces that would stream in to undermine our efforts, but I really believe that there are larger issues here that we have to address sooner or later -- the threat to our Western style of life by a culture that doesn't believe in the equality of females, religion or class. The Iranians, Saudis and Syrians, among others, who are trying to destabilize Iraq, are fighting a larger war. They don't want a secular way of life established anywhere. This is a war between their culture and ours. They're just waiting for us to blink. Bin Laden referred to this in his speech concerning our debacle in Somalia. Whether or not we should have invaded, our success or failure will determine their next course of action and how hard they fight us elsewhere.
To me, those who want to believe that all people want peace, and if we just stay out of their business they will leave us alone, are naive. Classifying me as a racist for that belief just makes it easier to dismiss me without looking into why I believe what I do. I work for the military and I've been to Saudi Arabia. I know what it's like to not be allowed to drive or ride in the front seat of a car, to be forced to wear a long black robe and be concerned about being detained by the religious police. I've also flown in planes full of women who, once they leave Saudi air space, race to the bathroom to put on their Western-style clothes. Don't tell me that these women are truly happy to be subjugated.
We have a large Arab population here in Dearborn, Mich. Last year the newspapers had stories about the growing problem of honor killings here. Liberals seem to believe that all cultures are valid and should be celebrated. What's to celebrate about an honor killing? What's to celebrate about a guy being killed because an Arab girl chose to fall in love with him and not the Arab boy that she was promised to? How can we go from public lynching in the South to honor killings in the North, decrying one but not the other? This isn't happening in some far-off land, it's happening in our own backyards.
I'm worried that you and other powerful liberal voices will ignore the negative in order to avoid facing the harsh task of dealing with this growing threat to our way of life. I don't have a problem celebrating "Muslim History Month" or asking my children to learn about Arabic culture. I do have a problem with being told that any woman in this country should not be equal or that I have to sit idly by while liberal politicians decide which foreign ethnic groups deserve to be saved and which deserve to be sacrificed, based on what's politically expedient for them. People like me aren't happy to spill blood: we're looking to save our grandchildren from what we think is a real threat.
Victoria Pizzo Madden
You make a powerful statement about the very real crisis faced by the West. It is true that there is a peace-at-any-cost wing of the Democrat Party, but I do not belong to it. Some members of that wing still adhere to the 1960s hippie credo (descending from Jean-Jacques Rousseau) that people=good, society=evil, and (as the Beatles said) all you need is love.
I wrote a 700-page book ("Sexual Personae") disputing that notion and asserting, as did Nietzsche and Freud, that aggression is a natural impulse inextricably intertwined with the formation of human identity. Conflict and war are cyclic and inevitable, which is why a strong military will always be needed.
But I strongly disagree that the invasion of Iraq was an intelligent response to our security threat from terrorist cells dispersed around the globe. Nor has the resentment and hostility it has incited among Muslims everywhere helped make Western culture more appealing. If we are in a clash of civilizations, it's because fundamentalist religions are gaining in this era of glittering technology but empty materialism. The West is no longer defended by most of its intellectuals.
The transition from the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages remains my master paradigm for historical analysis. Greco-Roman humanism became so weakened by its own cosmopolitanism and hedonism that it collapsed in the face of fervid, fundamentalist Christianity, which is still thriving. Out of the Mideast at the dawn of medievalism would also come Islam, which spread through North Africa into Spain and nearly conquered Europe.
We're at that point again. I see this not as a Manichaean battle of good versus evil but as a Darwinian struggle in social evolution. Which culture will be more confident, vital and creative? There is certainly an inherent incompatibility between Islam and Western feminism in regard to women's rights. It remains to be seen whether liberals, deeply committed (as I am) to multiculturalism, will face this impasse forthrightly.
But do conservatives really see war as the ultimate solution? There are over a billion Muslims in the world. If the West is to win, it must be by art, culture and persuasion and not by the sword.
Do you love the way Dianne Feinstein sat as head of the Senate military appropriations committee and directed billions of dollars to her husband's companies? She makes Cheney and Halliburton look like pikers. You should check out the Pulitzer-quality exposé written by Peter Byrne in, of all places, the San Jose Metro, a left-wing liberal smut rag.
Pax,
BD
Thank you for forwarding this riveting article. As I have repeatedly said, I am a fan of Senator Feinstein and have contributed small sums to her campaigns. My interest in her began in 1978 with her cool poise under pressure when, as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, she had to announce to the horrified press corps that Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk had been assassinated in their offices by a disgruntled former supervisor. Feinstein's long-term conduct as mayor and senator remains for me the closest approximation we have yet had to that of an ideal woman president -- sober, centered, knowledgeable, deliberative, dignified and knife-edge shrewd.
While this exposé, if accurate, does raise disturbing questions about possible impropriety in Feinstein's committee work, I'm not sure I see a smoking gun. The article is superb, however, in the way that it chronicles the sickening interconnections of government business with big corporations in the United Stats and abroad. Like many other Democrats, I've been dismayed by the glaring contradiction between populist liberal ideology and the actual behavior of liberal politicians and journalists, who too often kowtow to power and nakedly pursue their own self-interest.
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