Saturday, June 07, 2003
QUOTE OF THE DAY
" A DECLINE IN COURAGE
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party and of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society....And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional bursts of boldness and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and countries that lack support...But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists. "
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Written as part of his Harvard commencement address in 1978, Solzhenitsyn described what today could rightly be termed the " spirit of the elites " that still exists today in the EU, the Social Democratic parties, France as a whole, in the State Department, among the transnational NGO's, the Georgetown sophisticates and other intellectuals who excoriate Bush for daring to fight back against Islamo-fascism, terrorism and rogue state dictatorships. These experts urged appeasement of the Soviets when they were strong and tried to rescue the evil empire when it was weak ( and now try to rewrite history with self-congratulatory articles in liberal newsmagazines to argue that Reagan had absolutely nothing to do with the Soviet collapse). In the U.S. they inhabit both major political parties but read the same journals, graduate from the same schools and offer the same self-referential opinions that prescribe, for any foreign policy crisis, little better than a world-weary muddling through where ultimate solutions are impossible.
These folks are out of power now and they are hopping mad about it. The vitriol hurled by the Paul Krugmans and the Robert Scheer's at Bush and Tony Blair is a measure of their desperation to regain the reins of power to resume their declinist, transnationalist and anti-democratic agenda. ¶ 10:27 AM
" A DECLINE IN COURAGE
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party and of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society....And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional bursts of boldness and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and countries that lack support...But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists. "
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Written as part of his Harvard commencement address in 1978, Solzhenitsyn described what today could rightly be termed the " spirit of the elites " that still exists today in the EU, the Social Democratic parties, France as a whole, in the State Department, among the transnational NGO's, the Georgetown sophisticates and other intellectuals who excoriate Bush for daring to fight back against Islamo-fascism, terrorism and rogue state dictatorships. These experts urged appeasement of the Soviets when they were strong and tried to rescue the evil empire when it was weak ( and now try to rewrite history with self-congratulatory articles in liberal newsmagazines to argue that Reagan had absolutely nothing to do with the Soviet collapse). In the U.S. they inhabit both major political parties but read the same journals, graduate from the same schools and offer the same self-referential opinions that prescribe, for any foreign policy crisis, little better than a world-weary muddling through where ultimate solutions are impossible.
These folks are out of power now and they are hopping mad about it. The vitriol hurled by the Paul Krugmans and the Robert Scheer's at Bush and Tony Blair is a measure of their desperation to regain the reins of power to resume their declinist, transnationalist and anti-democratic agenda. ¶ 10:27 AM
