Peaceniks Play War Games
When Diane and I were driving down the coast from Northern California after visiting with our first grandchild, we saw left (hyperbole) wingers of all ages leaping into sandboxes, splashing each other with unharnessed jubilation. Tears trailing down their cheeks, they celebrated for as long as they could windmill their (left) arms. Who could fault them? Smiling was a new experience for typically grim-faced left (hyperbole) wingers. National surveys consistently show that conservatives at all economic levels are happier with their lives — and more generous — than liberals at all economic levels. What the POWs and their ilk sadly lack is the faintest grasp of American or world history, of perspective, of moral values, of a rounded education. Three thousand Americans died in car accidents before I got to work this morning, and the sun wasn’t up yet. A warning: This short-attention-span crowd will nail you in both directions. If you cheer because 3,000 babies were born before I got to work this morning, they will criticize you for overpopulating a crowded world. In their limited universe, this passes for upper level philosophizing.
Happy Day for POWs
Every modern American war has yielded a huge spike in ginned-up membership in the POW community, Prisoners of Wusshood, another way to identify the mechanically operated anti-war crowd. Even though they are anti-religious, these boys and girls thank heaven every day they don’t have to think for a living. They aspired to be political robots, and their dreams are overflowing with fruition. Like windup dolls, when they hear “war” mentioned, they grab their nearest dirty ensemble and start marching. They don’t stop marching until they tire of chanting, “Peace now. War is not the answer.” On those rare occasions ordained for joy in a liberal’s constricted life, champagne and tears flow with such fervor that tsunami warnings were telegraphed into reliable liberal enclaves, the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, and the Times’s little brother and most exasperated imitator, the Los Angeles Times. Even the dirtiest POWs were not, of course, caught with their wash cloths down. They had been plotting this day with the same delicious lip-smackin’ expectation that you and I felt before the births of our first children. It would afford the exhausted anti-war crowd free worldwide publicity for their cause.
Numbers Don’t Lie, Do They?
“3,000 Deaths in Iraq, Countless Tears at Home,” read the main headline on Monday in The New York Times. This is a grown-up newspaper? So eager was America’s steadily skidding but still most prestigious daily newspaper to prance its anti-war message across the front page that the editors waved off their reporters covering the war in Iraq. This story was too big, too juicy for them to write. This was one for the home office to tackle with the viciousness of a gorilla pouncing on a kitty. In the same way you throw down a drink before your mother-in-law arrives, office-bound reporters Liz Alvarez and Andy Lehren pretended it was the 1 millionth American war death instead of the 3,000. Had to. Otherwise, how could they jack up themselves and the artificial stakes in their story. On Page 8 yesterday, to further dramatize its virulently anti-war stance that has cost it credibility, The New York Times introduced a 4-page layout featuring photos of the last 1,000 troops killed in Iraq. “U.S. MILITARY DEATHS IN IRAQ HIT 3,000 MARK,” blared the Los Angeles Times in capital letters. The San Francisco was more succinct, declaring, merely, “3,000.”
How Important Is Perspective?
The trouble with this generation of narcissistic left (hyperbole) wing journalists is that they failed to learn the value of history or perspective during their school days. They do not know history before they entered the first grade. In a fit of personally justifiable individual violence, they may clunk you over the head with the sheepskins they have accumulated. But they did not learn reading, writing and arithmetic. They learned “inconvenient truths.” They learned there is a new First Commandment, replacing the one about God. “Thou Shalt Learn All About the Environment, to the Exclusion of Traditional Subjects, Because in Hierarchical Terms, the Environment Is Primary in This Universe. We Are Its Servants.” Global warming may end the world by Sunday. We may run out of polar bears before the Dodger season starts. Ten or more of the abundant population of wealthy white middle-aged males in Nothern California may have to be killed off this winter to create breathing room for the unanticipated burgeoning increase in the number of polka-dotted owls.
Postscript
A tidy lesson for the present generation of under-educated left (hyperbole) wing journalists of America and their disciples:
Even under optimal conditions, war is frightfully bad. The good man has not been born who loves war. Thankfully,though, millions of present and late Americans have disagreed with the POWs. They believed that freedom and democracy were worth fighting for. Sensible, moral people realize that even though war is a fulltime tragedy, often it is necessary. Most of the peace-at-any-price POWs who hold platforms today are not educationally equipped to debate the subject. In view of their ignorance, perhaps the POWs will gain a modicum of perspective if they digest the following data:
- In the Vietnam War, 58,239 American troops were killed.
- In World War I, 37 million people were killed. America did not enter the war until the last year and a half, ending up with a whopping 115,660 casualties.
- In World War II,407,000 American troops were killed.
- In the Korean War, 54,229 Americans were killed.
- In the Civil War, 110,000 Union soldiers and 94,000 Confederate troops. For the left (hyperbole) wing journalists who studied the Joys of Environment in school instead of math, that is more than 200,000. In those days, our population was 31 million, one-tenth what it is today. This means that 200,000 fatalities between 1861 and ‘65 computes to 2 million.
If the POWs learn to master either the art of perspective or academic humility, the world will be richer, and they, to their surprise, will, too.
