The Democratic Party leadership's reflexive anti-Americanism

I'm a conservative. In particular, I'm a hawk on the Global War on Terror, but I'm also a hawk on foreign policy and national security matters more generally. That's obvious to anyone who's even skimmed the surface of this blog, and I make no bones about it. If you're a sympathizer with terrorists and you've been offended by my rhetoric's insensitivity to your point of view, my response is: Great! I only wish that my rhetoric had the power to give you bleeding stomach ulcers.

But my blog's target audience includes people who haven't fully made up their minds; and those who disagree with me but are still capable of changing their minds in whole or part; and those who will continue to disagree with me even after further reflection, including consideration of my arguments and opinions here. Indeed, I'm genuinely delighted when folks from any of those categories leave civil, thoughtful comments here. And in my personal life, wholly apart from this blog, many of my family members and best friends have opinions that are to the left of my own. I enjoy a respectful debate with them all.

That's why I've been pondering for the last several days a comment left here by a real-life friend of mine, a lawyer with whom I used to practice and with whom I still correspond and play poker regularly. As part of an essay comparing Barack Obama to John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, I'd included the following sentence: "Kennedy, at least, was a war veteran, and he came from a Democratic Party that hadn't yet started reflexively doubting, then hating and apologizing for, all things American." To that characterization, my friend left the following pithy question in the comments (emphasis mine): "Do you really believe that the Democrats hate all things American?"

My friend was tweaking me very politely but effectively, knowing that he'd touch a nerve with his question just as I, probably, had touched a nerve in him with my observation: My friend is a life-long Democrat, and yet I would never characterize him as "hating all things American." To the contrary, despite our different political affiliations and outlooks, he and I share an overwhelming number of common values; and even when we differ, I respect his views as being entirely genuine, and as usually having some rational, explicable connections to what he sincerely perceives as the long-term interests of our country (even when I disagree about the validity of those connections). Thus, my reply to him in those comments read:

I don't think all Democrats uniformly hate all things American, no. And I didn't say that. I do think that the current Democratic Party's leadership, though, may be fairly described as self-hating Americans who reflexively blame America first (at least as long as it's led by a Republican president, and never mind whether they voted to give him authority to act overseas or not).

But even now, some days later, I'm not satisfied with that response. Hence this post, as "revised and extended remarks."

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I read in the WaPo this morning that later today (Saturday), President Bush "will veto legislation meant to ban the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics and will argue that the agency needs to use tougher methods than the U.S. military to wrest information from terrorism suspects." Dubya's veto is expected to re-ignite "the Washington debate over the proper limits of the U.S. interrogation policies and whether the CIA has engaged in torture by subjecting prisoners to severe tactics." The WaPo report goes on to explain that

[t]he legislation would have limited the CIA to using 19 less-aggressive tactics outlined in a U.S. Army field manual on interrogations. Besides ruling out waterboarding, that restriction would effectively ban temperature extremes, extended forced standing and other harsh methods that the CIA used on al-Qaeda prisoners after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

I haven't blogged very much about the "torture" debate here because I consider the overwhelming majority of that debate, as it's been conducted elsewhere in the mainstream media and blogosphere, to have been a colossal waste of time and energy. For their efforts to be useful, all participants in that debate must employ some common definitions of the most relevant terms, beginning with the word "torture" — and they haven't, and apparently can't. Look at the WaPo lede above, which blithely describes "temperature extremes" and "forced standing" as "harsh interrogation tactics." I must conclude that by the standards of the Democratic Party leadership, I was the frequent victim of state-sponsored torture as a child.

After all, when we misbehaved badly enough to prompt our teachers to cancel the pre-lunch recess period, my second-grade class at North Elementary School in Lamesa, Texas, had to stand silently, sometimes in sub-freezing winds and blowing sand, for a quarter-hour or more in line outside the cafeteria doors before we were permitted inside to eat lunch. Other days, we stood in more than 100°F blazing sunshine. No wonder I bear so many psychic scars — oh, please, someone contact Amnesty International on my behalf! Someone get me ... a lawyer!

(A very few of my readers may miss the snark in the previous paragraph. To re-assure you: Being denied recess was genuine punishment, but many of us, including me, routinely spent much longer walking to and from school in those same freezing, sand-filled winds or under that same blazing sun; and we all would have been perfectly pleased to be outside in them, playing Red Rover or whatever during recess, had we not misbehaved. This was part of a very normal childhood growing up in the Texas panhandle in the early 1960s, a time and place in which the Ward Cleaver family would have fit in just fine.)

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So here we are in America as of March 2008, in which a Democratic-led Congress eagerly passes legislation protecting captured terrorists from shivers, sweats, and sore feet — even at the cost of American lives that may well be lost as a direct consequence. Simultaneously, that same Democratic-led Congress cannot bestir itself to pass an extension of previously passed legislation that would have permitted American intelligence agencies to continue to conduct warrantless investigation of foreigners' electronic communications with other foreigners, with both senders and receivers in foreign lands. They would have you believe that the Founding Fathers' intentions were to establish and enshrine the protections of the Fourth Amendment for every digital packet of every foreigner's message to another foreigner that might wander through a fiber-optic pipeline running through American space. Again, American lives may well be lost as a direct consequence. A majority of senate Democrats recognize this, and has tacitly admitted it through their votes to re-authorize. But in Nancy Pelosi's House of Representatives, the higher value is to ensure the continued ability of a tiny number of tort lawyers to continue to terrorize communications companies through reckless, ridiculous litigation.

The Democratic Party leadership's actions and inactions here are both excellent examples of what I originally characterized as "reflexively doubting, then hating and apologizing for, all things American." Their starting and nearly irrefutable presumption is that the Administration and the governmental agencies, military and non-, that we voters have entrusted with our national security are corrupt, incompetent, and abusive — indeed, they presume that our government, and not the terrorists, are America's real enemy. The dangers those American professionals have been charged to protect us from, Congress systematically downplays or ignores. Not only the president from an opposing party, but nonpolitical career professionals and even dissenters from within the Democratic Party (e.g., Joe Lieberman), must be demonized by the Democratic Party leadership and its sycophants in the mainstream media as "abusers of civil rights." And one need not wander far downstream from that leadership to find allied minions and advocates who are eager to apply the word "fascist" with absolutely straight (albeit hate-filled) faces.

My original formulation was indeed overbroad. Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, and Obama et al. don't doubt, hate, and apologize for all things American. Notwithstanding Sen. Obama's resistance to lapel pins, they aren't out burning American flags, for instance. But neither are they condemning those who do so at their anti-BusHitler rallies. All too often, and indeed with increasing frequency as they approach the 2008 election, the Democratic Party leaders are acting reflexively, and irrationally, and indefensibly. Some small fringe of the American public at the very extreme edge of the Angry Left would agree with them that it's better for Congress to prevent terrorist heat rashes and bunions than exploded American bodies. But do not tell me that that's representative of America — not even of most of those who would happily and proudly self-identify as "Democrats."

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The Obama campaign in particular demonstrates, and even exceeds, these same tendencies and attitudes. It's not just in Sen. Obama's votes, which have earned him recognition as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. It's very explicit: In Barack Obama's and his wife's campaign rhetoric, America as it actually is and has been during their own remarkably privileged lifetimes, they find unworthy of pride. Only America as it can become — one Nation, under Obama — can be worth being proud of.

The Democratic Party is on the brink of nominating Sen. Obama as their presidential candidate. Is it unfair for me, then, to impute his and his wife's beliefs to the members of their party generally?

Good, solid, and intelligent members of the Democratic Party — like my commenting friend — have a reasonably clear choice, I think. Each must ask himself or herself: Do I continue to support my party leaders with my votes and my membership in their party? Or do I abandon them and instead speak out, and vote, in ways that would actually advance American interests instead of undercutting them? I won't doubt my Democratic friends' patriotism if they continue to stand by their party's leaders. But I will continue to doubt the wisdom and even the rationality of those party leaders, and to use this blog to express those doubts as best as I can manage.