April 09, 2007
Item for my list...
I have a lonnng list of reasons why I think George W. Bush will be considered one of the great presidents. (No, I don't agree with everything he does or says, nor do I think he doesn't make mistakes.) Here's a small but significant item to add to the list.
....President Bush has played an unsung role in combating worldwide anti-Semitism and in seeking to stem the surge of anger that has swept the world in the last decade.
The White House required East European nations that sought to join NATO to offer concrete proposals to combat anti-Semitism in their countries. "I have to give a lot of credit to the Bush administration," said Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of international Jewish affairs at the American Jewish Committee. "A major decision in NATO enlargement has been dealing with Jewish issues. The U.S. has repeatedly raised these issues."...(Thanks to Orrin)
It's a Christian thing. Certain people tend to refer to Bush and Rice (and Rumsfeld and Cheney) as Neo-cons. They are not Neo-cons (and none of those people who fling the term around carelessly are able or willing to define it. Try them. And what's worse, they don't care, They don't care that they are telling lies.)
Bush and Rice are best termed "Theo-cons." As am I. And WE are running the circus. (Cue famous quote by Alexander Haig.) After 9/11, we used the Neo-cons, for obvious reasons I've pointed out before. The link, by the way, is to a quote from a very good pre-derangement piece by Andrew Sullivan. Worth reading; it stands up well after 4 years. In fact, I'll just quote a bit now---but read it all...
....When George W. Bush looked around him in the ashes of the World Trade Center for an analysis of what had gone wrong and a comprehensive strategy to put it right, the neoconservatives were the only credible advocates who had an actual plan. They weren't a cabal. And they weren't natural Bush allies. Men like the Pentagon's Richard Perle or Douglas Feith or Paul Wolfowitz or the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer and Bob Kagan, or the New Republic's Lawrence Kaplan or the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol: all these had been bitter foes of Bush's father, brutal critics of his foreign policy. The Washington Post and New Republic had endorsed Al Gore for president. The Weekly Standard had backed John McCain in the primaries. The reason they rallied behind Bush in the wake of 9/11 was simply because he was the president. And the reason Bush reached out to these theorists was because history had proved them right and disaster had proved them prescient....Posted by John Weidner at April 9, 2007 09:37 AM
Now I remember why I used to like Sullivan.
Posted by: lyle at April 9, 2007 06:21 PMI have a grand unified theory about Andrew. Everything he rails against republicans and this president about goes back to what Fr. Neuhaus described cleverly as Sullivan's 'pole star'.
The 'Christianist' slur is obviously linked to Sullivan's obsession with his own libido, the Christianists remind him of his sin when they oppose same sex marriage for religious reasons and so he believes they must be driven from the public square. Looking at the language Sullivan uses when he displays his fixation on torture allegedly committed by US forces (but no one else, apparently) shows that he accuses the US, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield of treating these enemy combatants in much the same terms he uses when he describes the administration's treatment of gays -- that they are being dehumanized and deprived of the rights due them as human beings.
Andrew Sullivan has never been much for self-reflection or he would realize this himself.
Andrew Sullivan is a really sad case.
I agree with you about George Bush.
Posted by: Mrs. Peperium at April 10, 2007 11:13 AMOne quibble: I am not sure that "surge of anger" is the best phrase to describe the current spate of Jew hatred. For one thing, the word "anger" is used in situations where being outraged about something is justified. For the anti-Semitism fad, I prefer the descriptor "flood of peevish insanity."
Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 10, 2007 04:17 PM Christianity is convincing intellectually--we enjoy reading Lewis, Chesterton, Belloc but what about World War 2. The Europe product of 2000 years of Christianity indulges in an orgy of killing (in name of race, not religion) and what do the Christians do?. What does the Church do, guided as it claims by Holy Spirit?. Should not the Church be above suspicion?. How many Christian martyrs in Western Europe?.
And even now one gets the feeling that the Christian writers try to avoid the whole topic. Instead the writers
indulge in decrying the present evils but these evils are rooted in past. The Church has consistently made light of nationalist claims ie not taking the encroachment seriously as they deserved. I am afraid that the Third World Churches (of which we are all very proud) may fall to the same malady.
We wait for a new Chesterton to explain the WW2 and its consequences. People decry Vatican 2 but was not Vatican already hollow by 1939?
PS There is a passage in Chesterton somewhere that the Jewish race is headed for a new pogrom (written about 1920). Why would a Catholic writer say this?. I have not read any discussion of this throw-away Chesterton quote.
Bisaal,
I'm not sure exactly what you are asking here, so it's hard to answer, but you are touching on some of the most interesting questions of our time.
Most Christians would say that the two World Wars stem from the decline of Christian faith in Europe, a process that can be traced back for centuries. (WHY this happened is another huge question.) The 19th Century philosopher Nietzsche predicted that the loss of faith by the ruling classes of Europe would result in terrible catastrophes in the 20th Century—starting around 1915!
I myself would say that WWII is the product of the false religion of Socialism, which flourished amoung people who had lost their faith, but still had the habit of believing in something bigger than themselves. Nowadays the habit has died out, and so there are few real socialists or leftists.
What did the Church do? It did a lot, in its quiet way, most of which it gets no credit for. The Vatican certainly was not "hollow," but, then as now, the Pope has no divisions. Just moral suasion. There were, by the way more Christian martyrs in the 20th Century than in all previous centuries combined.
I don't know that Chesterton quote, but it sounds like a good prediction. There was a LOT of anti-Semitism in his time, and he was a smart guy. "Why would a Catholic writer say this?" Uh, maybe because he thought it was true? What's your point?
Belloc, by the way, predicted we would be having trouble with Islam.
Posted by: John Weidner at April 11, 2007 10:25 AM
