Posted by
JDComments on Friday, January 19, 2007 7:11:19 PM
In foreign policy, Liberals seek not safety nor respect nor national interests, but rather- to be liked!.
I am not a psychiatrist, but the almost primal urge by the Left in this country to use multiculturalism to turn foreigners into reflections of themselves, and then to seek the approval and love of these people seems like the same defective psychology exhibited by individuals who can only validate their existence by external affirmation.
Joshua Muravchik exhaustively
details this behavior throughout the career of Jimmy Carter, giving example after example of this failure of a president kowtowing to the world's despots as he proclaimed them kindred spirits and world leaders. Reading this piece is like entering the mind of a psychotic, and considering he was the most powerful man in the world for four years, is truly frightening.
More proof of this mindset is given in an
article in the Christian Science Monitor, where the Iranians' overwhelming love for America is hailed , proven by people dancing in buses [ I am not kidding] and the warning given that if we do anything to interfere in this country we endanger that, so we must be on our best behavior.
Even assuming the validity of this author's observations, and it's interesting to note at one point even in this lovefest he mentions the Iranians may
envy us, a feeling not equated with good relations historically, why do Liberals correlate likability with successful management of foreign affairs?
It's easy to laugh at Machiavelli's dictum about it being better to be feared than loved, but that is a brutally realistic assessment that has been demonstrated time and again in numerous countries and cultures.
Read
Making Friends with Hitler by Ian Kershaw and you will see how many of the English espoused these same beliefs about Nazi Germany right up until the panzers were in Paris. They ,too, saw the Germans as their compatriots, and believed that Hitler was possibly a great man, and certainly one they could work with.
We look back and wonder at the stupidity they demonstrated , and yet we are doing it again.
Even if the average Iranian is just like Aunt Sarah and Uncle Joe, their leader is a egomaniacal zealot with visions of Armageddon dancing in his head, and even if it causes them to
dislike us , we cannot sit idly by while he pursues his fanatical policies.
For me being loved by the foreign community couldn't mean less. My model is the Romans, who ruled their world with haughty dignity and condescension for hundreds of years. Their opponents may have hated them, but they feared and respected them too, and as a result they were able to impose a Pax Romana which we can only admire with our mouths open.
Being liked usually requires deferring to the wishes of others, demonstrating a vulnerability which can elicit an almost sympathetic reaction [ how I HATED that after 9/11!] , and subsuming your needs to those whose approval you are seeking , actions appropriate for the class clown maybe, but not the World's Superpower.