Thursday, August 21, 2008

Sheer Lunancy From the Left

Again, Robert Sheer, who once worked for the leftist LA Times, provides us with insight into the liberal mind. I commented on his 4th of July editorial, and he continues with his rants against sane, conservative polices with his usual irrational understanding of reality.

In his latest op-ed of Aug 20th, he spews forth more of his liberal talking points. His premiss for arguments are not based on facts. Let's look at some:

There you have it — in a capsule, the McCain campaign for president, an irrational melange of patriotic swagger and blindness to reality that is proving disturbingly successful with uninformed voters. How else to explain the many millions of Americans who tell pollsters they prefer a continuation of Republican rule when so many of them are losing their homes to foreclosure and the nation is bankrupted by out-of-control military spending.

The economy is in a downward spiral, the national debt is at an all-time high, the dollar is an international disgrace, and inflation in July had the steepest rise in 27 years, driven by oil prices fivefold higher than when President Bush invaded the nation with the world's second-largest petroleum reserves.

First of all, Sheer hates anything doing with patriotism, so he uses this quite frequently in his criticism of Republicans, and Americans in general, in this case "patriotic swagger and blindness." On July 4th, it was "patriotic bluster and beer swilling."

To us "uninformed voters," of course, being a liberal elitist, he doesn't believe we can choose for ourselves. That's one of the problems with America today -- we don't let the liberal elite run everything, you know?

He then leads you to believe that "so many" Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure, because you know, those damned neocons are cheating them out of their homes, you know. He doesn't say that, but you know that's what he means. But the fact is that these people are losing their homes because they made bad decisions. The government, many years ago, allowed lenders to lend to just about anybody -- didn't matter if they could repay -- so here we are with the consequences.

Then our national debt is due to out-of-control military spending. Oh? Really? Is it out of control? Or is it at the level we need to protect ourselves, unlike the attacks we suffered in the 1990s and on Sept 11, 2001? What's out of control is social spending, which has gone up much faster than military spending. But welfare programs, income redistribution, in fact, socialism is O.K.

Of course, the price of oil is Bush's fault. And since this is Bush's fault, our economy, inflation, etc is also Bush's fault. This is something I'm really tired of hearing. I just don't understand this Bush hatred, when any honest thinking human knows that all of our problems aren't the fault of one man.

Later in his editorial, while admitting to the victory in Iraq, Sheer has to disqualify it by bringing up our experience in Vietnam and that "victory is not all it's cracked up to be." Really? I guess victories, like World War II aren't important either. Or any of the other "victories" our military has managed to accomplish.

He reminds us of how Nixon rejected the neoconservative addiction to the cold war by his policy of detente with the Soviets and Chinese. Yet, Nixon really accomplished very little. The threat from these two communist regimes remained just a real as ever, and even more so to smaller countries, such as Afghanistan. Only when Reagan used neoconservative policies in the 1980s did he finally end the cold war.

And of course, our efforts against Islamic fundamentalists is "absurdly misdirected." We shouldn't spend more for national defense, oh no. This won't make us stronger. "Vote for McCain, and forget about funding to solve the Social Security, Medicare and subprime mortgage disasters or anything else that truly would make America stronger," he concludes.

Certainly, Mr. Sheer. Medicare, subprime mortgages and Social Security will certainly beat back the terrorists and other assorted bad guys from attacking our citizens, our properties and our freedoms.

This is dangerous thinking. Americans need to wake up and fight for the freedoms we have, because there are too many people willing -- like Mr. Sheer -- to give them away, or others who want to take them away.

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