Where Are the True Liberals?

Yes, you can still read about the atrocities on the back pages and in sideline reporting in the mainstream media. How many of you know that in the last few days another Russian investigative reporter was found in her apartment elevator with a bullet to the head and another “just to be sure?” This woman had the audacity to write - from personal experience - of atrocities in Chechnya and other probing articles about a Russian government that moves back to the “good old days of Uncle Joe” further and further while we make nice with a robot front man in a country run by a KGB operative who is a true cold war believer.

China still executes political prisoners regularly and often without trial, but just this week another large group of lawyers in China had their licenses to practice law revoked because it was determined by the national leaders that they put too much time into sensitive cases and allowed access to the foreign media. Let’s not forget how uprisings in Chinese provinces get squashed with fatalities and injuries falling into an “undetermined” category. Internet access is government controlled with the primary assistance of U. S. service providers.

Women are stoned to death with regularity in countries who we now think are worthy of “regular dialogue” and inclusion in the larger economic world and Britain is actually considering legalizing the replacement of British Common Law with Sharia Law in communities where the Muslim population is significant.

But none of this is important anymore, for we are now a “global community” and whether the message comes from the political right or left, from our Democratic president or minority Republican leadership, it is “Internationalism Uber Alles” when it comes to both foreign and domestic policy and hundreds of thousands, no millions, can be slaughtered in Africa while a handful of U.N. troops look on with direct orders they are to do nothing and make no calls for reinforcements. It makes no difference that a Marine Expeditionary Force is 20 minutes away by helicopter where the finest trained and equipped troops in the world could have stopped the majority of the bloodshed almost instantly.

The “Liberals,” as a group and the PARTY OF THE PEOPLE who long claimed support and broader concern for humanitarian international issues, now transform those interests to international trade and the movement of money. Prioritizing international human rights and trade with only those who respect them are now anachronisms from the recent past. 400,000 Americans died from my father’s generation creating the government that would lead the world by example. Another 100,000 from mine did so in Korea and Vietnam trying to implement that policy with very mixed results, but we were promised that diplomacy would replace the military approach and a more sophisticated foreign policy would do a much better job and do it without regular loss of life in the process.

INTERNATIONAL MONEY EXCHANGE is the idol now worshiped from all political and government quarters and for the most part the idealistic young activists and true believers of the postwar years have surrendered to the notion that top down power with little true democratic participation and fraudulent excuses for elections will suffice. It is now okay to move the goal posts anytime it avoids tough decisions and rationalizing the terrorist behavior of governments we do business with replaces a philosophy of self-sufficiency and self-determination first and foremost - - and trade and foreign exchange only with those whose actions match their propaganda.

We have been here before. The “Economic Miracle” of Germany 1932-36 got Hitler on the front page of Time, not once but twice. The New York Times worshiped Stalin’s “Five Year Plans” and one of their top journalists got the Pulitzer Prize for his work defending the man who is in a race with Mao for the record of how many millions were slaughtered or starved for not following their party line.

We have come full circle. Do we need to be a world financial center so badly that we will compromise our ability to produce what we need and instead export most of those needs to parts of the world that will use those dollars only to further exactly what we do not stand for? American toys and T-shirts build the Chinese Navy. Our imports fund South American dictators. International oil revenue keeps radical Muslim jihad schools funded worldwide.

Sure, we cannot be the world’s policeman, but we sure can stop the race to fund all the political and social evils we know exist with the earnings of the very same liberal Americans who claimed their philosophy would be the one that would never allow the atrocities of the past a chance at reincarnation.

Jim Foster