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Patriot Games
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http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Y2RjNzdlMjczZmU0MDdiZDVhMzY0ZmFiZTRlZDJjZDc
April 19, 2008
God and Guns
The only healthy way to fly.
By Mark Steyn
Our lesson today comes from the songwriter Frank Loesser: "Praise The Lord
And Pass The Ammunition."
Or as Barack Obama and his San Francisco pals would put it: God and guns.
Loesser got the phrase from Howell Forgy, a naval chaplain at Pearl Harbor,
who walked the decks of the New Orleans under Japanese bombardment exhorting
his comrades. When the line came to Loesser's ears, he turned it into a big
hit song of the Second World War:
Praise the Lord and swing into position
Can't afford to sit around a-wishin'.
- which some folks sang as "Can't afford to be a politician." Indeed.
Senator Obama's remarks about poor dumb bitter rural losers "clinging to"
guns and God certainly testify to the instinctive snobbery of a big segment
of the political class. But we shouldn't let it go by merely deploring
coastal condescension toward the knuckledraggers. No, what Michelle Malkin
calls Crackerquiddick (quite rightly - it's more than just another dreary
"-gate") is not just snobbish nor even merely wrongheaded. It's an attack on
two of the critical advantages the U.S. holds over most of the rest of the
western world. In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God'n'guns.
The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they
embraced Big Government as the new religion.
How's that working out? Compared to America, France and Germany have been
more or less economically stagnant for the last quarter-century, living
permanently with unemployment rates significantly higher than the U.S.
Has it made them any less "bitter," as Obama characterizes those
Pennsylvanian crackers? No. In my book America Alone, just out in paperback
and available in all good bookstores - you'll find it in Borders propping up
the wonky rear leg of the display table for the smash new CD Michelle Obama
And The San Francisco Macchiato Chorus Sing "I Pinned My Pink Slip To The
Gun Rack Of My Pick-Up", "My Dog Done Died, My Wife Jus' Left Me, And
Michael Dukakis Is Strangely Reluctant To Run Again", Plus "I Swung By The
Economic Development Zone Business Park But The Only Two Occupied Rental
Units Were Both Evangelical Churches" And Other Embittered Appalachian
Favorites .
Where was I? Oh, yes. In my book America Alone, I note a global survey on
optimism: 61 per cent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 per
cent of the French, 15 per cent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my
experience, Americans are the least "bitter" people in the developed world.
Secular gun-free big-government Europe doesn't seem to have done anything
for people's happiness. Consider by way of example the words of Keith Reade.
He's not an Obama speechwriter, he's a writer for the London Daily Mirror.
And the day after the 2004 presidential election he expressed his
frustration in an alarmingly Obamaesque way:
Were I a Kerry voter, though, I'd feel deep anger, not only at them
returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all
into the same category of moronic muppets. The self-righteous, gun-totin',
military-lovin', sister-marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin',
foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave
America the biggest d in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us
and make their land "free and strong."
Well, that's certainly why I supported Bush, but I'm not sure it entirely
accounts for the other 62,039,073 incontinent rednecks. Mr Reade, though,
does usefully enumerate some of the distinctive features that separate
America from the rest of the west. "Self-righteous"? If you want a public
culture that reeks of indestructible faith in its own righteousness, try
Europe - especially when they're talking about America: If you disagree with
Eutopian wisdom, you must be an idiot. Obama and far too many Democrats have
bought into this delusion, most thoroughly distilled in Thomas Frank's book
What's The Matter With Kansas?, whose argument is that heartland voters are
too dumb (i.e., "moronic muppets") to vote for their own best interests.
Europeans did "vote for their own best interests" - i.e., cradle-to-grave
welfare, 35 hour work-weeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc - and as a
result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic
stagnation, and declining human capital that's left them so demographically
beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they're being
remorselessly Islamized with every passing day. We should thank God (if you'll
forgive the expression) that America's loser gun-nuts don't share the same
sophisticated rational calculation of "their best interests" as Thomas
Frank, Obama, too many Democrats and the European political establishment.
As for "gun-totin'," large numbers of Americans tote guns because they're
assertive, self-reliant citizens, not docile subjects of a permanent
governing class. The Second Amendment is philosophically consistent with the
First Amendment, for which I've become more grateful since the Canadian
Islamic Congress decided to sue me for "hate speech" up north. Both
amendments embody the American view that liberty is not the gift of the
state, and its defense cannot be outsourced exclusively to the government.
I think a healthy society needs both God and guns: it benefits from a belief
in some kind of higher purpose to life on earth, and it requires a
self-reliant citizenry. If you lack either of those twin props, you wind up
with today's Europe - a present-tense Eutopia mired in fatalism. A while
back, I was struck by the words of Oscar van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay
humanist (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool). Reflecting on the
Continent's accelerating Islamification, he concluded that the jig was up
for the Europe he loved, but what could he do? "I am not a warrior, but who
is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only
good at enjoying it."
Sorry, it doesn't work like that. If you don't understand that there are
times when you'll have to fight for it, you won't enjoy it for long. That's
what a lot of Keith Reade's laundry list - "gun-totin'," "military-lovin'" -
boils down to. As for "gay-loathin,'" it's Oscar van den Boogaard's famously
tolerant Amsterdam where gay-bashing is resurgent: the editor of the
American gay paper the Washington Blade got beaten up in the streets on his
last visit to the Netherlands.
God and guns. Maybe one day a viable society will find a magic cure-all that
can do without both, but Big Government isn't it. And even complacent
liberal Democrats ought to be able to cast an eye across the ocean and see
that. But then he did give the speech in San Francisco, a city
demographically declining at a rate that qualifies it for EU membership.
When it comes to parochial simpletons, you don't need to go to Kansas.
April 19, 2008
God and Guns
The only healthy way to fly.
By Mark Steyn
Our lesson today comes from the songwriter Frank Loesser: "Praise The Lord
And Pass The Ammunition."
Or as Barack Obama and his San Francisco pals would put it: God and guns.
Loesser got the phrase from Howell Forgy, a naval chaplain at Pearl Harbor,
who walked the decks of the New Orleans under Japanese bombardment exhorting
his comrades. When the line came to Loesser's ears, he turned it into a big
hit song of the Second World War:
Praise the Lord and swing into position
Can't afford to sit around a-wishin'.
- which some folks sang as "Can't afford to be a politician." Indeed.
Senator Obama's remarks about poor dumb bitter rural losers "clinging to"
guns and God certainly testify to the instinctive snobbery of a big segment
of the political class. But we shouldn't let it go by merely deploring
coastal condescension toward the knuckledraggers. No, what Michelle Malkin
calls Crackerquiddick (quite rightly - it's more than just another dreary
"-gate") is not just snobbish nor even merely wrongheaded. It's an attack on
two of the critical advantages the U.S. holds over most of the rest of the
western world. In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God'n'guns.
The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they
embraced Big Government as the new religion.
How's that working out? Compared to America, France and Germany have been
more or less economically stagnant for the last quarter-century, living
permanently with unemployment rates significantly higher than the U.S.
Has it made them any less "bitter," as Obama characterizes those
Pennsylvanian crackers? No. In my book America Alone, just out in paperback
and available in all good bookstores - you'll find it in Borders propping up
the wonky rear leg of the display table for the smash new CD Michelle Obama
And The San Francisco Macchiato Chorus Sing "I Pinned My Pink Slip To The
Gun Rack Of My Pick-Up", "My Dog Done Died, My Wife Jus' Left Me, And
Michael Dukakis Is Strangely Reluctant To Run Again", Plus "I Swung By The
Economic Development Zone Business Park But The Only Two Occupied Rental
Units Were Both Evangelical Churches" And Other Embittered Appalachian
Favorites .
Where was I? Oh, yes. In my book America Alone, I note a global survey on
optimism: 61 per cent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 per
cent of the French, 15 per cent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my
experience, Americans are the least "bitter" people in the developed world.
Secular gun-free big-government Europe doesn't seem to have done anything
for people's happiness. Consider by way of example the words of Keith Reade.
He's not an Obama speechwriter, he's a writer for the London Daily Mirror.
And the day after the 2004 presidential election he expressed his
frustration in an alarmingly Obamaesque way:
Were I a Kerry voter, though, I'd feel deep anger, not only at them
returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all
into the same category of moronic muppets. The self-righteous, gun-totin',
military-lovin', sister-marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin',
foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave
America the biggest d in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us
and make their land "free and strong."
Well, that's certainly why I supported Bush, but I'm not sure it entirely
accounts for the other 62,039,073 incontinent rednecks. Mr Reade, though,
does usefully enumerate some of the distinctive features that separate
America from the rest of the west. "Self-righteous"? If you want a public
culture that reeks of indestructible faith in its own righteousness, try
Europe - especially when they're talking about America: If you disagree with
Eutopian wisdom, you must be an idiot. Obama and far too many Democrats have
bought into this delusion, most thoroughly distilled in Thomas Frank's book
What's The Matter With Kansas?, whose argument is that heartland voters are
too dumb (i.e., "moronic muppets") to vote for their own best interests.
Europeans did "vote for their own best interests" - i.e., cradle-to-grave
welfare, 35 hour work-weeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc - and as a
result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic
stagnation, and declining human capital that's left them so demographically
beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they're being
remorselessly Islamized with every passing day. We should thank God (if you'll
forgive the expression) that America's loser gun-nuts don't share the same
sophisticated rational calculation of "their best interests" as Thomas
Frank, Obama, too many Democrats and the European political establishment.
As for "gun-totin'," large numbers of Americans tote guns because they're
assertive, self-reliant citizens, not docile subjects of a permanent
governing class. The Second Amendment is philosophically consistent with the
First Amendment, for which I've become more grateful since the Canadian
Islamic Congress decided to sue me for "hate speech" up north. Both
amendments embody the American view that liberty is not the gift of the
state, and its defense cannot be outsourced exclusively to the government.
I think a healthy society needs both God and guns: it benefits from a belief
in some kind of higher purpose to life on earth, and it requires a
self-reliant citizenry. If you lack either of those twin props, you wind up
with today's Europe - a present-tense Eutopia mired in fatalism. A while
back, I was struck by the words of Oscar van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay
humanist (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool). Reflecting on the
Continent's accelerating Islamification, he concluded that the jig was up
for the Europe he loved, but what could he do? "I am not a warrior, but who
is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only
good at enjoying it."
Sorry, it doesn't work like that. If you don't understand that there are
times when you'll have to fight for it, you won't enjoy it for long. That's
what a lot of Keith Reade's laundry list - "gun-totin'," "military-lovin'" -
boils down to. As for "gay-loathin,'" it's Oscar van den Boogaard's famously
tolerant Amsterdam where gay-bashing is resurgent: the editor of the
American gay paper the Washington Blade got beaten up in the streets on his
last visit to the Netherlands.
God and guns. Maybe one day a viable society will find a magic cure-all that
can do without both, but Big Government isn't it. And even complacent
liberal Democrats ought to be able to cast an eye across the ocean and see
that. But then he did give the speech in San Francisco, a city
demographically declining at a rate that qualifies it for EU membership.
When it comes to parochial simpletons, you don't need to go to Kansas.