A Divided World | A Divided Nation
It appears the entire world has an opinion, or a candidate, in the race for the White House. This is not by chance. A straightforward analysis of the world today reflects that the world is divided sharply, just as this nation is, hence the willingness of political leaders from around the world to state their beliefs about the proper man for the Oval Office. We are apt to pin the divide both at home and abroad on one issue. When we do so, we are wrong.
Foremost among the commonlly recognized divides is the Global War on Terror or the Iraqi campaign in particular. However, the greater divides have led to the GWOT divide, just as they’ve led to the divide of Israel and the Palestinians. The greater divides are more esoteric to some, and unmentionable to others. They include issues such as virtue or vice, excellence or mediocrity, man or mankind and individual liberty or societal equity. Do all people or nations who fall on one side or the other of any particular divide see things alike? Of course not, yet those who follow the general path of opposition to the war also tend to be of the opposition in each of the other areas.
The divided world arises from several issues. The most commonly discussed is, as noted above, the Global War on Terror or the removal of Saddam Hussein from Iraq and the ensuing effort to build a free and democratic Iraq. In addition we are divided by our very nature as a society from much of the world, this divide is between virtue and vice. Indeed, the U.S., a nation where most any vice can be found, stands as the beacon of virtue, while the defenders of the most terrible of vices stand against us. The world is also divided by its expectations for its people and their fulfillment. Here we see excellence against mediocrity. And of course, fueling each of these great divides, the churning battle between liberty and socialism.
While we might enjoy an exploration of how we came to this divide, our current attention must be the battle at hand. The fronts in the undeclared war of liberty and socialism are many, so many that we are each involved in not just one, the personal battle to elevate ourselves to the most noble of human characteristics, rather we are involved, knowingly or not, in a majority of them. Thankfully so, as our votes are a testament to our stand in this war.
In the United States, the most significant of the battles is taking place. It isn’t the most significant because the writer of this blog lives in the U.S., but rather because the U.S. is the spearhead of the defense of liberty, even while the war wages on within the U.S. President Bush, his supporters, and like-minded people around the world, are the leading proponents for the liberty of man over the limitations of societal whimsy. The President represents a belief that the individual determines his success or failure not the government or the collective view its citizens. He espouses entrepreneurial effort, a disciplined work ethic, self-reliance and a value system that honors rather than limits man’s capacity to succeed. The Senator from Massachusetts offers the more globally prevalent, socialist inspired view which has led to the decline of Western European influence, economic stagnation, moral ambivalence and stirred the more base nature of man to prominence and broad acceptance.
In Europe and the U.N., the war also has many fronts as the French, German and new Spanish governments represent the Islamophobic Socialist for Appeasement, while the recently liberated, and those holding any remnants of moral clarity remain staunchly supportive of the U.S. and of liberty. The much-maligned Coalition of the Willing is comprised not of traditional Allies of the U.S. rather it is comprised of the few who remain true to the cause of liberty, as many former allies were not so much advocates of liberty as they were self-serving tag-a-longs while the threat of the Soviet Union stood at their doorstep. What we’ve seen in recent months is that the much larger Coalition of the Coerced, Corrupt and Condemned will do or say anything to prevent the recognition of their money trial to terrorist, while at home they take measures to deny religious freedoms, constrain individual rights and maintain power within their governments. The French, builders of the Statue of Liberty, are expelling children who wear religious garments to school, and are unwilling to come to the defense of the people of Iraq fighting terrorist in their nation. The fear of Islamic terror has blinded them to their own hypocrisy, just as their greed blinded them to the moral injustices of their support for Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, Syria, and the Sudan. They have become default leaders of the Axis of Ambiguity, soon to be the Axis of the Irrelevant.
When we re-elect President Bush, we are sending a signal to the world that the U.S. is not about to cede our rightful place as leaders of the free world. The task afterwards will be to continue to develop new allies in the lands once occupied by our enemies, to stand resolute, when the U.N. will not, and to work to defend liberty at home and in our enemy’s backyard. The U.S. has a noble calling, let us answer it well.
