Prager says 2 + 2 = 5 … I mean, Prager says Hamas victory confirms Bush Doctrine

In their lock-step promotion of Muslim democracy as the key to world salvation, today’s “conservatives” have been exhibiting more and more left-wing—by which I mean false and tortured—modes of thought, on the order of Communists arguing that all pigs are equal, except that some pigs are more equal than others. And as the democratization policy continues to disintegrate before their eyes, e.g. the overwhelming democratic victory of the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas, the democratists’ need to deny the the undeniable is making their arguments more tortured by the day. Thus the “conservative” blogosphere has been eagerly sending around Dennis Prager’s latest column, in which he asserts that the Hamas victory demonstrates the wisdom and necessity of the Bush Doctrine. I first saw the piece last night when Paul Nachman, an eminently rational fellow (meaning that unlike most people who follow politics today he adheres to the principle of non-contradiction), sent me this:

See if you can make sense of this paragraph …

That is one reason why the Bush doctrine—we need to spread democracy everywhere possible, including, or even especially, in the Arab world—is so valid. You cannot deal with any problem in life—from the most personal to the most macro—by engaging in wishful thinking and denying reality.

… in the context of the rest of this column by Dennis Prager.

So I read the paragraph. It seemed strange to me because it simply assumes that the Bush doctrine of spreading democracy in the Muslim world is the opposite of thinking wishfully and denying reality. Isn’t that the thing that has to be demonstrated, rather than merely asserted? Then I went and read the whole Prager article, and wrote back to Mr. Nachman:

Ok, I read the quote, then the column. The column doesn’t extenuate or make sense of the quote. In fact it makes it worse, since in the next paragraph he says that the Hamas election proves the LEFT wrong:

Thanks to this election, the mask has been removed. When given the opportunity to express themselves, most Arabs and many Muslims elsewhere support terror and seek the annihilation of Israel. That is why the Hamas victory is such a defeat for the world’s Left—university professors, news media, socialist parties, the European Union, the United Nations, “peace” activists, editorial writers, and all other apologists for the Palestinians.

It proves the left wrong because the left says that Muslims don’t want to destroy Israel, they just want the end of the occupation, blah blah. But in fact, Prager continues, the election shows that Muslims want to destroy Israel.

Ok, fine. The election proves the left wrong about the Palestinians. But how does the election prove that spreading democracy to Muslims is valid? Hasn’t the election proved that spreading democracy to Muslims leads to a Hamas government?

Or is Prager suggesting that the real purpose of spreading democracy is to smoke out the Muslims and demonstrate once and for all how destructive they are, so that we won’t have to deal with them any more and can treat them as enemies and make war on them or seal them off or let them go to hell?

But of course that’s not the purpose enunciated by the leader of the spread-democracy movement, President Bush. He’s spreading democracy not because he wants to expose and discredit Muslims as incurable terrorists, but because he thinks that democracy will make the Muslims peaceful and friendly.

So the Hamas election is at least as much a reproof to Bush as it is to the left. But in the fanatically polarized mindset of today’s “conservatives,” every issue must be seen as showing the left wrong and Bush right. A shattering blow to the whole Bush Doctrine is interpreted as a vindication of Bush and a repudiation of the left.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 31, 2006 05:00 PM | Send