McCain’s vicious smear of America

In his foreign policy speech, McCain said:

In such a world, where power of all kinds is more widely and evenly distributed, the United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone. We must be strong politically, economically, and militarily. But we must also lead by attracting others to our cause, by demonstrating once again the virtues of freedom and democracy, by defending the rules of international civilized society and by creating the new international institutions necessary to advance the peace and freedoms we cherish. Perhaps above all, leadership in today’s world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation. [Emphasis added.]

When did America ever lead in the world by power alone! It has never done this. What does McCain think America is, Wilhelmine Germany? Whether America’s policies were wise or foolish (or even wicked, as they were in the war against Serbia in 1999), it has always led through summoning other nations to a cause defined by what the leaders of the time saw as shared moral concerns and the common interests of civilization. The only time America has seemed to assert itself in terms of pure power has been under G.W. Bush, and that was more a matter of Bush’s obnoxious imperial rhetoric than of actual deeds. From the time America began to play a global role, when President Theodore Roosevelt helped negotiate a settlement between Russia and Japan in 1905, and then in its participation in the First World War, all of America’s leadership throughout the 20th century was as a civilized nation and as a member of civilized—if sometimes tragically wrong-headed—alliances. For McCain to suggest otherwise puts him in the same relationship to this country as Condoleezza “America has a birth defect” Rice. It puts him in the same class as John Kerry, whose idee fixe throughout his political life has been that any assertion of American national power (i.e. of American national existence) is “arrogant.” If one believes that America has been following such an immoral course, what is its moral opposite? Answer: refusal to take a lead on any international problem, refusal to defend America from attack and insult, Kerryesque consulation with and deference to the EU (and Mexico) on all issues, national self-disarming, and greater emphasis on “first responders” (firemen, disaster relief, medical care) than on national defense.

- end of initial entry -

Ray G. writes:

McCain’s speech in California last week was disturbing on many different fronts. It is chock full of loss of sovereignty, continental, hemispheric regional crap that will no doubt bring about a North American Union. Obsession with “free trade,” regional partnerships, open borders, etc.—truly planning to dissolve our nation as an independent, sovereign country.

Alan Levine writes:

Thought you went overboard on McCain’s remark on how we cannot rely on power alone; the remark, while sententious, seems to me to be harmless, or at most aimed at disassociating himself from the small number of maniacs who do think this way. (Some of the more cynical neocons or their fellow travelers like Hanson, I think, may have tendencies in that direction.)

I seem to recall Ike and JF Dulles saying similar things, although I cannot cite chapter and verse for that.

By the way, Wilhelminian Germans, other than the Kaiser when he was running off at the mouth, very often boasted of Germany’s superior culture and saw it as a component of national power.

LA replies:

I agree with you that I went overboard on … Wilhelminian Germany. I was thinking primarily of the Kaiser and his warlike hyper-nationalistic posture which brought on the war which permanently damaged Western civilization.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 31, 2008 02:21 AM | Send