British believe Bush is more dangerous than Kim Jong-il

mymechanic

2006-11-20 16:07:09 UTC

It's Not Xenophobia, It's Xenonausea

by Mac Johnson
Posted Mar 13, 2006

For a political junkie, the Dubai ports debacle has been a bit like the
movie "Pulp Fiction"-just one freaky story inside another, unfolding at a
rapid pace and leading to an unexpected ending that made no darn sense and
yet was really quite satisfying emotionally. I give it two thumbs way up.

Unfortunately for the President, he played the part of "Marcellus Wallace"
in "Port Fiction." He talked tough at the start of the whole thing, but
really took it hard in the end. (Bada bing!) And along the way we got to see
Chuck Schumer support racial profiling, Hillary Clinton claim to be
concerned about national security, Lawrence Kudlow play the (Arab) race
card, Fred Barnes complain that some conservatives were too cantankerous,
and Rush Limbaugh congratulate his own audience for defeating him. Now that's
a movie that should have got an Oscar!

Two of the subplots really stood out in my mind though. One was how eagerly
the disciples of "free" trade took to attacking the conservative base as a
bunch of xenophobic ignoramuses storming the harmless castle Globalstein
with torches and pitchforks. That sort of animosity couldn't be over just
one relatively minor business deal for Dubai. I'm sensing that the Beltway
Boys and the Wall Street Wonks have been entertaining some animosity against
Main Street and the Heartland for some time.

Whatever their motivation, they came across as nothing less than petty and
absurd. The restructuring of the world economy and the American legal
landscape by the proponents of free trade over the last two decades has been
nothing short of a revolution-and it was all made possible, ultimately, by
the votes of the fly-over country conservatives with whom Kudlow and company
have shared a big tent for so long.

And yet at the first sign of hesitation or reluctance to indulge further on
mom and pop's part, the free trade faithful turned on them with epithets and
disdain. According to some pinstriped pundits, the most open nation on
earth, at the most internationalist time in its history, is suddenly and
dismissively labeled "xenophobic," "isolationist," "protectionist,"
"nativist," "racist" and "ignorant" of the fact that world is global, or
some such insight. Given 99% of everything they want, some free traders
turned petulantly on their enablers over the 1% they didn't get.

This behavior is very familiar to anyone who has small children. You can
take them to the park, the mall, the museum, a game, an arcade, an ice cream
shop, McDonald's and Chuck E Cheese's, then after spending the whole day and
$200 on them, you tell them it's time to go home and they explode into tears
and theatrics while flopping about on the floor calling you "a meanie,"
which is like "xenophobic," but without the overeducated pretense.

And what was the tone-deaf expectation behind conservatives of any stripe,
pin or otherwise, playing the race card in an internal political debate?
Perhaps, like an abused child who grows up to be a child abuser, the name
callers thought that they might get the same sort of instant capitulation
from their base that they are used to giving to Democrats and the media when
they themselves are accused of racism-or of just having used the word
"niggardly" in a college essay once.

Way to solidify the base! Why not just say that Republicans are "a pretty
monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's
pretty much a white Christian party," or "The Republicans are not very
friendly to different kinds of people"? When some in the party start
sounding like Howard Dean while bashing the rest of it, it could be time to
take a deep breath.

The second subplot that really stood out to me, is how clueless many in the
Republican Party are to the true source of public misgiving about the port
deal. This does not bode well for avoiding a repeat of the debacle in the
near future. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the average
voter does not normally concern himself with the minutiae of cargo
management and port personnel. So why the big opinion all of a sudden over
Dubai Ports World?

Well, in my opinion this is sort of like an argument in a marriage. It may
have started over a specific incident, but it's really about something else
and has been building for a long time.

This minor uprising was about a general feeling that, whatever merits free
trade, open borders, and corporate globalism may have financially, they are
often not good for the nation in many ways that fail to be accounted for in
the theoretical models of economists. Free trade fails to take account of
cultural consequences, and it places no value on concepts such as national
loyalty. To the value-free traders, labor is simply a commodity, and people
are interchangeable parts. And they are entirely correct-economically
speaking. A widget is a widget, and the cheaper you can get them made, the
better.

But the problem is that all nations are more than just economic systems.
They are each somebody's home. And each has a culture, and a language, and a
set of common ideals that they want protected-even more than they want
another 0.3% added to next year's GDP. Some things matter more than the
economic opportunity cost we pay for having them. The American Revolution,
for example, was bad for the economy while it was under way. But that was
not really the point of the whole thing, was it?

The emotion surrounding the ports deal, and illegal immigration, and
outsourcing, and homeland security and a dozen other aspects of breakneck
international economic integration is no longer simply a quiet misgiving. It
is rapidly being formed into a single coherent message from average citizens
to those in power-both on the right and on the left- that see it as their
job to make sure the "inevitable" rise of a single world economic entity
actually happens. People are saying, "Stop!

They're saying "OK, we've tried it your way and it never seems to end. No
amount of globalization, tolerance, equalization, outsourcing,
internationalism, interventionism, human smuggling, and security risk is
ever enough. There is always a push for more-even before the last round has
proven itself wise or foolish. Treaty piles upon treaty, migration upon
migration, integration upon integration. Now people want a break and a
reassessment. They're not sure they are against it all. They're just no
longer sure they're still for it.

It is not Xenophobia. It is Xenonausea. People are sick of having the whole
world shoved down their throats at once and being told it tastes like ice
cream. They are sick of every street corner and parking lot being filled
with criminal aliens waiting to work off the books and outside the laws that
are applied so enthusiastically to actual Americans. They are sick of
pressing "1" for English. They are sick of being at war with foreign
terrorists and simultaneously being economically and demographically bound
more tightly to the nations producing these terrorists. They are sick of
being told that the world is global or flat or smaller or at their doorstep
or all coming for dinner on Tuesday.

They are sick of hearing that America is just an economic opportunity zone
and not a distinct nation, a culture-their home. They are sick of being told
that human beings are interchangeable parts, that the nation-state is passé,
that there are some jobs that Americans just won't do, that there are some
contracts that Americans just won't bid, and that any cost that cannot be
measured in money cannot be very important. They are sick of having the
world purposely knit together in a tighter tangle everyday and then being
told we are so entangled that America must now run the whole world and solve
all its problems. And they are sick of being called ignorant and racist and
xenophobic just for having the temerity to raise questions when abstract
trade theory conflicts with their common sense.

And they want a break. They want some breathing room and some limits; and
they don't want to hear elitist children cry themselves hoarse after all
they've been given already.

If absolute globalization really is inevitable, it doesn't need such a
vociferous lobby. It will happen at its own organic pace. Trying to force it
prematurely will just cause a backlash here and abroad-as it already has
from Van Nuys to Venezuela to Vladivostok.

And if it is not inevitable, then it needs to be justified beyond the
boardroom and the lecture hall. It may not be something that everyone wants
to pay the costs of, whatever benefits it may bring to our bank accounts and
stock exchanges.

Soon, Congress will consider a new illegal immigration bill. Failure to
acknowledge the new mood in the country could break the Republican Party.

Mr. Johnson, a writer and medical researcher in Cambridge, MA., is a regular
contributor to Human Events. His column generally appears on Tuesdays.
Archives and additional material can be found at www.macjohnson.com.

Wayne LaPierre's response to Britain's International Network on Small Arms:

A: (Wayne La Pierre) You know, a lot of your countrymen are disagreeing with
you, and every statistic that I have from your government says just the
opposite. That the UK now leads the US by a large margin in assaults,
robberies, burglaries, all types of violent crime. Your laws now give the
home invader a head up, a hand up on the homeowner.

The homeowner tries to defend himself, he's probably going to go to jail.
Every statistic I've seen here in this country, your violent crime is
rising, and ours in the United States is going down. The other point I'd
like to make is a firearm's a tool. It doesn't jump off of a table and do
something bad. It's a tool.

Ms Peters, I heard her, you know, talk about the fact that, my gosh, look at
all this that's happening, you know? So a gun's invented only to kill
people. A gun, if it's misused, yes, it can kill someone. And that's why you
want to be very tough. No sympathy. Throw him in jail. For someone that
misuses a gun for life. That's good with me. They want to coddle criminals.
That's another thing on their agenda.

But a gun can also save a person's life. If a criminal is breaking down
their door it may very well save the victim's life. It can be used for
hunting. It can be used for recreation. It can be used for sport. We at the
NRA had 50,000 safety instructors, 35,000 shooting and hunting clubs, 9,000
law enforcement instructors, and we have put 17 million kids through our
Eddie Eagle Child Safety Program, and we have got accidents down to the
lowest level ever in U.S. history.

And we are leading the way in the United States to arm good people,
prosecute bad people, throw the book at them, put them in jail for a long,
long time, and that makes people safe.

Post by Imperialist Watch
British believe Bush is more dangerous than Kim Jong-il
· US allies think Washington threat to world peace
· Only Bin Laden feared more in United Kingdom
Julian Glover
Friday November 3, 2006
Guardian
America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and
allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published
today that reveals just how far the country's reputation has fallen among
former supporters since the invasion of Iraq.
Carried out as US voters prepare to go to the polls next week in an election
dominated by the war, the research also shows that British voters see George
Bush as a greater danger to world peace than either the North Korean leader,
Kim Jong-il, or the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both countries
were once cited by the US president as part of an "axis of evil", but it is
Mr Bush who now alarms voters in countries with traditionally strong links
to the US.
The survey has been carried out by the Guardian in Britain and leading
newspapers in Israel (Haaretz), Canada (La Presse and Toronto Star) and
Mexico (Reforma), using professional local opinion polling in each country.
It exposes high levels of distrust. In Britain, 69% of those questioned say
they believe US policy has made the world less safe since 2001, with only 7%
thinking action in Iraq and Afghanistan has increased global security.
The finding is mirrored in America's immediate northern and southern
neighbours, Canada and Mexico, with 62% of Canadians and 57% of Mexicans
saying the world has become more dangerous because of US policy.
Even in Israel, which has long looked to America to guarantee national
security, support for the US has slipped.
Only one in four Israeli voters say that Mr Bush has made the world safer,
outweighed by the number who think he has added to the risk of
international
conflict, 36% to 25%. A further 30% say that at best he has made no
difference.
Voters in three of the four countries surveyed also overwhelmingly reject
the decision to invade Iraq, with only Israeli voters in favour, 59% to 34%
against. Opinion against the war has hardened strongly since a similar
survey before the US presidential election in 2004.
In Britain 71% of voters now say the invasion was unjustified, a view shared
by 89% of Mexicans and 73% of Canadians. Canada is a Nato member whose
troops are in action in Afghanistan. Neither do voters think America has
helped advance democracy in developing countries, one of the
justifications
for deposing Saddam Hussein. Only 11% of Britons and 28% of Israelis think
that has happened.
As a result, Mr Bush is ranked with some of his bitterest enemies as a cause
of global anxiety. He is outranked by Osama bin Laden in all four countries,
but runs the al-Qaida leader close in the eyes of UK voters: 87% think the
al-Qaida leader is a great or moderate danger to peace, compared with 75%
who think this of Mr Bush.
The US leader and close ally of Tony Blair is seen in Britain as a more
dangerous man than the president of Iran (62% think he is a danger), the
North Korean leader (69%) and the leader of Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah
(65%).
Only 10% of British voters think that Mr Bush poses no danger at all.
Israeli voters remain much more trusting of him, with 23% thinking he
represents a serious danger and 61% thinking he does not.
Contrary to the usual expectation, older voters in Britain are slightly more
hostile to the Iraq war than younger ones. Voters under 35 are also more
trusting of Mr Bush, with hostility strongest among people aged 35-65.
· ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,010 adults by telephone from October
27-30. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have
been weighted to the profile of all adults. Polling was by phone in Canada
(sample 1,007), Israel (1,078) and Mexico (1,010)
http://www.guardian.co.uk:80/print/0,,329617605-110878,00.html
---
"We talk a great deal about patriotism. What do we mean by patriotism in the
context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of
national responsibility which will enable America to remain master of her
power-to walk with it in serenity and wisdom, with self-respect and the
respect to all mankind; a patriotism that puts country ahead of self; a
patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the
tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. The dedication of a
lifetime-these are words that are easy to utter, but this is a mighty
assignment. For it is often easier to fight for principles than to live up
to them." - Adlai Stevenson's 'Nature of Patriotism' Speech, 1952

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