The Character of a Nation

It has been bizarre and disheartening to see the reaction to a visit to the United States by the president of Iran and all the folks whining and wetting themselves over it. Over. A. Visit. My God, what a bunch of little pansies.

You know, a couple decades ago, America faced a real threat, the Soviet Union, which could destroy us completely in the space of half an hour. And no one sat around pissing and moaning about, well, democracy. Free speech sure is a scary thing. If you're a tyrant. Or just aspire to be.

That's right, I'm talkin' to you, Duncan Hunter. Suck it up, you spineless little sissy. You ain't got the stones to be a real tyrant, no matter how much you fantasize about it.

So: what is the American character? Hard to say, of course. But I daresay we know it when we see it. Let me put before you an illustrative example: one week in September of 1959, when, much like one week in September of 2007, American soil supported a visit by what many, if not most Americans agreed was the most evil and dangerous man on the planet.

Nikita Khrushchev disembarked from his plane at Andrews Air Force Base to a 21-gun salute and a receiving line of 63 officials and bureaucrats, ending with President Eisenhower. He rode 13 miles with Ike in an open limousine to his guest quarters across from the White House. Then he met for two hours with Ike and his foreign policy team. Then came a white-tie state dinner. (The Soviets then put one on at the embassy for Ike.) He joshed with the CIA chief about pooling their intelligence data, since it probably all came from the same people—then was ushered upstairs to the East Wing for a leisurely gander at the Eisenhowers' family quarters. Visited the Agriculture Department's 12,000 acre research station ("If you didn't give a turkey a passport you couldn't tell the difference between a Communist and capitalist turkey"), spoke to the National Press Club, toured Manhattan, San Francisco (where he debated Walter Reuther on Stalin's crimes before a retinue of AFL-CIO leaders, or in K's words, "capitalist lackeys"), and Los Angeles (there he supped at the 20th Century Fox commissary, visited the set of the Frank Sinatra picture Can Can but to his great disappointment did not get to visit Disneyland), and sat down one more with the president, at Camp David.

Mrs. K did the ladies-who-lunch circuit, with Pat Nixon as guide. Eleanor Roosevelt toured them through Hyde Park. It's not like it was all hearts and flowers. He bellowed that America, as Time magazine reported, "must close down its worldwide deterrent bases and disarm." Reporters asked him what he'd been doing during Stalin's blood purges, and the 1956 invasion of Hungary. A banquet of 27 industrialists tried to impress upon him the merits of capitalism. Nelson Rockefeller rapped with him about the Bible.

Had America suddenly succumbed to a fever of weak-kneed appeasement? Had the general running the country—the man who had faced down Hitler!—proven himself what the John Birch Society claimed he was: a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy?

No. Nikita Khrushchev simply visited a nation that had character. That was mature, well-adjusted. A nation confident we were great.

Where have you gone, Dwight D. Eisenhower? A nation turns its saddened eyes towards you.

Comments

[Ed]

And we wonder why people like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez (a Fidel wanna be), Kim II etc are embolden to pursue their agendas against the once mighty US of A. We have become a nation of whinny, self-grandiosed-illusioned hypocrits. We consume the bulk of the planet's resources, and have this idea of self-entitlement, and then are surprised when some rougue nation gives us the middle finger.
The Current Occupant, Uncle Dick and rest of the criminal gang are clearly to blame for this. He pursued a disastrous war against a pathetic opponent, yet chosed to pursue "diplomatic" means with N Korea. Message to Iran and rest of the world: if you are armed with nuclear weapons, we will kiss your arses and not invade, but if the best you posses is aluminum tubes strapped to a friggin goat, the kiss you pattoies good bye.
Between the Boomers ('whiners' would be a better moniker) and the Bushies we have reduced this once proud nation to a bunch of pansies and bullies.

[Sassy Belle]

And what sort of idiot university president first invites the guy and then is a jerk in his introduction of the guy? I'm not saying people can't question, but to be so openly rude... Good grief. What are you trying to prove, Mr. Columbia President?

We need a leader who can instill some sense.

[Steve the LLamabutcher]

Umm, no, with all due respect, you're wide of the mark by about a mile here. There's the little problem that Iran and the United States have technically been at war since they invaded our Embassy in 1979 and held our diplomats hostage. Since then, we have no diplomatic relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. And I won't even go into their bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beruit...

And as for rudeness in such a situation, I guess the praise of Colbert at the WH Correspondent's dinner is going to be revoked? Or is "speaking truth to power" only for furthering leftie phantasms.

[scott]

There's the little problem that Iran and the United States have technically been at war since they invaded our Embassy in 1979 and held our diplomats hostage.

Oh, you are the cutie when you're spinning. You know we are not, in fact, technically at war with Iran since to be technically at war with Iran would require congress to declare that we were technically at war with Iran.

What's more, that would mean you truly believe in your heart of hearts that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, amongst oh so many other high Republican muckety-mucks, were guilty of treason and therefore would have been sentenced to death. Or are you perhaps suggesting that you believe President Reagan should have, in fact, been literally drawn and quartered?

To rephrase that, do you believe President Ronald Reagan should have been executed?
Do you believe former President George Herbert Walker Bush should be?

If we have been at war with Iran since 1979, then Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.B. Bush were/are guilty of treason for providing material aid to the enemy. And the law states that they should have been/should be executed.

You, my friend, play hard ball.

And as for rudeness in such a situation, I guess the praise of Colbert at the WH Correspondent's dinner is going to be revoked? Or is "speaking truth to power" only for furthering leftie phantasms.

The Correspondent's Dinner, you say? Why, would that be an affair where politicians and comedians are invited specifically to poke fun at the highest of the high muckety-mucks? In other words, Colbert did exactly what he was expected to do, simply far better than anyone else ever had. Were you also incensed when Don Imus did the exact same thing to the Clintons years before, only without the humor?

This is in stark contrast to inviting a speaker to a university, where a certain amount of decorum is the standard. So Colbert behaved as expected. Lee Bolinger did not. Not that I shed any tears for Ahmadinejad. He's a psychotic little tyrant, albeit a relatively unimportant one, as tyrants go.

But, once again, it's not about him. It's about us. What we used to be and what we think we are, as opposed to what we really are.