No one even pretends to be for free trade any more. Ryan Lizza’s new blog explains.
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “Sixty-seven Japanese cities were firebombed by the B-29s in the spring of 1945 and three hundred and fifty thousand civilians burnt to death – and the war in effect won – well before Hiroshima… Now, thanks to our sleek modern weaponry, Americans no longer have to kill civilians in indiscriminate numbers in wartime, and can despise and fear enemies who hold to the idea that anyone can be targeted for death in the name of a fervent cause.” – Roger Angell comparing the United States fighting the Japanese in World War Two to Al Qaeda bombing the World Trade Center in the New Yorker, January 19, 2004.
BUSH IS HITLER WATCH: Here’s a classic from Canada. Of course, he takes pains to say that there are differences between Bush and the Nazi dictator, but then goes on to milk the parallels:
Like central European nations of the 1930s, Canada finds itself next door to a powerful nation led by an unusually aggressive and perhaps slightly unhinged man. What to do? It’s generally forgotten now, but in the mid-’30s Hitler was not universally condemned as evil personified. Indeed, he had many admirers in Europe and North America – people who lauded his “leadership,” who lionized his moral certainty (no namby-pamby moral relativism there) and who either forgave, or actively applauded, what was then called anti-Semitism and today would be labelled racial profiling. World leaders were wary and respectful. Canada’s then-prime minister, Mackenzie King, confided in his diary after meeting Hitler in 1937 that the dictator was “one who truly loves his fellow men and his country and would make any sacrifice for their good … a man of deep sincerity and a genuine patriot … a teetotaller.”
When Democrats accuse Bush of creating hostility across the globe, they fail to see that some hostility is simply a function of ignorance, ideology and insufferable smugness.
The Dish 