Nov. 16, 2004 #01:  Political Satire/Commentary where satire is always commentary but commentary isn't always satire™ (but we're confident you'll know the difference)  Search PoliSat.Com Home  Tell a friend about PoliSat.Com    Subscribe   Permanent link to this installment in PoliSat.Com's Archives    Google-News list of recent updates    About author, Jim Wrenn.

Condoleeza Rice, whom George Bush nominated to succeed Colin Powell as Secretary of State, would be deemed unqualified for such position by a President John Kerry.

            Condoleeza Rice lacks the qualifications that a President John Kerry would desire for a Secretary of State:  An ability to simultaneously occupy opposite sides of all issues until hindsight reveals which position was least subject to criticism.  She has the vision to see long-term benefits through the lens of short-term challenges.  It's often said that fear of failure is the greatest enemy of success, but fear of blame for failure is an even greater enemy.  This latter fear is one of Kerry's greatest flaws.  His fear of criticism in hindsight constricts his vision of the future.  In his mind, the theoretically perfect solution is almost always the enemy of the sensibly good solution.

            Today, Kerry said he plans to return to the Senate and "continue fighting" for the "same issues" for which he has spent a career fighting.  What are those issues?  One senses that if Kerry were forced to make an instantaneous decision on most vital issues, he would more often than not make the right decision, but if he were afforded time to contemplate all the pros and cons, he would more often than not make the wrong decision or suffer the intellectual paralysis of being unable to make any decision at all, the latter of which is often the most disastrous type of "decision."  When circumstances denied him the opportunity for nuanced contemplation, he braved enemy fire to save a comrade, but when circumstances afforded him the luxury of opportunistic reflection, he made statements supporting enemy propaganda by his broad-scale defamation of his comrades.

            Rice, unlike Kerry, was no stranger to adversity during her formative years.  She was able to envision a future of liberty despite being forced to view it through a lens of harsh oppression.  She understands what Kerry, Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac do not:  That liberty is the foundation of stability rather than vice-versa.  

Rice: A Stable Staple.

Says Dubya, "I'll bring to the table
a leader both willing and able
the wold to entice--
That leader is Rice,
whose staple is vision that's stable."

Her life is a powerful sign
that liberty can't be consigned
to privileged few--
A value she knew
when freedom to her was denied.

            Today, much is being said about the need for "stability" in Iraq in order for liberty to take hold.  The opposite is true.  Terrorist intimidation can produce stability but not liberty.  Just as a neighborhood infected with a mob "protection" racket must be willing to endure and support application of force (i.e., law enforcement) to eradicate it in order to become free of it, a country infected with tyrannical forces must be willing to endure and support application of force to eradicate them in order to achieve stabilization of liberty rather than tyranny.

            Application of a long-term, hindsight evaluation of Rice's philosophy in contrast to Kerry's is revealing.  Rice favored Reagan's theory that an aggressive buildup of our military strength was the key to ultimately producing a mutual build-down of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union and the United States; Kerry adopted the opposite view.  Rice understood that removing Saddam Hussein from Kuwait was essential to preventing Hussein from acquiring virtual control of all Mid-East oil revenue in order to build a gold-plated, nuclear-armed totalitarian state that would have decidedly tilted the balance of history against the forces of liberty; Kerry adopted the opposite view.  Rice understood (as did Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush) that 9-11 made it obvious we no longer enjoyed the luxury of gambling that we would know enough about Saddam Hussein's capabilities and intentions far enough in advance to prevent them and that, therefore, we'd better act "sooner" than "later."   Despite initially appearing to embrace such view, in hindsight Kerry adopted the opposite view.

--Jim Wrenn, Editor at PoliSat.Com

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Questions for Americans:

Shouldn't we be at least as generous in supporting the families of our troops killed or injured while serving our country in Afghanistan, Iraq, in America and throughout the rest of the world as we were for the families of the victims of 9-11?  Here are some suggestions:

*Salute American Heroes*  *Support Fallen Heroes Fund*

Shouldn't we recognize that many, if not most, instances of foreign anti-Americanism in the late 20th Century (like most of the foreign anti-Americanism today) focused reactionary rage against maintenance of, and willingness to use, human-rights-respecting power against forces that oppose liberty and favor the "stability" of the status quo?   See a retrospective on Ronald Reagan.   Shouldn't we recognize that despite arguments to the contrary by devotees of the United Nations that the world remains a yet-to-be-civilized place in which the wise exercise of human-rights-respecting power more than intellectual sophistry can best assure the survival of liberty?

Shouldn't we recognize that "property rights" are among the most fundamental of "human rights" and are therefore vital to the survival of liberty?  See "'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness' versus 'Life, Liberty [and] Property.'"

Questions for secular thinkers:

Shouldn't secular thinkers be at least as respectful towards ordinary people of faith as George Bush is towards ordinary secular thinkers, and shouldn't ordinary secular thinkers repudiate fanatical secular fundamentalists at least as firmly as Bush repudiates fanatical religious fundamentalists?  Shouldn't secular fundamentalists learn to recognize the unscientific nature of their own leaps of faith before throwing stones at unscientific leaps of faith by ordinary people of faith?  See satire/commentary about Secular Fundamentalists and Religious Fanatics.

Shouldn't people professing to be secular thinkers learn to understand the difference between science and political science (i.e., politicized science)?  Shouldn't radical environmentalists learn to understand that their views are little more than modern forms of pantheism?  See Satire/Commentary about Pantheopians.  Shouldn't they learn to objectively and scientifically scrutinize theories such as Global Warming at least as rigorously as they scrutinize "creationism"?  See "Global Warming or Scientific Flatulence?"  See also the commentary on proposed "climate stewardship" legislation and the animated illustration, "Goblins of Globalized 'Warming.'" 

Shouldn't people professing to be secular thinkers learn to understand that what science reveals about human evolution supports, rather than undermines, the sensibility of a rebuttable presumption that monogamous, heterosexual marriage best serves the interests of children notwithstanding the sensibility of recognizing civil unions to accord comparable (but not identical) privileges to mutual-support partnerships?   See  commentary "Evolution versus Revolution" and the animated illustration, "Devolution versus Evolution."

Questions for people of faith:

Shouldn't people with faith that a Deity created free will recognize that compulsory piety would be offensive to such Deity?

Shouldn't people with faith that a Deity created free will recognize that political compromises limiting the power of government to compel conformity with theocratic doctrines over which other people of faith, as well as secular thinkers, can reasonably disagree would not be offensive to such Deity?  See commentary about our Founding Documents, the Constitution and the Creator.

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