Oh What A Year It Was!
By Alan Caruba (12/18/03)
“Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more” says Shakespeare’s King Henry. America’s finest soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen answered the call to protect us at home by restoring freedom to Iraq and encouraging it in Afghanistan.
The great news coming from our swift military victory in Iraq is, of course, the capture of Saddam Hussein, a man whose name will join those of the worst tyrants of modern times. His ignominious capture is yet another reason for too many Arabs to continue wallowing in their victim psychology, blaming America and Jews for their failures.
The work of taking a nation that has been held in the death grip of despotism for more than three decades to one that establishes the basics of democracy is not a job that will be accomplished in a few months or even a few years. The Iraqis, an educated, energetic people are, however, capable of it.
Even the US, after winning the Revolution, went through a lengthy period, abandoning the Articles of Confederation for the Constitution in 1788, and then having to wait until 1791 for the ratification of the Bill of Rights. From 1861 to 1865, our nation engaged in a Civil War to insure it would remain unified. Democracy is a messy business, but it is the best form of self-governance compared to everything else. Men are not angels.
Historians will, hopefully, look back at the 21st century and say that the world moved closer to choosing democracy over communism/socialism, having spent the 20th century in a nearly constant state of war to reach this point. This new century is the dawn of the American Empire, one that must protect our national sovereignty while extending the blessings of freedom, self-governance, and prosperity to other nations. So far, however, we are witnessing the continued movement toward socialism in the US.
In the era of globalism, we cannot afford to live in a world where millions of people are denied the opportunity to be productive, where despots are permitted to deny education, food, medicine, and other necessities of life to people; where slavery continues; where AIDS continues; where hatred is encouraged as policy. This is generally viewed as a liberal position, but it is also a conservative one and that is why a conservative President is leading the fight.
The enemies of freedom, however, never rest. Leading the fight against freedom this passed year was the United Nations. It did everything in its power to keep Saddam Hussein in power!
By the end of the year, the UN held a conference for the purpose of exerting control over the Internet, the greatest instrument for freedom ever invented. The UN wants to establish control over all forms of free expression in word and speech. Fortunately, the US, Canada, and other freedom-loving nations put the “kibosh” on this latest effort to impose the slavery of a global government on the world.
The UN experienced another major defeat when Russia decided not to ratify the Kyoto treaty that insanely asserted it could “control” the climate in the name of the utterly discredited notion of “global warming.”
It was the unilateral decision of the United States and its multinational coalition of freedom-loving nations that demonstrated the UN’s impotency when it removed the Ba’athist regime from control of Iraq. What was the response of the Islamist enemies of freedom? They bombed the UN headquarters in Iraq and the UN retreated immediately. A new generation is learning the lessons of its failed predecessor, the League of Nations.
If anyone thinks that the West and its institutions is not under attack they should also recall the bombing of the Baghdad headquarters of the International Red Cross. The list of terror bombings around the world is testimony that the war between Islam and the world continues.
Here at home the assaults on the Constitution continued and, to the growing alarm of many people, they were led by the Supreme Court which, having previously sanctioned abortion, went on to sanction sodomy, depriving the individual States of their right to determine their own laws. Nowhere in the Constitution will you find any reference to either of these “rights.” The Tenth Amendment clearly states that, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
An assault on the free expression of religion, the cornerstone of the moral power of the Constitution, continued as its opponents sought to remove any symbol or statement of faith from public display or discourse. Even the sanctity of marriage, always reserved to the bond between a man and a women, the bedrock of all societies, was under attack by the courts. The Supreme Court continued its assault on free speech by upholding the campaign finance law that imposes restrictions on political advertising prior to an election and uncouples campaign donations from the expression of free speech.
There was, however, a great victory for the voice of the people in the California special election that removed one Governor and replaced him with one pledged to fiscal sanity.
America, too, seems to be in the early stages of throwing off the shackles imposed in the name of “environmentalism.” When thousands of acres and homes in California burned, the first, tentative steps were taken by Congress to protect our national forests against the prohibitions on proper management that were imposed by the Greens. The effort remains to restore some rationality to the proper use of our natural resources and the upgrade of our system of creating and distributing electricity, and other forms of energy. A huge blackout that plunged the East Coast into darkness was a warning sign that dare not be ignored. That said, a bad energy bill was derailed and will possibly be replaced with one not designed to make corn farmers ecstatic.
Even so, the Green effort, led by groups allied against property rights, the cornerstone of capitalism, continues to put vast areas of the nation off limits to any further development, despite the fact that less than five percent of the entire nation’s landmass is developed, i.e., has cities, suburbs, highways, et cetera. The fact remains that our population, now more than 280 million, is growing and will continue to grow. People need a place to live! Denying them that right in the name of “endangered species”, deserts declared “wetlands”, or in the name of “urban sprawl” is yet another Green deception.
Perhaps the best news was the astonishing swift recovery from 9-11 as the economy rebounded along with our growing determination and confidence in our ability to protect the nation from attack and our willingness to destroy our enemies no matter where they hide.
An era of pusillanimous cowardliness has been replaced by a new sense of America’s mission. It is inspiring other nations to join the fight against the enemies of liberty.
2003 was the year Americans rediscovered their courage, their faith in God, and the reasons we are the greatest living republic on the face of the Earth. There are battles yet to be fought to protect our freedom, but oh what a year it was!
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