There were many who said, "no, this is preposterous"Some unhinged frothing lefties screamed "yes and Bush is destroying the world"
One British born American had this to say:
What we are seeing is the fruit of hundreds of years of self-selected divergence of the European and American cultures. I am part of that divergence, having been born in London but emigrating to America with my family as a child. My father, a hard working businessman whose enterprise put food on dozens of workingmens' tables, had finally had all he could take of the punitive anti-capitalism of the Labour governments of the post-war years. He came to the US and never looked back, for which I shall always be grateful.
Ever since the discovery of the New World, America has been a magnet for immigration, but only among certain groups of people. Those who came here were among the most ambitious, self-directed, and stubborn in the Old World. Soft and comfortable men were left behind. The aristocracy took almost no part in the settling of America. The desiccated pomp of the established Church gained little foothold here. The toadies and bootlickers of the Court, the tax collectors and other functionaries of oppressive government, were scorned and abused and chased out.
It is true that we got the religious dissidents and fanatics, the well-armed and easily-offended border reivers, the con men and the slave traders.
But we also got the yeoman farmers, simple men of faith, hard work and patriotism, men of few words and great bravery. We got the inventors, the merchants, the soldiers and sailors, and countless ordinary peasants who were so desperate to improve their lives, and yet so optimistic about the shining future of America, that they sold themselves into years of indentured servitude to enable themselves to come to these shores.
And still they come, in an avalanche of hope and ambition that dwarfs all other human migrations. Around the world, people vote with their feet, embracing America despite all its flaws and turning their backs on their native lands. The footsteps of these multitudes, risking all to become Americans, utterly drown out the pipsqueak rantings of those who can find nothing to admire in the American experiment. George Bush is without a doubt the heir of such people, in his genes and in his view of the human condition.
So in answer to the question posed by the editors of the Telegraph, if I may be as inflammatory as they: Yes, Bush is a threat to world peace, because he, and we, value liberty more than safety, and honor more than the shabby, craven "peace" of the Neville Chamberlains and Noam Chomskys of the world.
We recognized that the authoritarian collectivism of Stalin and Hitler was a threat to all we hold dear, and we poured out blood and treasure for fifty years to destroy it, and some of the soft men cocooned in Europe have never forgiven us for it.
Likewise, we recognize in militant expansionist Islamism an even greater threat to the foundations of the civilization our forefathers left us. We will fight hard for fifty more years, or a hundred or a thousand, to destroy it too, without apology or shame or second thoughts.
We hope that those who now cry "jihad" will learn, from the example of Japan and Germany, to reconcile themselves to religious tolerance, political pluralism and the rule of law under a representative democracy. If they don't, we will kill them in large numbers without pity. We don't want to, but we did it before, and we can do it again.
Britain and all of Europe will have to decide soon whether to remain standing by us or join the Islamists. Demography is destiny, and Europe's destiny at this point looks like Sharia law. We offer the civilized world a choice between Bush or the burqa. Choose wisely and choose soon, because there will be no other choices.
Posted by Christopher May on June 24, 2006 10:40 AM
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