Friday, January 28, 2005 |
11:41 - The Last Good War
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In response to this post about the Left's beatific nostalgia for WWII (exemplified by Doonesbury), George H. e-mails:
I'm of the opinion that the modern Left loves to reverently invoke WW2 because its a safe way to claim they're not complete weaklings when it comes to national defense and related issues. See, they can say, we were all for fighting Hitler!
It also doesn't hurt that the Nazis were/are the perfect foes for the Left, whose hivemind is notoriously emotion-ruled. Hitler and the gang were downright demonic - right out of Central Casting - and made to order.
Also, hating the Nazis and celebrating their destruction in the post-1945 period was the safest thing one could do. In the past 200 years, no regime has ever been so as destroyed, scattered, vilified and comprehensively liquidated as that of the Third Reich. Hell, even the most recent Euro-conqueror before Hitler - Napoleon - escaped with his life and one of Nappy's "Feldmarschalls" founded a royal dynasty in Sweden! The Swastikettes, on the other hand, were hung, shot, driven to suicide or chased to the ends of the Earth.
GOOD, says I. But the point is that dancing on the grave of Nazism and idolizing the war that dug that grave was a pretty risk-free political endeavor after WW2. Very little chance that Otto Skorzeny was going to show up at your door with a Luger.
Being comprehensively opposed to tyranny - you know, like a true classical liberal - was another kettle of fish entirely. As we both know, a regime just as bad as Hitler's survived the war and its bloodsoaked leaders mostly died in bed (unless killed by each other or by Stalin, the worst snake in the nest). Add to this the decades-long, collective blowjob administered by "progressives" to the Soviet State and the right-thinking Liberal has a real dilemma.
Solution? More WW2 nostalgia, please. Big Red was an ally, the eee-vil Nazis were the foe, and everything was ideologically comfortable.
Also note the prevalence of the European theater over the Pacific - even though we fought the Japanese for longer than the Germans. There's also that messy Atom Bomb thing. And the far less snappy uniforms of the Japs. :)
Yup, I'd noticed that too. Mentioning the A-bomb makes people inevitably start to bring up Dresden. And that wouldn't do.
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