Naive Liberals

posted by Jeffrey Folks at American Thinker 

We do not live in an entirely peaceful or civilized world. Conservatives realize that fact and wish to prepare for the worst by strengthening our military, shoring up the value of our currency, and ensuring economic prosperity.  In contrast, liberals live in a fantasy land, in which everyone is presumed to be “nice” and no other nation wishes to harm us.

Among those liberals is Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Harper, 2015) and other books.  Harari, who stated that all of the world’s great religions are mere “stories invented by our ancestors,” puts his faith in global “cooperation” and sees the possibility of a New Eden with no war, no poverty, and no prejudice.  What he fails to realize is that the “new Eden” of globalists (socialists and communists) is the most ridiculous “story” of all, and the most discredited.

It’s nice to believe that human nature has changed and that, just because we have not had a global war for 80 years, we will not have one in the future, ever.  But human nature has not changed.  The question is how we respond to the realities of war, genocide, and economic depression — and how we prepare for them.

Liberals — and I would include Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — respond to the world’s evil by turning away and doing nothing.  The 52 Americans who were seized in November, 1979, at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran should never have been taken hostage in the first place.  When they were, there should have been something more than the aborted operation of April 1980, to free them.  After that failure, the Carter administration sat on its hands for another nine months until the hostages were released on the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, presumably because they knew Reagan would not dither.

During the 1990s, President Clinton reportedly allowed the transfer of sensitive technology to China in return for millions in illicit campaign contributions, transferred through suspect Chinese-American donors.  He allowed China to overtake one industry after another, from shoes and clothing to pharmaceuticals and electronics.

A common argument was that, once its people had a taste of Western prosperity, China would renounce its totalitarian posture and behave in a civilized manner.  Anyone who has studied China’s militarism, its technological theft, and its internal repression of minority and religious groups knows that this is not the case.  Clinton was just as naïve as any other liberal.

Obama and Biden continued with this fantasy, doing little if anything to counter China’s ambitious global expansion.  During Obama’s second term, military spending fell by a cumulative 15%.  Equally bad, Biden allowed our military spending to decline for four years in a row relative to inflation, while China and other adversaries increased theirs.

No one wishes to see another war, but the way to avoid it is not to close your eyes and hope it doesn’t happen.  The only way to prevent another global war is for the U.S. to maintain a decisive advantage over our adversaries, something we lost under Obama and Biden.  Fortunately, President Trump understands this reality and has proposed a $58-billion increase in defense spending along with increases in NATO and Japanese spending on defense.  Trump would not just throw more money at the problem, but would cut waste and abuse, making our military more fitting it, at the same time that he focuses on cybersecurity, space forces, and nuclear defense (an “Iron Dome” for America).

Whether it is defense, inflation, immigration, fentanyl importation, or violent crime, liberals take a “soft” approach that turns its back on the problem and fails to protect us from harm.  Liberals do not even admit that radical Islam is a problem — like Obama and Biden, they refuse to utter the words “Islamic terrorism” — just as they refused to admit there was a “crisis” at our southern border.

The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it exists.  Liberals seem to think mankind has outgrown its evil tendencies and that “cooperation” with countries like Iran is possible.  Iran appears to be only weeks or months away from the capacity to develop a nuclear bomb.  President Trump may indeed strike a deal with Tehran, but it will be on our terms: as he said recently, the problem of a nuclear-armed Iran can be settled through “talks or bombs.”  That is the kind of language that Iran’s leaders understand.

It is not easy to be a conservative in a society in which so many want to believe in the fantasy of global cooperation and endless giveaways here at home.  President Trump will never be popular with the nearly one half of our population that voted for Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024 because Trump is asking us to recognize the dangers and to make sacrifices, if need be, to respond to them.  The threat of a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico was not popular with some Americans, and increased tariffs on China invite retaliation that might harm certain business interests.  But the failure to deal with illegal immigration, overspending, and aggression from our adversaries will do far more harm — a fact that liberals will never admit.

The heart of the matter is the naïveté of  liberal thinking and the weakness of character associated with it.  Liberals from Carter to Biden — and one could go back as far as Woodrow Wilson and FDR and to others before this — have refused to face the fundamental truth that the world is a dangerous place and that we must take precautions.  Liberals will scoff, but I know that another global war is coming and that there are only two options: win or lose.  And I know that the consequence of losing would be the destruction of our civilization, with all of its freedoms and opportunities.

The world is a dangerous place, and liberals just bury their heads in the sand.  As conservatives, we must take the lead in supporting a strong defense, a sound currency, and a growing economy.  This will require sacrifices, something that half of Americans seem unwilling to do.  There must be spending cuts in other areas if defense spending is to be increased, and there must be further cuts if our economy is to prosper and our currency remain sound.

Liberals are protesting any spending cuts, including cuts in DIE, USAID, and education.  But, as is always the case, they refuse to recognize the problems.  The U.S. is on a course toward  bankruptcy and defeat.  The time has come to face the problems and take decisive action.