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Defending barbarians, remembering Roosevelt
© by Barbara Anderson
The Salem News
Thursday, September 18, 2014
ATLANTA (AP) —
Calling the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a threat to world
security, President Barack Obama on Tuesday broadly expanded the
U.S. response by ordering thousands of troops to the region, along
with an aggressive effort to train health care workers and build
treatment centers.
At the same time, he offered assurances that the chances of an
outbreak in the U.S. are “extremely low.”
The stepped-up U.S. response includes sending 3,000 troops to the
region, including medics and corpsmen for treatment and training,
engineers to help build treatment facilities and logistics
specialists to assist in patient transportation. Troops would not
provide direct care to Ebola patients, White House spokesman Josh
Earnest said. A substantial number will be stationed at an
intermediate base in Senegal, with others at locations in Liberia,
he said.
Isn’t Josh Earnest the perfect name for an Obama White House
spokesman? Lookin’ earnest, but just joshin’, folks.
Hey, Josh, how come the president drops the g at the end of his ing
words? Did he learn that at Harvard?
Josh, tell us he’s kiddin’ about sending American troops to Africa
to fight the Ebola virus. Is that what our warrior men and women
signed up to do? Or did they think they were going to fight
terrorists... .
Josh, can you earnestly define “extremely low” for us? Did the
president mean that the chances of an outbreak in the U.S. are low
as long as Americans stay out of Africa or that chances are low
(zero?) that some of the 3,000 troops will bring the virus home and
begin its spread among our population?
Some liberals insist that African-Americans are entitled to
reparations because their ancestors were removed from Africa, so
they don’t get a chance to experience the genocides, hacked-off
limbs and tropical diseases, including Ebola, that the continent
offers. Liberia, founded by U.S. slaves who returned to Africa, has
an appalling history. Since the definition of liberal is “I care,”
perhaps we could send a volunteer brigade of these liberals to West
Africa to fight the epidemic (one-way tickets), so the military
could concentrate on defeating ISIS.
Experts say that an air war alone won’t stop “the Caliphate.” I wish
we could send the troops who signed up to fight terrorism, but
before more of them die, maybe we have to wait until we have a
commander-in-chief who can be trusted to wage a defined war, with an
understanding of the area’s history and a plan for long-term
victory, not an impulse that our country withdraws from before the
job is done.
If ISIS is busy dodging bombs and missiles, perhaps it won’t get to
West Africa to behead people like the British man who was just
trying to provide humanitarian aid in Syria. I notice that American
journalists seem to be more critical of our foreign policy now that
two of their own have been beheaded. I’ve often wanted to ask
Obama-worshipping alleged-journalists, what good is a head without a
brain?
Looking for a noun, some people call ISIS members “barbarians.” I
resent that. My name comes from the Greek varvara, which just means
“foreign” or “stranger.” I have often felt “a stranger in a strange
land,” as the phrase was used for the title of libertarian Robert
Heinlein’s novel. But as strange as even the normal can be to a
libertarian, the land we see now is bizarre when it’s not
horrifying.
ISIS isn’t human at all; Chip calls its members cockroaches, but
that’s because when he lived in the Florida Keys, they were the most
repugnant insects he encountered. Cockroaches, unfortunately, are
survivors, often predicted to be among the last creatures on a dying
planet someday.
Well, not dying yet; there’s work to be done. Let’s return to
American election politics for the rest of the column.
If I hadn’t noticed before, I’d know it’s an election year because
I’m getting mailings from Planned Parenthood that say “Back off
birth control!” on the envelope. Inside, it asks for money to defeat
Republicans, though it doesn’t use that word: We know what it means
though. Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit arm of the Democratic
Party.
Hey, ladies, whatever. It was Massachusetts Republicans who
supported birth control, fighting the Catholic Church whose members
then voted them out of legislative power to this present day. By the
way, are you watching Ken Burns’ “The Roosevelts” on PBS? If you
didn’t already know, you learn that it was Republican President
Theodore Roosevelt who was the country’s first great
environmentalist, responsible for creating the U.S. Forest Service
and establishing 51 federal bird reservations, four national game
preserves, 150 national forests, five national parks and the
American Antiquities Act, which he used to proclaim 18 national
monuments. Take that, Democrat Greens.
By the way, it was Republican Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves.
Republican Richard Nixon who ended the military draft. Republican
Ronald Reagan who ended the Cold War with its nuclear threat (and
saved Lake Tahoe from developers). No Republican has repealed Roe v.
Wade or abolished birth control, and none ever will. But “the war on
women” is all the Democrats have, along with ongoing national debt
that will burden the planned children throughout their lives.
Teddy Roosevelt left the Republican Party because, among other
reasons, he wanted a strong federal government and Republicans
support states’ rights. His “Progressive Party” (Bullmoose Party)
supported women’s right to vote and labors’ right to organize, along
with an early version of Social Security. But in forming a third
party, he helped elect Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who gave us the
federal income tax, the Federal Reserve Bank and involvement in
world war. This year’s foolish third-party candidates could be
equally helpful to the Democrats, whose president is sending troops
to Africa to fight germs while ISIS spreads like plague.
The comments made
and opinions expressed in her columns are those of Barbara Anderson
and do not necessarily reflect those of Citizens for Limited Taxation.
Barbara Anderson is executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation. Her
column appears weekly in the Salem News and other Eagle-Tribune newspapers.
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