Hi. Thanks for the good read….

14 days of rioting in France, (if not more), the Netherlands having to place government officials, artists and writers in protective custody. “Honor” killings in the UK. Sweden knuckling under to the demands of local Imams. What a wonderful model of utopia you’ve become. But its nice to see that the moral beacon has shifted to Europe. Or is that another car on fire?

Im sure you’ll survive, but the cost in lives may be more expensive.

Ugh … can’t … type … outrageous … jingoism …

phew!

Honestly, you are giving me great lines. I’ll be visiting relatives in Scotland this February, and I can’t wait to try out some of this material at the pub.

If Europeans had their perceptions right, they would be as great as we are.

Awesome!!! Bless you. That’s a pint right there.

I fight for 3 things, Truth, Justice, and Liberty. And it matters not to me, how many people we have to obliterate to achieve those ends.

AAAAAHHHHH HA HA HA HA HA HA

I’m not going to torture them, they are just going to die. That’s morally clean, even for the best of us.

AAAAAHHH! You’re killin’ me!!!

Is anybody linking to this stuff???

Maybe if the EUropeans had learned not to champion their pet dreams despite everything, they could have avoided WWII and Reconstruction.

If Europe had followed our advice after WWI, WWII would not have happened. Now their excuse for not following our lead in the 21st century is this: that we had fallen off the pedestal they had put us on. Putting someone on a pedestal is a nice way to disregard everything they say.

Holding the US on a pedestal and then claiming it has fallen in your eyes is a nice excuse to cover up for personal failures. And also why you aren’t listening to US guidelines and wisdom now.

I can see that quite clearly. The US is no one’s pedestal, china doll, or punching bag. People should get their angst out on their own kind. Oh, the horror of the results of that, they might even get a working democracy going where 3/4ths of the people weren’t controlled by government doles.

But that’s just the thing, the US got to where it is because we lifted ourselves out from the mire, we didn’t do so cause Europeans expected us to. We expect Europe to get a grip on reality, but the fact that they clearly don’t illustrates why the objections of other countries matter little. SInce American objections to European apathy and craziness doesn’t matter, what makes anyone think that European idealization of Americans matter?

Since when does the United States lower itself to the same standards as people like Saddam?

About when the FOunding Fathers came up with a notion called justice. They had nothing against execution of criminals, but you do. And there’s a reason for that, independent of the torture factor.

To some people, justice is weak, to others, justice is strong. Don’t spread weakened notions of justice, decadent and foolish conceptions, onto Saddam’s trial in an invigorated and heartened nation. They won’t stand for it, and neither will I.

I understand you are worried about the safety of your country but there is something even bigger at stake: the integrity of your country.

Some people give their lives for what they fight for. Others give their souls. I fight for 3 things, Truth, Justice, and Liberty. And it matters not to me, how many people we have to obliterate to achieve those ends. I’m not going to torture them, they are just going to die. That’s morally clean, even for the best of us.

Not everyone who disliked America or fought against her is my enemy. But anyone that fights against Truth, Justice, and Liberty is. And I have no compunctions about terminating those with extreme prejudice, whether by my own hand or through support of others. Saddam neither fights for Truth, nor Justice, nor Liberty. And I do understand why some people may not be willing to apply the death penalty for fear their hands will get dirty with work.

I tend to agree with most people, Europeans included, that torture should not be done. But then again I do so primarily on a pragmatic basis. And Europeans tend to disfavor the death penalty and torture on ideological foundations.

The US didn’t become as strong and as great as it is based upon “idealism”, but upon the hybridization of pragmatism and idealism. The French Revolution was all slogans and no sweat work. Truman championed liberty, but he also dropped two nukes on Japan. So don’t quote Andrew Sullivan’s weak and unpersuasive article, talking about how America must remain pure and respect human rights. Killing humans also respects their rights, it just doesn’t respect their life over ours.

For a great nation must respect their own rights over the rights of our enemies. In any case where respecting the rights of our enemies does not harm us, then we should do so. But if it ever came to a pass that for the Japanese to live, Americans must die, then I’m sorry but the Japs are going up in smoke. It also applies to terroists, if a terroist’s right to not be tortured is mutually exclusive with our right not to be tortured, then the terroist is flat out of luck. However respected and well loved and great allies they are now, it didn’t change the fact that we were mortal enemies. And it wasn’t Andrew Sullivan’s “kindness” act that pacified Germany and Japan, but the iron hand of American ruthlessness and pragmatism. Just because American tends to put on velvet gloves over the iron first most of the time, doesn’t mean the US is as weak as it is percieved by Europeans.

If Europeans had their perceptions right, they would be as great as we are. But they aren’t, and so they don’t.

When people become far more enamored of the “integrity of America” than they are about the founding principles of AMerica, justice, liberty, freedom, then you are the one who should worry, not me.

“Peace in our time”. People who value ideals and slogans, like Europeans do, need a reality check.

I understand perfectly the reasons and the rationalizations of Europeans. I just don’t agree with them. And I cannot.

Because I once struggled with the ethics of Hiroshima, like all other AMericans. But, like most Americans, I had to come to the conclusion that if the US isn’t around to guarantee human rights, then the human rights of the rest of the human race isn’t worth jack considering the quality of our enemies.

And that is a consideration most Brits, Euros, and something Andrew Sullivan cannot understand. They cannot understand the iron hand in the velvet glove, the responsibility of having power.

They cannot and they will not understand the secret to the greatness of the United States of America. For it is equal parts patriotism, idealism, pragmatism, and ruthlessness.

You have to be willing to sacrifice everything in the service of your country. But it is incomplete, you must also fight for something greater than yourself or your country for that matter. That was lacking in France’s WWI. And you must also be ready to do your duty, to put it on the line, your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honor when it is time to battle.

European perceptions of America, without understanding those qualities first and foremost, are… sub-optimal and quite inaccurate.

Andrew Sullivan lives not in the real world. TO defeat an enemy, one must become more like the enemy. That is a rule of war. And anyone who does not adapt their tactics to the tactics of the enemy, will lose, and their families will pay the horrible price of failure.

No wonder we are witnessing the regression into the pre-Enlightenment moral desert of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, the solemn representation of such horrors as water-boarding as a regrettable necessity that is not to be regarded as torture, CIA hit squads roaming the streets of other people’s countries kidnapping their victims without legality or compunction — not to mention the monstrous evil of capital punishment that lines up the United States with China and Saudi Arabia.

Few of our governments in Europe have completely clean hands in any of these areas, and some are actively complicit in the criminal activities of a global super-power whose very power seems to have destroyed its moral compass. But I hope our intellectuals will never stoop as low in their trahison des clercs as this post and (especially) these comments suggest is happening on the other side of the ditch.

Gloom.

(I would normally give my website and blog address with this comment, but in this case I don’t feel any obligation to expose them to the kind of smears and sneers that are directed here to a respected, thoughtful and eminent British — or Irish — professor in terms that say more about their authors than they say about Conor Gearty.

Another disconcerting theme from the American right. Good luck with that, too.

Andrew Sullivan is getting nuttier by the day. Fewer people are paying attention to him.

I’d like to be a shining beacon. I’d also like to be alive.
I recall the Europeans were with us after 9-11 until the first funerals were done and then it was back to the usual crap.
My father was shot in several countries straightening out the world’s greatest oxymoron “European diplomacy”.
We’ll pick our own path, there being no better example from which to take lessons.

Batman, Superman, Spider-man, etc, they all share the exact same quality as Gearty; to preserve their own moral superiority they will not tarnish their hands with anything more than knocking the villian of the moment unconscious. No matter how many times the villian has escaped previously, no matter how many people they might have killed or endangered, each time the ‘hero’ always takes the high ground by simply apprehending them for the nth time.

This realization that the ‘heroes’ were essentially morally bankrupt is what turned me off those continuing comics, and the movies they spawn. Admittedly the comic books have to do that so they can stretch the titles out for decades, but the heroes lose their shine and just become pathetic men/women in costumes afraid to stand up and take on true responsibility in the protection of innocent people when they refuse to stain their hands directly.

Wonder how many people growing up have had their moral outlook profoundly affected by such drawn tales.