SAINT
GARY VERSUS THE CHINESE DRAGON
Bauer alleges "Communist China
is developing one of the most daunting conventional theater missile
challenges in the world... which could have significant implications
for regional stability."
Bauer's Family Research Council
Website boasts an FAQ entitled "Morality
in Foreign Policy." Did you know the only immoral foreign
country is China? Now I don't for one minute doubt Bauer's religious
zeal. I have no doubt Bauer is a bonafide True Believer. But perhaps
I may be forgiven for doubting Bauer's recall, not to mention
his common sense.
Has Bauer forgotten how President Kennedy reacted to Khrushchev's
attempt to install Soviet missiles in what he considered "America's
own backyard?" Has Bauer forgotten that President Clinton
recently offered a dangerously destabilizing TMD umbrella to Japan,
China's most threatening neighbor, and worse, Taiwan's secessionist
elite, in "China's own backyard?" And finally, has Bauer
forgotten the Golden Rule? You know, "Do unto others...?"
Or does Bauer's foreign policy morality mean the Monroe Doctrine
applies only to America but not to China?
Daunting? Gary Bauer, sitting in the Oval Office, Commander in
Chief of the armed forces of the World's Only Remaining Superpower,
barely able to contain himself as he contemplates Holy War against
the Satanic Yellow Peril. Now that's daunting. Thank God Gary
Bauer's theocratic arrogance is not shared by tolerant
Christians Billy Graham and Pat Robertson.
A GEOGRAPHY
LESSON
Taiwan is on the other side of the
Pacific Ocean, Gary. Taiwan is part of China. Go to your library.
Crack open your Rand McNally. Find mainland China. Look at where
the offshore Chinese island of Taiwan is, a mere ninety miles
to the east of China's eastern seaboard. Notice the tiny sliver
of blue between the two? That's the Taiwan Strait.
Now travel east. That's right, to the right. No, don't stop, not
yet. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. Now stop.
You are now on the California coast. See that vast expanse of
blue in between China and America? That's the Pacific Ocean. The
widest ocean on the planet. Eight thousand miles wide. One third
the circumference of our planet.
Beijing's missiles were fired at Chinese territory, and that's
where they landed. They weren't fired at the Lower Forty-eight.
They weren't fired at Alaska. They weren't fired at the Hawaiian
islands. Beijing's missiles had nothing to do with America.
AMERICA
AIN'T GOT NO DAWG IN THIS FIGHT
According to the constitutions of
both the Peoples' Republic of China (mainland China) and the Republic
of China (Taiwan), Taiwan is an integral part of a single unified
China. The conflict between Beijing and Taipei is part of a painfully
protracted Chinese Civil War predating not just the Cold War,
but WWII, over which regime is the legitimate ruler of that single
unified China.
With the end of the Cold War, the struggle between Beijing and
Taipei ceased being part of a global showdown between capitalism
and communism, and reverted to the status of a purely internal
power struggle.
Even factoring in the noisy agitation for "independence"
from a minority of militant secessionists spearheaded by pro-Japanese
quisling Lee Teng-hui, the struggle between Beijing and Taipei
remains a domestic Chinese affair, similar to the escalating tensions
between Washington and Richmond prior to 1861.
In 1861, over eight thousand miles to the east of China, America
fought a civil war. The American Civil War was none of China's
business. In 1999, eight thousand miles to the west of America,
China is fighting a civil war. The Chinese Civil War is none of
America's business. Is this such a difficult concept for interventionist
busybodies to grasp?
GARY
BAUER, YOU'RE NO RONALD REAGAN
Bauer remarked he was "appalled
that former President Bush would adopt the mantra of the Clinton-Gore
administration, which can only encourage military aggression by
the repressive government of China."
Bauer seems to have suffered another memory lapse. Ronald Reagan
"constructively engaged" the far more repressive Mao
Zedong and Deng Xiaoping regimes, and was absolutely correct in
doing so. George Bush was Reagan's vice-president. Reagan's China
policy was Bush's China policy. When Bush succeeded Reagan he
carried on Reagan's China policy, which by the way, was also Jimmy
Carter's China policy, Gerald Ford's China policy, and Richard
Nixon's China policy. If Bauer has a problem with Bush's China
policy, then he has a problem with Reagan's China policy.
Gary Bauer has been running belatedly on Ronald Reagan's coattails,
positioning himself as the heir to Reagan's legacy, never passing
up an opportunity to remind America he was Reagan's domestic policy
advisor. Or is that Domestic Policy Advisor? It's hard not to
laugh out loud when Bauer takes himself so seriously.
The Great Communicator was an affable economic conservative, not
a strident religious conservative. Reagan's most valuable and
enduring legacy, after all, the one which bears his name, was
"Reaganomics." Reagan was a leader savvy enough and
tolerant enough to embrace a diverse constituency. He won two
consecutive terms to the White House by inviting the American
public to enter an inclusivist Republican "Big Tent."
When
Bauer looks into his mirror each morning, who looks back at him?
An easygoing economic conservative with libertarian leanings?
Or a humorless religious fanatic who smugly pigeonholes both fellow
Americans and unseen foreigners into tidy categories of "Good"
and "Evil?"
Reagan made you his Domestic Policy Advisor, Gary, not his Foreign
Policy Advisor. You profess enormous respect for Reagan's foreign
policy judgment. You ought to. Reagan affirmed his good judgment
by not appointing you to such a sensitive position.
AMERICA
IS NOT GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
Bauer lambasted George W. Bush for
urging a relaxation of American super computer export controls.
"It is shocking that a Republican presidential candidate
would advocate a policy that shows less regard for our national
security than the current irresponsible policies of the Clinton-Gore
administration."
What's really shocking is how casually Bauer invokes "national
security," presuming that the federal government speaks for
"the nation as a whole" and that its interests are "higher"
than the "mere" commercial interests of private American
citizens.
What makes America unique is the Founders' understanding that
the interests of the government are supposed to be subordinate
to the interests of private citizens. The real America, where
real Americans live, is its civil society , its private sector,
its business community, not our leech-infested nation's capital.
The real America has its address on Main Street and Wall Street,
not Pennsylvania Avenue and K Street.
If "Government of the People, by the People, and for the
People" is going to be a living reality and not a cruel hoax,
then the answer to the question "Who decides what may be
freely traded in the open marketplace?" had better be sovereign
American citizens, not petty despots.
Bauer's viewpoint certainly reflects the assumptions of contemporary
America's statist nomenklatura, but hasn't the faintest
resemblance to our Founding Fathers' deepest convictions on the
proper relationship between government and the individual.
America is not government property. America is private property.
DO BUSINESSMEN
HAVE HUMAN RIGHTS?
Take Normal Trade Relations or NTR,
formerly known inaccurately and misleadingly as "Most Favored
Nation," or MFN. "China violates Chinese citizens' religious
freedom," says Bauer. Therefore to punish the Beijing government
he wants to sic our federal leviathan on American businessmen,
threatening them with naked government coercion if they dare exercise
their constitutional right to engage in free trade.
Forget about trampling over the economic rights of Chinese entrepreneurs
and consumers in China's private sector, what about what Bauer
wants to do to his fellow Americans' economic rights? Correct
me if I'm wrong, but I thought property rights were a fundamental
American value?
Does Bauer even know why we fought the Cold War? Does Bauer even
understand that the defining distinction between capitalism and
communism was that capitalism upheld the sanctity of private property
and free trade, while communism demeaned them? Does Bauer realize
when he condemns free enterprise how much he sounds like a Soviet
commissar?
COLD
WARRIOR WITHOUT A CLUE
Gary Bauer blasted CEOs of America's
Fortune 500 companies for participating in Fortune's Global Forum
in Shanghai. "Are American businessmen so beguiled by profits
that they are willing to abandon their country's most cherished
ideals of freedom, democracy and human rights? These gentlemen
seem to have forgotten that they are Americans first and businessmen
second"
Beguiled
by profits? Forgotten they are Americans?
Does Gary Bauer remember how America defeated the Soviet Union?
Let me rephrase that. Does Gary Bauer have the foggiest clue how
America won the Cold War in the first place?
America did not defeat the Soviets on the battlefield. America
was engaged in a Cold War, remember? A Cold War is, by definition,
a war which never flares into open conflict. America's military
never directly confronted the Soviet military.
Instead the capitalist world, led by America, defeated the communist
world, led by the Soviets, by bankrupting it. Wars are expensive.
Wars must be subsidized by profits from the private sectors of
warring nations. Capitalist America defeated communist Russia
by showing profits for 184 straight quarters, from 1945 to 1991,
while the latter continually hemorrhaged red ink.
Mikhail
Gorbachev threw in the towel when it finally dawned on him the
Soviet Union's money-losing economic system was in Chapter 11
and had no hope of competing with America's profit-making economic
system.
Do you want to know who defeated communism, Gary? The American
businessmen you've been busy slandering with accusations of treason
defeated communism.
COMRADE
BAUER, MEET COMRADE HALL
"Here
again we witnessed the spectacle of U.S. businessmen putting profits
ahead of the principles of freedom and democracy... freedom of
worship, freedom of speech and the right to just wages for labor
are higher American ideals [than free trade.]"
"If
the corporate and financial empires can accumulate such vast wealth,
make profits in the billions, why can't this rich nation of ours
guarantee basic human rights for everyone, a decent job at union
wages... and put people before profits."
The first quote, denouncing American capitalists and condemning
the profit motive, was taken from remarks made to the press by
Gary Bauer.
The second quote, denouncing American capitalists and condemning
the profit motive, was taken from Gus
Hall's Communist Party, USA web site.
Or was it vice-versa?
GARY
BAUER'S UN-AMERICAN VALUES
One cannot uphold American values
without defending freedom, hence free enterprise, also known as
capitalism. This of course means, God forbid, defending capitalists,
including the creative and industrious Americans who have made
great American companies like Hughes, Loral, McDonnell Douglas
and Boeing the world-class commercial enterprises they are today.
Gary
Bauer's "American values" are insidiously un-American,
that is unless we consider the Communist Party, USA's values "American."
Self-styled super patriot Bauer unwittingly demonstrates how far
modern Americans have strayed from the path laid out by our Founding
Fathers a mere two centuries ago. You want to be afraid of something,
Gary? Be afraid of that. Be very afraid.
GARY
BAUER'S COMMUNIST MORAL PREMISES
Gary Bauer imagines that ordinary
Americans living their own lives and minding their own business
have mysteriously incurred some sort of moral obligation to reform
the political systems of every foreign nation from Albania to
Zaire. Bauer presumes that his rightist globocop perception of
what Americans owe the world, and conversely, what the world owes
America, represents a proud, distinctly "American" idealism.
Does it really? How is Gary Bauer's sanctimonious assertion that
Americans who enjoy the blessings of liberty have a moral obligation
to underwrite "human rights" and "democracy"
in a less free Third World, any different from communists' and
socialists' sanctimonious assertions that Americans who enjoy
the blessings of material prosperity have a moral obligation to
"share the wealth" with a less well to do Third World?
Gary Bauer is no champion of American values. Gary Bauer is the
farthest thing from an authentic champion of American values.
If Gary Bauer is the least bit curious about what a principled
foreign policy grounded in authentic American values would look
like, he need look no further than George Washington's Farewell
Address of 1796, a treasure trove of the most astute foreign policy
advice a great patriot ever bequeathed his nation.
Americans who understand what values are quintessentially American,
know that politically and legally "Nobody owes anybody anything,
except to leave them the hell alone." This is as true between
individual Americans as it is between America and the nations
of the world.
With homegrown "friends" like Gary Bauer, do American
values need foreign enemies?