On Politics, We Can Always See the Whites of Their Eyes.
Andy Rooney being a Useful Idiot on Memorial Day, War and Peace
by: Scott Martin posted: 2009-05-25 13:37:00
Viewed 542 times. 1 Comments.
Bruce Thornton wrote:
Lenin called them "useful idiots," those people living in liberal democracies who by giving moral and material support to a totalitarian ideology in effect were braiding the rope that would hang them. Why people who enjoyed freedom and prosperity worked passionately to destroy both is a fascinating question, one still with us today. Now the useful idiots can be found in the chorus of appeasement, reflexive anti-Americanism, and sentimental idealism trying to inhibit the necessary responses to another freedom-hating ideology, radical Islam.
Throughout Andy Rooney's three decades on 60 Minutes, he has served as a useful idiot on behalf of nearly every enemy of freedom and anti-American idea that has come around the bend. Brilliantly, too. One minute he's waxing romantic on the smell of old books recently found in the attic, and the next minute he's making a seemingly reasonable statement about climate change.
I admire Andy Rooney's ability to make frightening statements of a dangerous and deadly ideology sound like an innocuous offhand comment that all should find agreeable. He did so once again last night, this time during his monologue on Memorial Day.
After a couple examples of men who died in past wars, Rooney said the following:
For too many Americans, Memorial Day has become just another day off. There's only so much time any of us can spend remembering those we loved who have died, but the men, boys really, who died in our wars deserve at least a few moments of reflection during which we consider what they did for us.They died.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the gist of what Rooney learned as a war reporter. He is the sort of journalist who considers death in war to be newsworthy. Death is not news in war. War is about the scoreboard. War is about winning and losing, and about bigger ideas like freedom and defeating evil that make death seem insignificant to most of us. Until liberals like Andy Rooney put it into "perspective" for us.
There is more bravery at war than in peace, and it seems wrong that we have so often saved this virtue to use for our least noble activity - war. The goal of war is to cause death to other people.
A more dangerous perspective would be difficult to contemplate. War is our least noble activity? The reality is that American wars have historically been America at its noblest. We have fought for our freedom, we have fought for the freedom of others who were too weak or too afraid to fight for their own. We have fought hot wars against the evils of Hitler. We fought and won a cold war against the communist Soviet Union. Until recently, we warred against the evils of terrorism. Rooney's words opposed our heroic actions at every turn.
I wish we could dedicate Memorial Day, not to the memory of those who have died at war, but to the idea of saving the lives of the young people who are going to die in the future if we don’t find some new way - some new religion maybe - that takes war out of our lives.
America's wars have made life better (and even possible) for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Death would be preferable to this idea of a false peace. Peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is the absence of fear, or the presence of a meaningful faith that overrides any fear. Those who chose to go to war against evil and government oppression chose the route of peace. Should we as a nation ever agree with Rooney's dangerous vision of peace, peace will die. If we do find some way, some new religion - Obamunism maybe? - America will cease to be a great nation. We will cease to be the ideological ancestors of Patrick Henry, whose words ought to be remembered on this and every Memorial Day.
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
I've been watching Andy Rooney's couple minutes of cranky cantankerism on 60 Minutes once a week for the majority of my life. I find him endearing on one level, although it's been a long time since I considered him a journalistic role model. Whether or not I wish to see any other portion of the show, I still choose to record it and at skip forward to his segment each week. His pieces are still worth watching, his insights on the mundane often are superb. But he has been on the wrong side of the battle between democracy and socialism since he first wrote a column, and long before he first appeared on TV.
Useful idiots cause no harm to those who know what they are, but they are quite dangerous to those who listen for two minutes and accept what they hear as gospel. Andy Rooney's vision of peace is a recipe for hell on Earth. It is a recipe for chains and slavery, and there is no virtue in either.
Tags: liberty, War, Andy Rooney, Memorial Day,
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I thought this guy was dead. Go figure.