Fantastic Forties

Fantastic Forties
by Jennifer King, Managing Editor

February 11, 2004

"The Heretical Housewife"

Managing Editor Jennifer King Recently, I had the opportunity to hear the Glenn Miller band in concert. I took my children and a few of their musically inclined friends and as we sat enjoying the tunes I pondered on what made this music great, and so uniquely American. It was I decided, the boundless optimism with which they were infused. The Forties will always be remembered as the War Years, and Americans certainly faced a grim reality on December 8th, 1941. Yet the music of the War Years is relentlessly cheery, patriotic and enthusiastic. If Americans harbored doubts about their eventual victory in the War, their music never did.

American culture has changed markedly in the last six decades, but what has changed most is that sense of dogged inevitability and the righteousness of the American cause. Americans in 1941 had just lived through the Great Depression. They lived with the harsh reality of a threadbare economy and few jobs and they dealt with it. All in the certainty that someday things would improve. They grimly noted the gathering fascist menace growing on the European continent and on the Asian one, but a certain naivety colored the vision of how dire the threat really was. However, there were few pacifists left when December 8th arrived.

Americans still have that character, that selfless bravery, that sense of a shared destiny. We saw it gloriously emerge in the actions of our fellow citizens on September 11th. Yet, two years later, the seriousness has utterly departed - at least from the ranks of the Democratic Party. The bloviating Michael Moore can fatuously declare President Bush “a deserter” and his chosen candidate, Wesley Clark refuses to demur, despite the facts being to the contrary. Howard Dean, mercifully fading since his widely disseminated “I Have A Scream” rant, postulates that the Bush Administration is “the most dangerous administration in my lifetime.” And Hillary Clinton ridiculously accuses the Bush Administration of “erasing the progress of the entire 20th century.” Ah yes, Republicans wanting to put women back in the kitchen and blacks back at the rear of the bus. How original! How droll!

As the candidates make tracks on the campaign trail, one might reasonably ask where all the adults have gone. Indeed, the Democrats and their brethren on the Left seem to have utterly forgotten September 11th and the consequences for our modern world. It seems fantastic, unbelievable that we citizens of the 21st century should be fighting an anachronistic religious war. Yet that is exactly what we face. Like the Romans confronting the Huns we civilized and sophisticated types face the jihadists, holy warriors convinced that the route to Heaven lays just beyond the trigger on their detonator belt. Shahid who are firmly convinced that - not only will they attain paradise, but that they can then vouch for 70 of their relatives.

The Western mind, influenced by Judeo-Christianity, revels in the worth of each individual being. We should not forget that other philosophies - Japan’s militarism, the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler, and the communism of Stalin - all subjected an individual’s worth to the perceived common good of the state. The Bolsheviks murdered kulaks in pursuit of their utopian dream, the Nazis murdered those deemed unfit in pursuit of ethnic purity.

The threat posed by socialists, Communists, Nazis and jihadists is the same. After all, their goal - the complete annihilation of Western society - is the same. It is declared openly in Wahhabist mosques every Friday. To ignore it is folly.

Yet, the Democratic hopefuls do just that. John F. Kerry would have us adjudicate every national security issue before the hopelessly corrupt U.N. Howard Dean would impulsively pull our troops out of Iraq - dooming that emerging nation to yet more years of chaos and grief. Hillary Clinton would do both, along with selling more missile technology to China and North Korea in the naïve hopes that they would “be our friends.”

This is immaturity at best. It is rooted either in a craven, high schoolish desire to be popular, or in a massive insecurity/guilt complex about U.S. superpower status. It does not behoove those who would be President to be beholden to either one.

The United States has had many Presidents who understood our power and the great goodness of our citizenry. In our century Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan assumed the role history had assigned them. Americans came to liberate, and to keep peace in the world.

It is unfortunate that today’s Democratic candidates cannot remember that history.

Perhaps they should dust off those old War LPs. ***

Photo of Jennifer King courtesy of staff files