{"id":57,"date":"2011-05-19T20:55:21","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T00:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=57"},"modified":"2011-05-19T20:55:21","modified_gmt":"2011-05-20T00:55:21","slug":"the-killing-of-bin-laden-and-the-hypocrisy-of-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-killing-of-bin-laden-and-the-hypocrisy-of-democrats.html","title":{"rendered":"The Killing of bin Laden and the Hypocrisy of Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some readers of this column will no doubt remember the popular 80\u2019s television series Dallas<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em>Although the show ran for 14 seasons, due to what may have amounted to one of the biggest blunders in television history\u2014the exiting of a pivotal character\u2014one of these seasons was written off as a dream!\u00a0 To the dismay of many a viewer, the opening episode of the tenth season revealed that all of the events from the last segment of the eighth season through the entire ninth season never happened.\u00a0 <\/em>Watching the collective response of leftists to the killing of Osama bin Laden, I am reminded of this chapter of Dallas<\/em>, <\/em>for it is difficult not to think that the happenings of the better part of the last decade are as well the contents of a dream.<\/p>\n

All throughout the Bush years, leftists relentlessly took our last president to task for his prosecution of \u201cthe War on Terror.\u201d\u00a0 From \u201cwire tapping\u201d to the war in Iraq, from the establishment of secret CIA prisons\u2014so called \u201cblack sites\u201d\u2014to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, from the employment of \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques\u201d to his insensitivity to Muslims and disregard of \u201cworld opinion,\u201d there wasn\u2019t a single step taken by George W. Bush\u2019s administration to which leftists didn\u2019t fiercely object.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet now all of that has apparently been forgotten.\u00a0<\/p>\n

President Obama\u2019s supporters in the media and elsewhere are positively giddy over the killing of bin Laden.\u00a0 That Americans should relish in the death of this terrorist is a proposition with which I wholeheartedly agree, mind you; what is worth marveling at, what is more than just a bit hypocritical, is that leftist Democrats <\/em>should relish in it.<\/p>\n

After all, in order to locate bin Laden, this president had to rely upon a trail of information that his predecessor assembled by way of the very strategies and tactics that he and his fellow partisans staunchly resisted.\u00a0 The details of all this are still a bit murky, but at the very least what appears to be increasingly indisputable is that had it not been for the implementation of the very \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques\u201d\u2014what during the Bush years was called \u201ctorture\u201d\u2014we never would have found bin Laden.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t all.<\/p>\n

When Bush launched the Iraq War, Democrats complained that Bush had (1) \u201cunilaterally\u201d (2) invaded a sovereign nation (3) that never attacked us.\u00a0 For these reasons, this war was deemed at once \u201cimmoral\u201d and \u201cillegal.\u201d\u00a0 Now, Pakistan is also a sovereign nation.\u00a0 Yet this past week, Obama undercut its sovereignty by invading it, <\/em>and he did so unilaterally.\u00a0 <\/em>Moreover, from latest accounts, he did so in order to assassinate <\/em>an unarmed <\/em>man.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Again, the point here isn\u2019t that I <\/em>necessarily think that Obama acted wrongly.\u00a0 The point is that by the standards according to which the left judged George W. Bush, there isn\u2019t a leftist alive who shouldn\u2019t be demanding, not Osama\u2019s <\/em>head, but Obama\u2019s. <\/em><\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t just the Democrat\u2019s hypocrisy to be disclosed by this latest news cycle, though.\u00a0 The Republican\u2019s ignorance is also now on full display.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The notion that Democrats are \u201cappeasers\u201d or \u201cpacifists\u201d is now seen for the fiction that it is.\u00a0 Anyone remotely familiar with the nature of leftism would have already known this.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his quest to \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d his society by deploying his brethren\u2019s resources in the service of his own plans, the leftist has always known that, as Rahm Emmanuel once famously remarked, he can never allow \u201ca good crisis<\/em>\u201d go to waste.\u00a0 In times of crisis, the resistance to the government\u2019s imposition upon the citizenry of \u201cthe solution\u201d to the latest epic challenge with which that new acquisition of power would ordinarily be met is rendered negligible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The liberties to which Americans have grown attached and that were bequeathed to them by their English forbears are located in the interstices of the multiple \u201cchecks and balances\u201d on power that our Constitution delineates. Since it is this wide dispersion of power and authority that remains the most formidable obstacle to the realization of the leftist\u2019s utopian dreams, his disdain toward it<\/em> is inseparable from his disdain toward the liberties that it makes possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What this in turn means is that, far from being dovish about war, the leftist can\u2019t but love it, for nothing so epitomizes a crisis as war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

War is not just a<\/em> pretext for those in government to amass ever greater concentrations of power and authority over the lives of citizens; it is the <\/em>ultimate pretext for this purpose.\u00a0 In the name of protecting the liberty of the individual, the fact or just the belief that there is a war permits the government to actually erode that liberty.\u00a0 Indeed, it is impossible that it should avoid doing so during war.<\/p>\n

And when the war in question is being waged, not against a determinate, concrete enemy\u2014i.e. a nation-state\u2014but an abstraction like Drugs, Crime, Poverty, Racism, or\u2014as in the present case\u2014Islamic Terror, it is inescapably a war in perpetuity, and inescapably the largest threat to a people\u2019s freedom.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

War is sometimes necessary, but it is crucial for all lovers of our liberties to be forever mindful that any one <\/em>who calls for potentially endless war, though he may be among us, is most certainly not <\/em>of us.<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some readers of this column will no doubt remember the popular 80\u2019s television series Dallas.\u00a0 Although the show ran for 14 seasons, due to what may have amounted to one of the biggest blunders in television history\u2014the exiting of a pivotal character\u2014one of these seasons was written off as a dream!\u00a0 To the dismay of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Killing of bin Laden and the Hypocrisy of Democrats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Killing of bin Laden and the Hypocrisy of Democrats\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Some readers of this column will no doubt remember the popular 80\u2019s television series Dallas.\u00a0 Although the show ran for 14 seasons, due to what may have amounted to one of the biggest blunders in television history\u2014the exiting of a pivotal character\u2014one of these seasons was written off as a dream!\u00a0 To the dismay of…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-killing-of-bin-laden-and-the-hypocrisy-of-democrats.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-05-20T00:55:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Killing of bin Laden and the Hypocrisy of Democrats","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"nofollow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Killing of bin Laden and the Hypocrisy of Democrats","og_description":"Some readers of this column will no doubt remember the popular 80\u2019s television series Dallas.\u00a0 Although the show ran for 14 seasons, due to what may have amounted to one of the biggest blunders in television history\u2014the exiting of a pivotal character\u2014one of these seasons was written off as a dream!\u00a0 To the dismay of…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-killing-of-bin-laden-and-the-hypocrisy-of-democrats.html","og_site_name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","article_published_time":"2011-05-20T00:55:21+00:00","author":"Jack Kerwick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-killing-of-bin-laden-and-the-hypocrisy-of-democrats.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-killing-of-bin-laden-and-the-hypocrisy-of-democrats.html","name":"The Killing of bin Laden and the Hypocrisy of Democrats","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-05-20T00:55:21+00:00","dateModified":"2011-05-20T00:55:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-killing-of-bin-laden-and-the-hypocrisy-of-democrats.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-killing-of-bin-laden-and-the-hypocrisy-of-democrats.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-killing-of-bin-laden-and-the-hypocrisy-of-democrats.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Killing of bin Laden and the Hypocrisy of Democrats"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/","name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","description":"Beliefnet Voices - 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