Policy Of Appeasement Quotes

The God of the legalistic Christian, on the other hand, is often unpredictable, erratic, and capable of all manner of prejudices. When we view God this way, we feel compelled to engage in some sort of magic to appease Him. Sunday worship becomes a superstitious insurance policy against His whims. This God expects people to be perfect and to be in perpetual control of their feelings and thoughts. When broken people with this concept of God fail—as inevitably they must—they usually expect punishment. So they persevere in religious practices as they struggle to maintain a hollow image of a perfect self. The struggle itself is exhausting. The legalists can never live up to the expectations they project on God.

Appeasement as a policy soon failed. The powerful Babylonian empire, desiring the vast treasures stored in Jerusalem’s Temple, conquered the Holy Land in 586 BCE—razing the building to its foundations. The once glorious city of Jerusalem lay in ruins, a physical embodiment of a spiritual collapse. The Babylonians seized not only the Temple’s material wealth but also carted off its human capital, taking the Israelites’ priests, scholars, and skilled elite back to the court in Babylon—where the exiles wept by its rivers.

Just a taste. That was the Cambion policy, our credo. 'Just take enough to appease the spirit, then move on.' It sounded simple enough, but sometimes taking a little was worse than taking none at all.

President Obama has diminished American power and retreated from the field of battle, fueling rising threats against our nation. He has pursued a foreign policy built on appeasing our adversaries, abandoning our allies, and apologizing for America.

My view is that you don't just talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies, as well. And the diplomacy involves talking to your enemies. You don't reward your enemies necessarily, by talking to them if you're tough and you know what you're doing. You don't appease them. Talking to an enemy is not, in my view, appeasement. I made 15 trips to Syria in 1990-1991 at a time when Syria was on the list of countries who are state sponsors of terrorism. And the 16th trip, guess what? Lo and behold, Syria changed 25 years of policy and agreed for the first time in history to come sit at the table with Israel, which is what Israel wanted at the time. And, thereby, implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist. Now, all I'm saying is that would never have happened if we hadn't been sufficiently dedicated that we were going to keep at it.

The only way to reverse this trend is to mount a campaign to put Obama’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood at the forefront of the political debate, and to educate Americans about the real dangers we face. Americans need to become aware of the Islamic supremacist threat, of the malignant designs of the Muslim Brotherhood, and of the disasters that may lie ahead because of the Obama administration’s policies of appeasing and enabling their evil ambitions.

Neville Chamberlain's politics of appeasement were, as far as we can judge, inspired by good motives; he was probably less motivated by considerations of personal power than were many other British prime ministers, and he sought to preserve peace and to assure the happiness of all concerned. Yet his policies helped to make the Second World War inevitable, and to bring untold miseries to millions of men. Sir Winston Churchill's motives, on the other hand, were much less universal in scope and much more narrowly directed toward personal and national power, yet the foreign policies that sprang from these inferior motives were certainly superior in moral and political quality to those pursued by his predecessor. Judged by his motives, Robespierre was one of the most virtuous men who ever lived. Yet it was the utopian radicalism of that very virtue that made him kill those less virtuous than himself, brought him to the scaffold, and destroyed the revolution of which he was a leader.

But history,” wrote Dodd’s friend Claude Bowers, ambassador to Spain and later Chile, “will record that in a period when the forces of tyranny were mobilizing for the extermination of liberty and democracy everywhere, when a mistaken policy of ‘appeasement’ was stocking the arsenals of despotism, and when in many high social, and some political, circles, fascism was a fad and democracy anathema, he stood foursquare for our democratic way of life, fought the good fight and kept the faith, and when death touched him his flag was flying still.

Thus it is wrong to think that the British Establishment wholeheartedly supported Churchill’s premiership in the darkest days of the Second World War: it tolerated him for the lack of a viable alternative and because he was still popular with the public. It also refused to acknowledge that many of the defeats for which he was being blamed were directly attributable to the failure to heed his warnings and adopt his rearmament proposals in the 1930s. At a deeper level, he could not be forgiven for having been proved right about their flagship policy of those years: appeasement.

On 1 August 1939, Savarkar spoke at a public meeting organized at Tilak Smarak Mandir in Poona. In his speech, he talked about the three different schools of thought prevalent in the Congress, led by three different leaders—Gandhi, Subhas Bose and Manabendranath Roy—and how it is different from the school of thought of the Hindu Mahasabha. He said: In today’s Congress, there are three schools of thought . . . Gandhian school of thought has truth and non-violence as its key ideas. But Gandhian non-violence is inimical to Hindutva. Hindu philosophy says violence for violence sake is bad, but violence is permissible to destroy evil and protect the good, and such violence is good conduct. But Gandhian thought makes no such distinction. They believe in non-violence under all conditions. Second school of thought is led by Subhas Bose and the Forward Bloc. His policies and means used are similar to our thought process and we could work together on certain issues, but even they are obsessed with this mirage of Hindu-Muslim unity. The third school of thought is of Manvendranath (sic) Roy and that is not acceptable to us at all. They believe in the policy of active Muslim appeasement. The Hindu Mahasabha has the interests of Hindus in mind always.

...Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender. Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum. And what then—when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance." And this—this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits—not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty." You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness...

Patriotism comes from the same Latin word as father. Blind patriotism is collective transference. In it the state becomes a parent and we citizens submit our loyalty to ensure its protection. We may have been encouraged to make that bargain from our public school education, our family home, religion, or culture in general. We associate safety with obedience to authority, for example, going along with government policies. We then make duty, as it is defined by the nation, our unquestioned course. Our motivation is usually not love of country but fear of being without a country that will defend us and our property. Connection is all-important to us; excommunication is the equivalent of death, the finality we can’t dispute. Healthy adult loyalty is a virtue that does not become blind obedience for fear of losing connection, nor total devotion so that we lose our boundaries. Our civil obedience can be so firm that it may take precedence over our concern for those we love, even our children. Here is an example: A young mother is told by the doctor that her toddler is allergic to peanuts and peanut oil. She lets the school know of her son’s allergy when he goes to kindergarten. Throughout his childhood, she is vigilant and makes sure he is safe from peanuts in any form. Eighteen years later, there is a war and he is drafted. The same mother, who was so scrupulously careful about her child’s safety, now waves goodbye to him with a tear but without protest. Mother’s own training in public school and throughout her life has made her believe that her son’s life is expendable whether or not the war in question is just. “Patriotism” is so deeply ingrained in her that she does not even imagine an alternative, even when her son’s life is at stake. It is of course also true that, biologically, parents are ready to let children go just as the state is ready to draft them. What a cunning synchronic-ity. In addition, old men who decide on war take advantage of the timing too. The warrior archetype is lively in eighteen-year-olds, who are willing to fight. Those in their mid-thirties, whose archetype is being a householder and making a mark in their chosen field, will not show an interest in battlefields of blood. The chiefs count on the fact that young braves will take the warrior myth literally rather than as a metaphor for interior battles. They will be willing to put their lives on the line to live out the collective myth of societies that have not found the path of nonviolence. Our collective nature thus seems geared to making war a workable enterprise. In some people, peacemaking is the archetype most in evidence. Nature seems to have made that population smaller, unfortunately. Our culture has trained us to endure and tolerate, not to protest and rebel. Every cell of our bodies learned that lesson. It may not be virtue; it may be fear. We may believe that showing anger is dangerous, because it opposes the authority we are obliged to appease and placate if we are to survive. This explains why we so admire someone who dares to say no and to stand up or even to die for what he believes. That person did not fall prey to the collective seduction. Watching Jeopardy on television, I notice that the audience applauds with special force when a contestant risks everything on a double-jeopardy question. The healthy part of us ardently admires daring. In our positive shadow, our admiration reflects our own disavowed or hidden potential. We, too, have it in us to dare. We can stand up for our truth, putting every comfort on the line, if only we can calm our long-scared ego and open to the part of us that wants to live free. Joseph Campbell says encouragingly, “The part of us that wants to become is fearless.” Religion and Transference Transference is not simply horizontal, from person to person, but vertical from person to a higher power, usually personified as God. When

The appeasers had been powerful; they had controlled The Times and The BBC; they had been largely drawn from the upper classes, and their betrayal of England's greatness would be neither forgotten nor forgiven by those who, gulled by the mystique of England's class system, had believed as Englishmen had believed for generations that public school boys governed best. The appeasers destroyed oligarchic rule which, though levelers may protest, had long governed well. If ever men betrayed their class, these were they. Because their possessions were great, the appeasers had much to lose should the Red flag fly over Westminster. That was why they had felt threatened by the hunger riots of 1932. It was also the driving force behind their exorbitant fear and distrust of the new Russia. They had seen a strong Germany as a buffer against bolshevism, had thought their security would be strengthened if they sidled up to the fierce, virile Third Reich. Nazi coarseness, Anti-Semitism, the Reich's darker underside, were rationalized; time, they assured one another, would blur the jagged edges of Nazi Germany. So, with their eyes open, they sought accommodation with a criminal regime, turned a blind eye to its iniquities, ignored its frequent resort to murder and torture, submitted to extortion, humiliation, and abuse until, having sold out all who had sought to stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain and keep the bridge against the new barbarism, they led England herself into the cold damp shadow of the gallows, friendless save for the demoralized republic across the Channel. Their end came when the House of Commons, in a revolt of conscience, wrenched power from them and summoned to the colors the one man who had foretold all that had passed, who had tried, year after year, alone and mocked, to prevent the war by urging the only policy which would have done the job. And now, in the desperate spring of 1940, he resolved to lead Britain and her fading empire in one last great struggle worthy of all they had been and meant, to arm the nation, not only with weapons but also with the mace of honor, creating in every English breast a soul beneath the ribs of death.

China’s claim on Tibet was a classic case of historical distortion, which was buttressed by the British who double-crossed the Himalayan kingdom in their desire to appease China so that they could further their trade interests. Dismissing Indian arguments on the grounds that post 1947 the Indians were only parroting British imperial policy, the Chinese justified their takeover of Tibet on the grounds that in the twelfth century, Tibet had been briefly incorporated into China when the Mongols under Kublai Khan had established the Yuan Dynasty in China (ad 1271-1368).

What is a man, asked Nietzsche, without his powers of defense and attack? He is a nullity. As our civilization has long labored under a one-sided idea of goodness, we now see a false ideal of “the good” dictating a policy of unilateral disarmament, the appeasement of mortal enemies, and the nullification of the U.S. border. Those who object to this “suicide of the west” are racists and Islamophobes. They are cast in the image of Hitler. Here we have adopted an idealism which makes “man amputate those instincts which enable him to be an enemy, to be harmful, to be angry and to insist upon revenge,” wrote Nietzsche. “This method of valuing thus believes itself to be ‘idealistic’; it never doubts that in its concept of the ‘good man’ it has found the highest desideratum.

This was not what they wanted to hear because ever since Barack Obama had become president in 2009, the main policy of the US government toward Russia had been one of appeasement.

The United States, Canada, and Australia had formidable immigration barriers in place, and while the British had admitted 80,000 Jewish refugees, all of that essentially ended after the declaration of war.[33] British-controlled Palestine also began to turn back ships of Jewish immigrants, a policy they would continue all throughout the war and beyond, sticking to strict Jewish immigration quotas to appease the non-Jewish residents there.

The entire French approach was defensive and negative – and a negative mindset takes hold in many counter-productive ways. The huge cost of the Maginot Line and the appeasement and non-aggression line of the French Government and political left also played an enormous part in formulating policy, but this endemic defensive attitude – this rigidity to the methodical battle plan – had ensured that there could be no French march into Germany when Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, nor again when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Had the French done so on either occasion, the Second World War would almost certainly have never taken place.

The British desire to appease Germany before 1933 is intelligible in the light of the reign of liberalism; appeasement, as an enlightened policy of justice for all, including Germany, was a child of that outlook. For over a decade it was promoted (ineffectually, because of French recalcitrance) by men as diverse as J.M. Keynes and Ramsay MacDonald, Gilbert Murray and Stanley Baldwin. But appeasement did not end with the ascent of Hitler to the chancellorship. In this respect, 1933–1935 marked a watershed; appeasement, gradually but perceptibly, changed from a policy based on 'morality' and on a quest for 'justice' to one compelled by fear and expediency. Thus appeasement changed its meaning.

To most Liberals, the concept of political ideology was both alien and abhorrent. Liberalism rejected the rule of dogma and absolutes in politics; it refused to believe that unswerving doctrine should or could be translated into policy. It therefore attempted, in the thirties, to dismiss the notion that Germany under Hitler was in fact governed by the ideology and precepts embodied in Mein Kampf. Even years of Hitlerite persecution at home and Nazi aggression abroad failed to convince many that here indeed was an ideology on the path of fulfilment. No doubt, the refusal of many Britons to admit this stemmed in some measure from a realization of the consequences if it were indeed true: if Nazi ideology was as malign as its detractors contended, and was being enacted, then the prospects for Europe were indeed bleak.

Literally thousands of articles on Germany appeared in the weeklies in the course of the thirties. No more than 25 (!) specifically set out to define, explain or analyse Nazi ideology. Most of the editors apparently regarded that ideology as ridiculous, irrelevant or simply intellectually uninteresting. Even those, like Gavin, who displayed an awareness of the connection in German politics between the idea and the action failed to print analyses of Nazi ideology. Most, simply, viewed polite and policies as the product of material forces, interests and ambitions struggling within a context of a changing set of physical circumstances.

The blindness of the weeklies towards Nazism was the blindness of liberalism. At the core of Nazi ideology stood the concept of race; it interpreted history as a necessary and perpetual conflict of races; and it conceived of morality as a function of racial well-being. Such doctrine was directly antithetical to the precepts of liberalism. Liberals flatly denied its truth and refused to believe that a 'civilised' nation of 70 millions could subscribe to it, let alone base domestic and foreign policies upon it. When faced with the evidence of Hitler's rule, many looked on with despairing and total incomprehension.

The attempt, then, was to explain Nazism in the light of something, for liberals, readily identifiable, rational and precedented, be it in economic or political terms. That such explanations contained and imparted a measure oftruth is undeniable. But the peculiar admixture ofknown and unprecedented elements which constituted Nazism produced something novel and alien which was not explicable in the light of each ofits parts. Nor was the thrust of Nazi internal and foreign policies intelligible without attending to the ideology's racial core. The failure to understand the ideology resulted in the emergence of secondary misconceptions concerning the workings and policies of the Third Reich. For many years, Nazi excesses were attributed to the first flush of revolutionary zeal or to 'evil counsellors', such as Streicher and Goebbels, with whom the Führer surrounded himself. That the evils and excesses were inherent in the ideology and in the system of government in which it was embodied was thus lost upon many observers. Thus liberalism's values and preconceptions served as a necessary backdrop to the emergence and adoption of a policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. Attitudes to war, attitudes to Versailles and perceptions of Nazism constituted the fabric of the backdrop. But while a necessary pre-condition, they were not the sole or indeed main 'cause' of appeasement. Liberalism was responsible for a mood, anti-war and anti-Versailles, and afforded, when necessary, pretexts for that policy.

The policy of appeasement is always fatal. Always. History teaches us.

Today’s liberal foreign policy, to adapt Churchill, is appeasement wrapped in realism inside moral equivalency.

The practice in Washington among the representa- tives of the great grafters is never to make a fight against a bill in both houses. The wisdom of this policy is plain. One house is thereby always permitted to appear to be the friend of the people, while the killing of a measure in one house is all that is necessary. Every Washington newspaper correspondent knows this. Any one may confirm the statement by watching the course of legislation for a few years. In the past, it has been the custom to introduce these fake bills in the house, pass them to appease public clamor, and impose upon the senate the duty of killing them. Perhaps the senators, now that they are elected by the people, will demand the right to pass a few fake bills themselves and let the representatives bear the odium of killing them.

Humanitarian, but hardly controversial; the Count was a secret opponent of the regime, with form to prove it. In January 1939, as Major von Schwerin, he had approached the British Military Attaché in Berlin, Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth Strong, with a deal. If Chamberlain abandoned his policy of appeasement and opposed Hitler, his friends in the army were willing to mount a coup against the Nazis. Lamentably this excellent opportunity was ignored by the Foreign Office. Meanwhile, by 1944 Strong had become Eisenhower’s chief of intelligence.14

Appeasement was a policy put in place by Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister to try to avert war. His theory was that trying to prevent Germany from getting what it wanted would cause more harm than good in the long run. Therefore Britain’s official foreign policy would be that they would fulfill Germany’s wishes, “provided they appeared legitimate and were not enforced with violence,” described in German newspaper Der Spiegel. Chamberlain was aware that the British Empire’s resources were limited and that they really didn’t have the power to stop Hitler. So cooperating with them seemed like a better option.

Here, courtesy of Dan Rather, anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News, is a prime example of how an editorial edge is woven into your "news": This was President Bush's first day at the office, and he did something to quickly please the right flank of his party: he reinstituted an anti-abortion policy that had been in place during his father's term and the Reagan presidency but was lifted during the Clinton years. Rather is telling you in no uncertain terms that President Bush used this important issue to make a political payoff in his first act as president. Compare that to Rather's characterization of Bill Clinton's first day as president: On the anniversary of Roe versus Wade, President Clinton fulfills a promise, supporting abortion rights . . . Today, with the stroke of a pen, President Clinton delivered on his campaign promise to cancel several anti-abortion regulations of the Reagan-Bush years. A cynical player of partisan politics versus a man fulfilling a promise to voters--two very different ways of characterizing men, each of whom was both appeasing a wing of his party and fulfilling a campaign promise. Although I was personally thrilled with Clinton's decisions on abortion rights, I can't pretend, as Dan Rather chose to do, that it was a matter of pure principle. Spin is that simple, that insidious, and a part of your nightly news.

… the [Iranian] clerical regime exploited the West’s appeasement policy to expand its terrorist operations in Europe and the U.S.

By this time next year we shall know whether the Prime Minister’s view of Herr Hitler and the German Nazi Party is right or wrong. By this time next year we shall know whether the policy of appeasement has appeased, or whether it has only stimulated a more ferocious appetite.

Although today it is considered shameful and craven, the policy of appeasement once occupied almost the whole moral high ground. The word was originally synonymous with idealism, magnanimity of the victor and the willingness to right wrongs.

As part of the appeasement policy there must be a settlement with the Duce—all according to that world conqueror’s wishes. They would recognize his title to Abyssinia and his right to intervene in the Spanish war. The Loyalists there were still holding out, in spite of Franco’s frequent announcements that they were beaten. Now the British would recognize Franco’s belligerency, and would force the French to do the same.

But, Kissinger insists, in the tenebrous world of international relations, it didn’t matter. Statesmen can never be sure; they are always forced to act from insufficient knowledge because by the time they can be certain (if that is ever possible), it is probably too late. Reading Hitler’s character and determining his intentions weren’t important. What counted were configurations of power, and “the West should have spent less time assessing Hitler’s motives and more time counterbalancing Germany’s growing strength.” One lesson that Kissinger drew from the West’s trusting, optimistic, wait-and-see policy of appeasement (as we saw in his approach to Salvador Allende) is that “foreign policy builds on quicksand when it disregards actual power relationships and relies on prophecies of another’s intentions.” Foreign policy could not be dictated by the hope that others would do the right thing or by a simple demonstration of goodwill, as attractive as that might be on a human level. It had to be determined by a cold-blooded calculation of power relationships and an ability to project influence. That perception provided the ground for Kissinger’s Realism.

Generally, Morgenthau ignored the hate mail, though he occasionally responded to the more temperate letters. But one public attack that he chose to answer came from the influential, nationally syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop. Among the members of the press, he was the most vociferous of hawks. Even lifelong friends like Isaiah Berlin thought his views on Vietnam “a trifle mad . . . even odious.” In March 1965 Alsop wrote a column directed at Morgenthau that began: “One proof of the wisdom of President Johnson’s Vietnamese policy is its marked success to date.” But that success had generated criticism from credulous politicians like Fulbright and “pompous” professors like Morgenthau, whom Alsop labeled an “appeaser” in the mold of “the be-nice-to-Hitler group in England before 1939.” The mention of Hitler had to be especially wounding to Morgenthau, who said “the gates of the political underworld seem to have opened.” Before Alsop’s column appeared, Morgenthau reported, even those who disagreed with him did so respectfully, but now “I receive every day letters with xenophobic, red-baiting, and anti-Semitic attacks.” Morgenthau responded to Alsop with a long letter to the editor of the Washington Post. The debate, such as it was, turned on the intentions of the Communist Chinese. To Alsop, who prided himself on his knowledge and appreciation of Chinese civilization, the Chinese were historically expansionist, always bent on conquest and therefore analogous to the Nazis of the Third Reich. To which Morgenthau rejoined that “Mao Zedong is not Hitler, that the position of China in Asia is not like that of Nazi Germany in Europe,” and that his opposition to the war in Vietnam could not be equated with the appeasers of the 1930s. No doubt wearily, he took up the task once again of explaining that spheres of influence were a reality of international relations, ignored only at one’s peril, and that if China had managed to extend its power in Asia it was “primarily through its political and cultural superiority and not through conquest.” (Years later, Kissinger would offer a similar assessment of the Chinese.)

Nazis and conservatives had authentic differences, marked by very real conservative defeats. At every crucial moment of decision, however—at each ratcheting up of anti-Jewish repression, at each new abridgment of civil liberties and infringement of legal norms, at each new aggressive move in foreign policy, at each further subordination of the economy to the needs of autarky and hasty rearmament—most German conservatives (with some honorable exceptions) swallowed their doubts about the Nazis in favor of their overriding common interests.

all policy directives which vindicate economic profitability rather than the ensue's of ethical conviction, principle and thus!, moral vindication..are but not!, the conation for championing a venerable and noble cause or end!, that which is just and right!... But rather!..they are the intemperate rapacity and morally depraved excretions of the egoistic mercenary!..whos only commitment and strive in life, is for the appeasing of ones rapacious impulse for the hoarding and coveting of worldly (material) wealth and profit!...all!, at the detriment of the innocent! ".

I’m sorry, young caretaker,” Lomo said. “By coming to Wyrmroost, you inherited calamitous trouble. And look what you do!” “Flip over my rocking chair?” “You stand and fight! While a nation of ancient adults cowers behind policies of appeasement.

The whole world stands to be engulfed. The destruction, when it is unleashed, will be unprecedented. The totalitarians in Russia, China, Iran and the Arab world are preparing for war. Now that Bush's position is collapsing and the Party of Outright Appeasement has begun its reign, the enemies of freedom see their chance. Cowardice and stupidity have conspired, and the result is "opportunity." Western progress has finally given the totalitarian regimes a generation of "last men," about whom Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote: "The earth hath become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small." The "last man" comes at the end, when civilization begins to die. And indeed, the Western democracies are dying. I am reminded of Titus Livius's description of Rome's descent into despotism as "the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them." We congratulate ourselves on the interest-group demagogy that produces policy in the West, throwing up words like "democracy" and "freedom" when the reality of the situation is better described by words like "anarchy" and "licentiousness.

Biggest mistake Reagan ever did re: foreign policy? 1984 decision to appease Hezbollah with Lebanon withdrawal