September 27, 2004
Warm, Cuddly, Deadly
I'd like to live in Teresa Heinz Kerry's world. No, I'm not talking about being a pampered billionaire, I'm talking about her world where everybody is a rational actor.
She said the United States needs a different approach in the world. "The way we live in peace in a family, in a marriage, in the world, is not by threatening people, is not by showing off your muscles. It's by listening, by giving a hand sometimes, by being intelligent, by being open and by setting high standards," she said at the CSU rally.
That may work for most people in their family lives, but it simply doesn't work for everybody nor does it work all the time in the world. They're are plenty of people in prison for whom all those non-forceful methods simply don't work. And does she honestly think we can sit down with Osama and work this whole 'infidels-must-die' thing out with listening and setting high standards?
This sort of thinking gets people killed. But it doesn't stop there.
"There are about 50 countries in the world that have the capability to build nuclear weapons. Are we going to attack them all?" she said.Are all countries equal? Does Canada follow the same foreign policy as North Korea? Of course not. So why should different countries, with different political systems, be treated the same? It's egalitarianism run amok. Homicidal dictators who feel no compunction in killing people should be treated differently than representative governments that take great care of foreigners and citizens alike.
I realize that she is the wife of the candidate, not the candidate, but I get tired of trite moralizing and an inability to face up to reality.
