UK politician Iain Duncan Smith has an excellent article in The Spectator on why he supports the reelection of George W. Bush. I have great respect for Mr. Smith, and he provides one of the more eloquent and expansive defenses of the President.
The protesters who marched through New York two week ago under the banner of Michael Moore were united solely by a negative. The Bush-haters have neither a plan nor a purpose. Their sophistication has become sophistry. Their panacea for global politics is to pray-in-aid the United Nations, the body which for 12 years stood by as Saddam Hussein flouted its every resolution, and whose officials — as now appears — were engaged in the systematic corruption of the oil-for-food programme, channelling funds into the pockets of Saddam’s own relatives. This outrage has gone scarcely reported, while Michael Moore makes lucrative hay with some disconnected allegations, pointing in contradictory directions, about the Bush family’s business interests.
The UN is an institution with a genius for inaction. It cannot lead nations: nations must lead it. But to the Michael Moore Bush-haters ‘leadership’ is cant for oppression and exploitation, and the rudderless UN is the institutional image of themselves — a camp whose pompous self-regard is in inverse proportion to its achievements and its vision. As Nick Cohen recently concluded in the New Statesman, ‘There is no longer a Left with a message of hope for the human race. The audiences at Michael Moore’s films … have no policy to offer. The noise of their self-righteous anger is merely a cover for an indifference bred of failure.’
The decline of the Tories in England has been a long, sad story. However, at least there remains some within the Conservative Party with a certain sense of vision. As long as men like Iain Duncan Smith continue to provide such eloquent defenses of freedom and continue to push for something better than the long, slow crawl towards statism and decline, there is yet hope. It is strange that a Labourite Europhile such as Tony Blair and a Tory such as Iain Duncan Smith would see eye-to-eye on anything, but it is clear to those willing to see that the exigencies of defeating terrorism and promoting freedom in the Middle East transcent temporal politics.
Jay-
As I remember, you weren’t the biggest fan of IDS when he ran the British Conservative Party. But perhaps you find him better in his post leadership role. I can certainly empathize with that myself. He wasn’t leadership material, but is an effective MP notwithstanding.
I agree the Tories need a comeback, but they did better at the Euro Elections. If anything they are not the ones who are responsible for the scandal ridden Scottish Parliament, the powerless Welsh Assembly, and the treacherous terrorist appeasing Belfast Agreement that brought about the now suspended Northern Ireland Assembly. Devolution has largely been a massive failure on all 3 fronts. Blair still needs the votes of Scottish Labour MP’s on english issues to get his way. On many domestic fronts Labour couldn’t have been more wrong.
The simply British values of the Conservative Party will hopefully guide them back into a majority during the expected elections next may.