Ghost of Machiavelli Lurks in Letters to a Rural New Hampshire Weekly

 by Gary Larson  

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Legions of our brave American military men and women have died, or been wounded in far-off places, to preserve the freedom of letter writers to be dead wrong.

Fire-breathing letters to editors are staples of mainstream media (MSM). Don’t look now, but it is true also in some rural newspapers.

Even here in bucolic New Hampshire, where “Moose Crossing” signs outnumber “No Passing” zones, all hell breaks loose in a little (circ. 5,000) weekly newspaper. Its letters column lures Bush-haters, reciting as if programmed — ah, “garbage out?” — the latest batch of antiwar myths.

One myth, that “he [Bush] misled us into war,” gains traction, polls show. Chalk it up to incessant replay of a Big Lie by Big Media. The lies of the antiwar Left and others give credence to the views of revisionist, cheap-shot politicians. No wonder polls reflect what they do; it’s a slam-dunk in pessimism 7/24. Hatred of “Amerika” is vaguely hinted.

Letters in the little weekly I read repeat the spate of lies about the “lies” of the Bush administration. Without due respect, I believe the lies’ perpetrators — soft, “liberal” politicians — know exactly what they’re doing. Moreover, they know their allegations to be bogus.  They define deceit, giving new meaning to Niccolo Machiavelli’s cynicism way back in n 1513: “Politics have no relation to morality.”

Take this whopper as example of Machiavelli‘s ghost in Gutter Politics 101:  “…the administration manipulated pre-war intelligence.” This is a two-edged sword. It is the SAME intelligence, after all, on which the Senate voted, 77 to 23, including liberal Democrats, to authorize the war. Their short term memory loss is pathetic; their likely motives, base, quite Machiavellian.  He perceptively wrote: “Men are so simple…that he who would trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.” (The Prince.)

License plates here declare “Live Free or Die.” A more succinct recap of Objectivist philosophy one could not hope to find, with apologies to my early hero Ayn Rand. This first-primary state is, dare we say?, still mostly live-free conservative, except for virtually 100% of academia. And you must forgive the fact New Hampshire was the only red state turning blue in 2004. Conservatives here blame liberal émigrés escaping high taxes in Howard Dean’s Vermont and John Kerry’s Massachusetts, and of course, crass liberal MSM, for the incongruity. (Time will tell if the blue state status holds.)

Samples from letters in a single issue of a very old weekly newspaper (Vol. 183, No. 46), the Argus-Champion, out of Claremont, N.H., on November 2, will boggle the minds of fair-minded observers:

– “…a colossal mistake.” Freeing 28 million Afghans, another 25 million Iraqis from tyranny, is a mistake? Wiping out terrorists’ bases, killing and capturing and scattering evil-doers, putting down roots for new peace-loving democracies, is a mistake? What would success be? Taliban rule, Saddam yet in power, incubating terror?

– “…and for what?” Clueless, like many rabid on the New Left, he doesn’t “get it.” To him it’s “occupation,” not liberation, proving obtuseness. Sad, but typical of close-minded hand-wringers on the antiwar Left.

– “Being a military power without morals….” Scolds our military in the style of Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) who, you’ll recall, likened our armed forces to the Nazi thugs and Soviet gulag masters. Shades, too, of Kerry’s portrayal of our military in Vietnam. Smear stoops no lower than these characterizations. 

– “Terrorists in Iraq today. . . are like patriots.” Oh, really? Sort of, like, our Minutemen? And the terrorist’s mass murderer-in-chief, al-Zarqawi, is their George Washington? Come on!  Get real.

– “…an unprovoked invasion.” Did Iraq NOT shoot-to-kill at coalition aircraft for years? Did NOT Saddam pay off bombers’ families? NOT try to kill a US president? NOT invade, then rape Kuwait? NOT kill with chemical weapons — yes, WMDs — more than 5,000 Iraqis in Habaja, Iraq? NOT provide training camps for terrorists? NOT murder hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, their bodies left in unmarked graves? NOT defy all those UN resolutions? NOT launch “scud” missiles at Israel? How many ways can the oblivious ones deny reality?

– “…the White House cover-up of lies that led us to war.” Repeated mantra-like, this cliché assumes the false mantle of truth. It is a lie, bald-faced even, aimed at bringing down a president, to win that next election. That such a lie gains credence at all is a victory of demagoguery over truth, to say nothing of justice. And  proves, again, propaganda works. Joseph Goebbels would be proud, looking up from Hell: Create a lie, he said, and keep repeating it. Soon enough, dummkopf masses buy into it. Wait! Didn’t braying liberal Dems unhesitatingly sign onto a Senate resolution for Gulf War II? They did, history shows, no matter what they now say. (Hey!, you could look it up.)

Presenting lies as fact, invective as truth, as do MSM and letters recycling their lies, is free speech too. It is protected, and has been since our Republic began, by an often-vilified military.  Legions of our brave American military men and women have died, or been wounded in far-off places, to preserve the freedom of letter writers to be dead wrong, making jackasses of themselves. Is this a great country, or what?

Culture: Media

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