| Rick Perlstein has a fantastic post -- "Bedwetter Nation" -- on the reception Iranian president Ahmadinejad received on his trip to the United States compared to a similar one Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev made in 1959.
Basically, Kruschev - a real threat to the US, unlike Iran - was treated with dignity and allowed to speak freely.
Had America suddenly succumbed to a fever of weak-kneed appeasement? Had the general running the country-the man who had faced down Hitler!-proven himself what the John Birch Society claimed he was: a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy?
No. Nikita Khrushchev simply visited a nation that had character. That was mature, well-adjusted. A nation confident we were great.
Ahmadinejad, of course, received a less warm welcome. Conservatives are even threatening to sap funds from Columbia University, the one institution that dared allow Ahmadinejad to speak - albeit while the school's president in his introduction castigated him, and the audience openly mocked him.
The culprit is, of course, conservative rhetoric. The shrillness of the fear mongering is inversely proportion to the willingness of the American public to engage in the neocon's Next Big Thing, Iran. The media co-conspires. Or, as Perlstein writes, "The worst thing about it, however, is how many people who should know better have surrendered it. They've lowered us all to their own pants-piddling level."
Can we win our nation back? Or will we continue to grovel in fear? |
