Cindy Sheehan shouts that George Bush is the world's biggest terrorist. Ben Stein says he's the world's greatest asset. Whether Stein is correct or not (I think he is), Sheehan is certainly not. After all, who would you rather meet on a deserted street, a jihadi from Fallujah, if there are any left, or George Bush?
Anyway, Stein's case for claiming Bush to be a great leader is here:
A few humble theses:
There is such a thing as evil in this world and such a thing as good. It is simply not true that all is relative and similar. Beheading Iraqi civilians with a saw on the Internet is absolutely evil. Helping children in Mosul get pure water is absolute good. Sending homicide bombers to blow up elementary schools at a kibbutz is evil. Treating the children of your enemies in the finest hospitals in Israel is good.
In Europe and Asia and South America and in much of North America, this idea is unknown. All is relative and the only point is to get away another day without having the evil ones attack you. Appeasing the terrorists, ignoring them and their instigators, pretending that the good guys are the bad guys -- all of these are now standard practice in the capitals of the world, and in the academies of America and in the Democratic Party at high levels.
There is one great man standing between us and this capitulation to evil: that man is George Bush, and he has two great allies, Tony Blair and John Howard. If we did not have George Bush at the helm, if we had a moral relativist like Kerry or Gore, we would even now be playing the same appeasing games as Chamberlain played with Hitler, and which France and Germany, Spain and Italy, Norway and Belgium, tragically, even Canada, play with the enemies of the human spirit.
By a great providence, we were sent George Bush. In his mind, there is such a thing as evil. Terrorism is evil. Racism is evil. The murder of unborn babies is evil. Torturing a totally innocent Terri Schiavo to death is evil. He sees it, acts on it, actively works not just to get along day by day, but to keep evil at bay and to overcome it where it can be overcome. As time goes by, I come to realize that George Bush, with all of his faults, is the spiritual heir to Abraham Lincoln, to Martin Luther King, Jr., to Winston Churchill, to the late Pope John Paul II. How unbelievably lucky we are to have him, and how grateful we should be.
The terrifying part is that he will be gone from power in less than three years. Then what? The evil will remain in men's souls, and who will be there to fight it? We have to start thinking right now of who sees and recognizes the difference between good and evil and start energizing ourselves to make that man or woman President. George Bush's shoes will be terrifyingly difficult to fill.
Stein has a point. In order to defend Western civilization one has to recognize that evil exists. Any politician who sees evil as purely the subjective revulsion of individual or collective taste is completely unsuited for leadership in these difficult times. Above all else we need men and women at the helm who possess a sense of moral clarity and who have not succumbed to the post-modern relativism which afflicts and paralyzes the judgment of so many of our educated elites. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were/are such men. Who will follow in their train? Surely not anyone endorsed by Ms Sheehan.
