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July 27, 2006
Where are the Truman Democrats?
At the tail-end of a post about the funky Silver Lake neighborhood in Los Angeles, Cathy Seipp notes an article -- unfortunately hidden behind a subscription firewall -- that she deems top notch.
Speaking of the war, one of the best things I've read anywhere recently is Noemie Emery's cover story in the Weekly Standard a couple of weeks ago: "The Inconvenient Truth About Truman." You can't read the Weekly Standard's paper magazine online unless you're a subscriber, but here's the most important part of Emery's article, about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings:
What Truman showed here is the relentlessness he shared with Lincoln and Roosevelt; the will to do what one must to save one's people, in the knowledge that sometimes men who do not like to kill are forced and obliged to kill in great numbers, to make sure that cruel and evil regimes do not flourish and that those who like killing do not rule the earth. It is the Democrats' problem -- and therefore the country's -- that their last president to understand this on a visceral level left the White House in 1963 in a coffin.
I am not a true believer Republican and would be quite happy to see the Democrats nominate someone I could vote for in 2008, which means someone more like the actual Harry Truman than the fantasy one. But the their track record lately hasn't been good.
Harry Truman -- Give 'em hell, Harry! -- would be tossed out of today's Democratic Party. He was the kind of muscular foreign-policy Donk that earned the life-long loyalty of my grandparents' generation, a loyalty that was transmitted to my Dad, also a life-long Dem -- until the disasterous presidency of Jimmah Carter, when my father crossed the line to the GOP.
It's telling that there are no Trumans to be found in the ranks of today's Dhimmi-cratic Party.
Posted by Mike Lief at July 27, 2006 07:56 AM
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Comments
Joe Lieberman is the closest thing to a Truman Democrat on the national scene . . . and look what the Keg, the War Hero, and the World's Smartest Woman are doing to him.
Posted by: The Little Coach at July 27, 2006 11:42 AM
I thought of Lieberman when I was posting this. Notice how the Dims have thrown him under the bus, in favor of Lamont, who is the Anti-War Moonbat Left's wetdream?
The latest polling seems to indicate Lieberman will lose the primary, proving that there's simply no desire for muscular liberalism of the Truman sort in the rank and file of the Democratic Party.
Sad.
Posted by: Mike Lief at July 27, 2006 12:46 PM
I wonder how many other life-long Democrats did as your father and I did - voted for Reagan and became Republicans after being disillusioned by Carter.
When Iran permitted the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran, it committed an act of war. Instead of responding with an appropriate military response, Carter told us to turn out the lights.
Meanwhile, our military was becoming an empty shell. Reagan brought a true commitment to the United States Armed Forces - not just a toothy smile.
Posted by: Macman at July 27, 2006 10:32 PM