George W. Bush.  During the last seven years he has become one of the most polarizing figures in the country.  He didn’t enter office under the greatest of circumstances.  Shrouded in a cloud of illegitamacy, it was inevitable that much of the liberal base would come to hate this rooten-tootin cowboy from Texas, the one who derailed their plans of holding onto the presidency.  But after September 11th, the nation rallied behind him.  A grief striken America looked to this man, who expressed everything we felt that day, for solace.  For comfort.  And we looked to him to take vengence on the monsters who murdered 3,000 of our brothers and sisters.  

That September morning legitamized the Bush presidency in the eyes of the American people.  We went from a nation still divided over what had transpired nearly one year before to one united, one that was commited to bringing war to those who attacked us.  But now, only six years later, Bush’s approval has dropped to the low thirties, our congressional leaders bicker and fight, our presidential candidates throw red meat at their supporters, degrading each other at every chance they get.  Politics as usual.

That brief interlude of patriotism and unity we felt was a farce, reminicent of estranged family members gathering and providing comfort for one another after a death.  We are a democracy after all.  Wanting to stop the “red state-blue state division” and end all this “partisanship” is dillusional and completely rediculous.  Fighting and arguing and bickering, using underhanded tactics, swiftboating, releasing forged documents with the hope that it will derail a candidacy...they are what we do.  These are the tactics that must be used to survive in the political arena.

After all, look at Barack Obama’s campaign.  Sure, standing around, giving speeches, being “charismatic” and all is nice if you want to win a popularity contest.  But unless you can put fourth ideas and tear apart the ones your opponents provide, there is no way you can be successful in American politics.  We can all see how he flatlined in the polls.  Luckily Barack is changing his strategy, and is finally making some headway, if only in Iowa.

But perhaps our partanship has been exacerbated by the war in Iraq.  It’s not just an American problem, however.  As Tony Blair, formerly one of the most popular British prime ministers in that nations history, left office, he left with a paltry 35% approval rating.  So what is causing this divide, this antagonistic view of the other side as being evil?  The liberals are communists, the conservatives are fascists, and our president is Hitler.  Of course, if Bush was Hitler, I’m not all too sure that he would let his opponents call him that without serious consequences.  The fact that Harry Reid hasn’t been, heaven forbid, waterboarded to death discredits that notion.

Though the image of Reid being waterboarded is somewhat amusing, I must move on.  So once again, what has caused this division?  Or, at least, what has turned a division into a divide, a lake into an ocean, separating our two competing ideologies?  It’s that we’re entering a new age.  America lived in relative isolation for so much of its history that it dosen’t know what to do with its influence, and we have not quite decided what our post-Cold war strategy will be.  Sure, we fought in World War I, but soon retreated into the shell of isolationism.  Then after World War II we were able to define ourselves as the bastion for capitalism and freedom and democracy against that evil red empire.  But what do we do now?  What can we define ourselves against now that our adversary has crumbled?

I am not about to suggest that we do not have enemies.  Russia is reasserting itself on the world stage while China is attempting to establish its hegemony in East Asia, and, perhaps, the world.  And then of course we have the terrorists and the repressive governments of the Third world.  But none of these enemies are tangable.  Our possible future conflicts with China and Russia have not yet come to fruition, and the terrorists are more of a concept than anything else.  We cannot outline them with an iron curtain, or splosh a great red blob on a map and say “Yes!  That is our enemy!”

And so we are left with a quandry.  How should we define ourselves, and how should we deal with these new enemies for a new age?  Enemies who don’t fight through traditional methods of regimented armies, but through the use of an all-consuming religious, political, and social ideology.  One side, the democrats, have been gaining ground in American opinion lately.  They say that the invation of Afghanistan was warrented because they harboured Osama bin Laden and his Al-Quaeda network, but that invading Iraq was a mistake.  That, because Iraq had nothing to do with those particular attacks on our homeland, we should have left it alone.  Or, perhaps, initiate those UN sanctions that we all know the dictators of the world fear so much.

American power scares the liberal mindset.  It shakes them to their core.  In there eyes, any nation with such military capabilities should be reigned in.  They are the successors to the framers of the Concert of Europe, of the Wilsonian League of Nations ideology.  That all nations must bequeath their power to a greater athority.  That there must be a governing body to control any and all states.  When the Concert of Europe saw that Russia was going to upset the balance of power after their victory over the Turks, they invaded and reigned the russian bear in.  To the modern liberal mindset, countries are too impetuous to be allowed full decision making.  We can’t invade Iraq, we have to have the support of the French and the Chinese.  We need the approval of a country who was illegally selling Saddam weapons and the go ahead from the butchers of Tienamen Square.

Their ideas on foreign policy are childish and idealistic.  Yes, that was a very mean thing to say.  I’m being too partisan, right?  Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with their motives.  Many truely feel that only through a UN-type entity could the world ever experience peace.  But in doing so they are ignoring how humanity has defined itelf in the last six thousand years.  We are a violent species, and we will always fight.  There will always be war.  That is not only the nature of humanity, but the nature of life.  Just as the lion makes war on the gazelle, the cow makes war on the grass and shrubbery, the vines of ivy make war on the oak, so do we make war on each other.

By creating a so called “balance of power” we are ignoring the fact that nations and peoples are not held in stasis.  We are constantly fluctuating, vying for some measure of superiority in world affairs.  Europe’s liberal elite have even begun viewing the European Union as an effective counter weight to American power.  Of course, while ignoring how Russia and China are gathering allies in Iran and North Korea and Colombia so that they can create their own counterweight.

By surrendering our decision making to the “global community” we are surrendering our own power.  We are losing the ability to make decisions that would be neccessary to ensure our national interest.  Ooo...that word.  Or words.  National interest.  Liberals hate it, because it is so antithetical to their world view.  But yes, we MUST act in our national interests.  We need to make America the greatest and most powerful country on this planet, and keep it that way for as long as possible.  Because the alternative is slavery.  That slavery so many people are forced to live with.  That slavery of the body, of the mind, of the soul.

Of course some may argue that our invasion of Iraq has discredited us in the eyes of the international community, that we have stretched ourselves too thin, and that because of this we have actually be weakened.  To some extent that does hold some truth.  But dig a little deeper and see that there are flaws in such an analysis.  Quadaffi didn’t surrender his decades long ambition for the bomb because he was upset that the UN didn’t approve of it.  He was scared shitless when we invaded Iraq.  It was a message.  You cannot even think about building WMD’s without serious consequences.

Still, our battle in Iraq has weakened us militarily.  But here we come to the new conservative view, one best articulated by Charles Krauthammer.  That there cannot be peace through some world organization that watches over us all.  That is through freedom.  And through democracy, and intellectual individualism, through everything that has made America and the West great.  Peace comes from that something that forces the government to bow to the people, and not vice versa.  It is the idea that democracies don’t fight democracies, that in freedom there is a common interest.  And, even if in the short run it seems that America is weakened by this policy, we must remain steady.  Because over the long run, if we are able to create a stable democratic regiem in the heart of the Middle East, then we will have given hope to millions who squaler in their slavery that freedom is possible and that the shining city on a hill has room for us all, no matter your race, religion, or culture.  If we fail then we will lose all credibility in the Middle East for a generation.  There is a small window that has been opened for us, and we must take the opportunity and charge headlong through it.