What Nobody Tells You About Apartheid and Jim Crow: The Policies of South Africa and of the USA's Southern States Were Neither Rightist Nor (Primarily) Racist; What They Were Was "Socialism with a Racist Face"

Lost in the ongoing brouhaha about a group of Afrikaner refugees being accepted in Donald Trump's America is the fact that Apartheid was neither a rightist nor even a primarily rac(ial)ist one. The same stands for Jim Crow, as well as slavery, in the Southern States.

As you can't avoid having heard, the Republican Party is often demonized for being predominant in the states that used to have slavery and Jim Crow. Actually, once the Southern states stopped being socialist and discriminatory, they naturally turned towards the free market. And so the Democrat party was left behind, along with and in the wake of Jim Crow and slavery. (Dankie aan Sarah vir die InstaHiperskakel.)

The 20th-century policies of South Africa and America's southern states were leftist policies, typical leftist policies, as it were, designed against capitalism and the free market. Indeed, as David R Henderson writes, 

"The socialist roots of Apartheid are a secret in plain sight."

I will never be able to thank David R Henderson enough for his eye-opening Joy of Freedom (one of my very earliest internet and Amazon purchases), which, during the year 2003, pivoted me once and for all to conservatism and contributed to starting me on my blogging career (which has now lasted for over 21 years). As I wrote in 2003 or 2004, after I opened my first website/weblog, the book

is one of the biggest literary discoveries (philosophically speaking) in my life. … Although its subject is the "dismal science" — economics (its subtitle is "An Economist's Odyssey") — David R Henderson's book is a breath of fresh air. Directly or indirectly, it gives in-depth insight about subjects such as racism, segregation, unions, war, communism, fascism, anti-Americanism, education, ecology, and even the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. 

The chapter on South Africa's apartheid era is especially eye-opening, and excerpts from said chapter are below, followed by Henderson's comments of America's slavery and Jim Crow era. (If you read this, David, please have the book republished — I bought a dozen copies during and after the Iraq War to hand out as gifts — or at least have it issued as an e-book.)

The main opponents of Apartheid were not just the black people who wanted better jobs, but also the white employers who wanted to hire them.

Before we go into the main subject of today's post, here are a couple of posts throughout the years featuring the writings of David R Henderson — who is a blogger at the EconLib blog and whose "specialty is in making economics understandable to non-economists" — both from my first couple of years of blogging, i.e., both 20 years old or more:
• "Income Is Determined Not by Society Distributing, But by Individuals Earning"
• Poverty and How to Reduce It 

• Did you know? Of all the peoples on the African continent (once known as the "Dark Continent"), the only ones to describe themselves (and their language) officially as "African(s)" happen to be light-skinned, indeed white people, i.e., South Africa's Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaners.

• Did you know? The word "USA" stands, or used to stand, for two countries: the United States of America, obviously, of course, as well as the Union of South Africa (before the Unie van Suid-Afrika was renamed the Republic of South Africa).

• Did you know? One of the most amazing things I remember learning in college, and that I will never forget, was that the worst animosity between communities in South Africa was in fact not between whites and blacks, but between blacks and blacks (the Xhosa versus the Zulus) on the one hand and between whites and whites (the farming descendants of the Dutch versus the business-oriented descendants of the British) on the other.

More: • Mandela and the ANC: A Look Back
• Fans of Mandela Like to Forget That One of the ANC's Biggest Supporters Was Muammar Gaddafi

Without further ado: here are excerpts from The Joy of Freedom's Chapter 7, which starts out by describing South Africa and segues into America's slavery and Jim Crow eras. (I have avoided using ellipses [i.e., "…"s], but each paragraph below is from a different part of the chapter between pages 102 and 131…)

Free Markets Versus Discrimination

By far the most common, vicious, and destructive use of force against racial and ethnic groups is by governments themselves.                                

Government use of force against ethnic groups is far more effective than private use of force.   

Interestingly, Apartheid and its precursor, the Colour Bar, resulted from the South African government's desire to help white workers avoid having to compete with black workers.  Apartheid was, in essence, an extreme form of affirmative action for whites.  "Workers of the world unite, and fight for a white South Africa."

Apartheid was, in the words of socialist Thomas Hazlett (in Henderson's "The Fortune Encyclopoedia of Economics"), "socialism with a racist face".  The socialist roots of Apartheid are a secret in plain sight.  Although these roots are well-known to scholars who have studied Apartheid, they have received little publicity in the West.  That so few Western intellectuals have been unwilling to look seriously at Apartheid's socialist roots is not surprising.  After all, a serious examination of those roots could easily lead to doubts about the goodness of socialism.   And, as most of us know, questioning the strongly held beliefs in which we have a lot invested is usually painful.

But avoiding pain is never a good enough reason to avoid thinking and understanding, especially when the issue is so crucial.        

Let's examine the roots of Apartheid.

Who pushed for the Colour Bar?   Not employers.  Indeed, employers wanted the many black workers who were as qualified as the white workers and who were often willing to work for lower wages.  The main people who pushed for laws enforcing racial discrimination in workplaces were the white union workers.  Their reason was simple:  they did not want to compete with black workers.  By passing laws that to make work by blacks illegal, the white union workers could restrict the supply of labor and drive up their own wages.

Hazlett:  "Industrialists, eyeing low-wage blacks anywhere in their neighborhoods, found them irresistible."  That, from the viewpoint of many whites, was the problem.  The employers' profit motive and the black workers' desire for better-paying jobs created constant pressure for racial discrimination to break down.  Moreover, blacks working alongside whites led to social integration, and social integration led to further economic cooperation, thus breaking down the Colour Bar even more.

So there you have it.  Apartheid did not come about simply because South African whites didn't like South African blacks or because whites considered blacks inferior.  Those factors were necessary and were present, but the impetus for Apartheid came almost solely from white workers who used government regulation to prevent blacks from competing with them.  Without government as the enforcer, the believers in Apartheid would have been seen as a bunch of cranks and would have had their own little racist sects, but would not have been able to able to determine where blacks and whites worked and lived for 40 years.  The main opponents of Apartheid were not just the black people who wanted better jobs, but also the white employers who wanted to hire them.

Slavery … is essentially legalized kidnapping.                         

The U.S. government helped maintain slavery in three main ways.

Government discrimination against black people continued well into the 20th century.  Laws in the South required discrimination in restaurants and other privately owned facilities, whether or not the owners desired it.  These segregation laws were thus a direct attack on the property rights of the owners. 

Small wonder that early 20th-century black leaders Booker T Washington and W.E.B. Dubois, whose disagreements with each other are legendary, agreed on unions.            

DuBois:  "[Unions are] the greatest enemy of the black working man."

How did unions become so powerful?  That can be answered in one word:  Government.

F Ray Marshall points out that the craft unions (for example, the plumbers union) could discriminate more than the industrial unions (the auto workers) because the craft unions could determine literally who could join and who could not.        

By contrast, employers of workers in industrial unions usually make the hiring decisions.

"look for the union label" 1880s ad campaign

Unions also were strong supporters of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
They also supported the Immigration Act of 1924, which restricted Japanese people from immigrating.

The loss in jobs caused by the minimum wage is not an accidental byproduct of the higher minimum wages.  It is the consequence intended by those who most avidly support increasing minimum wages.  Unions don't support minimum wage increases because their own members are working at the minimum wage.  Virtually all union employees — I've never heard of an exception — work at wages above the minimum.                

Although probably no one today would dare admit it, many who vote for increases in the minimum wage understand that one consequence will be to destroy jobs for the least skilled workers, a disproportionate number of whom are black.

Why were buses and streetcars segregated in the first place?  It wasn't because the streetcar companies wanted it that way, but because local government required it.  In fact, owners and managers of private streetcars strongly opposed segregation.  Before the law required segregation, most streetcar companies voluntarily segregated tobacco users, not blacks.  Nonsmokers of either race were allowed to ride where they wished, but smokers were relegated to the back or the outside platform.  Even after segregation laws were passed early in the 20th century, streetcar companies dragged their heels for as long as they could before complying.  Their objection was very simple:  Racial discrimination cost them money.  

In Augusta, Savannah, Atlanta, Mobile, and Jacksonville, streetcar companies refused to enforce segregation laws for as long as 15 years after the laws' passage.  But as the government stepped up the legal pressure, the streetcar companies finally had to comply with the law, and the United States stumbled further into government-enforced segregation.

This is how markets work.  Employers care mainly about people's productivity relative to their compensation package.  Employers who want to discriminate on grounds other than productivity may do so, but they pay a price — they pass up the opportunity to hire people whose productivity exceeds their wage rate.            [Schindler's List]

Throughout history, governments have generally been much less tolerant of racial differences than private employers have been.  This is because the government officials who discriminate incur no cost for doing so, as long as discrimination is politically acceptable, which it often has been.

The free market helps break down discrimination in all economic transactions                

Markets are especially good at breaking down discrimination when what is exchanged is goods rather than just labor.

When it comes to saving their economic lives, even otherwise prejudiced people are downright tolerant.

As economist and Nobel prize-winner Gary Becker makes clear in his book "The Economics of Discrimination", free markets make discriminators pay for discriminating.         

The bottom line is that in a free market, any employer who discriminates on grounds that have nothing to do with productivity will pay a cost for doing so.  The economic system that removes the props from racism is free markets.

That freedom breaks down racial and other kinds of discrimination is one reason many people don't like free markets.        [Including the independence-minded leaders of decolonization!]

In the vast majority of cases, the result of freedom will be racial tolerance and tolerance of differences generally.

Freedom of association means that people should be free to hire or not hire, or to work for or not work for, whom they please.

Moreover, laws against discrimination seem invariably to get out of control in two ways.  First, the government often starts to require discrimination.

Second, they make even sensible discrimination illegal.

Laws beginning as modest antidiscrimination measures inevitably evolve into laws that require discrimination or ban reasonable discrimination.

In a government-run society, unpopular groups are often discriminated against, often as a matter of government policy.  In a free society, on the other hand, freedom removes the props from discrimination.  Government policies against discrimination by business makes headlines.  Yet market penalties against discrimination are much more forceful and consistent than government penalties.  These market penalties almost never make headlines, and few people know about them.  But a free-market economy exacts a stiff penalty from employers who discriminate against people on any basis other than productivity.  For all their holier-than-thou talk about the evils of racial and other discrimination, government officials have been the main enemies of unpopular groups, and profit-maximizing businessmen have been their main saviors. Indeed, the market penalty for discrimination has been so strong that businessmen are often tenacious champions of fair treatment, even when doing so is unpopular and even when the businessmen would themselves prefer to discriminate.

"Why did men die of hunger, for six thousand years?  Why did they walk, and carry goods and other men on their backs, for six thousand years, and suddenly, in one century, only on a sixth of the earth's surface, they make steamships, railroads, motors, and are now flying around the earth in its utmost heights of air?  Why did families live thousands of years in floorless hovels, without windows and chimneys, then, in eighty years and only in the United States, they are taking floors, chimneys, glass windows for granted, and regarding electric lights, porcelain toilets, and windowless screens as minimum necessities?"   
(Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority)

Related: More entries in NP's What Nobody Tells You About… series:

• What Nobody Tells You About Indians and Other Native Americans
• What Nobody Tells You About the Alamo and the Texas Revolution of the 1830s
• What Nobody Tells You About the Israeli Rave of October 7, 2023

Sarkozy Accused of Accepting Millions of Euros from Libya for His 2007 Campaign; Did Gadhafi and Other Africans Also Fill Obama's Coffers in the 2008 Elections?

The AP's Samuel Petrequin reports (hat tip to Instapundit) that

Nicolas Sarkozy was placed in custody … as part of an investigation that he received millions of euros in illegal campaign financing from the regime of the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi …

No Pasarán has reported on this before — and on something far worse (see below) — and tried to bring it to the attention of American conservatives. Back in 2011, Instapundit quoted Foreign Policy's Joshua Keating as reporting on the Qaddafi régime's response to the French government's recognition of Libya's rebel forces, through Colonel Kaddhafi's son.

Saif al-Islam: “Sarkozy must first give back the money he took from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. We funded it and we have all the details and are ready to reveal everything. The first thing we want this clown to do is to give the money back to the Libyan people.”

But that ain't all.

Far from it!

France ain't alone and Sarkozy's winning 2007 presidential campaign may hardly be the only one.

Time to head West, over the Atlantic.

As No Pasarán reported back in 2011, a question to be asked is

Is it possible that Obama's reluctance to interfere in the Libyan crisis has something to do with secrets?

Five months before the 2008 election, indeed, in June of that year,

E-nough's Damien reported on a speech (broadcast and translated by Memritv), which was held by none other than the "Brotherly Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya". (We will look away from Gaddafi's birther credentials, even though from his perspective, calling Obama a Kenyan, an African, and/or a Muslim is hardly a smear — far from it.) [Here is what Gadhafi said]

There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama. All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency.

From: Qaddafi in June 2008: Hints That He and Other "Arabs and Africans Are Involved" in Contribution Drives for Obama's Presidential Campaign

France's Former Ambassador to Iraq Risks Prison Time on Charges of Tax Fraud and Forgery

A French diplomat and close adviser to the former president Nicolas Sarkozy has gone on trial after he was stopped trying to leave the country with a bag stuffed with banknotes

reports Kim Willshir in The Guardian, with Le Figaro's Anne Jouan adding that the prosecutor is asking for prison time for Monsieur Boillon.

Boris Boillon, who was known as “Sarko Boy”, appeared in a Paris court on Monday on charges of tax fraud and forgery following the discovery.

Boillon, who once appeared on the cover of a celebrity magazine with the headline “The James Bond of the diplomatic world”, was pulled over by customs officers at Gare du Nord in Paris in July 2013 before he boarded a train to Belgium, where he lives with his family near Brussels.

When Boillon opened the sports bag that he was carrying, police found €350,000 (£302,000) and $40,000 (£31,000) in cash wrapped in plastic bags and a plastic box. Boillon claimed he had been paid the money for consultancy work on a stadium construction in Iraq. As well as the fraud charges, he is accused of breaking strict limits on the transfer of cash within the European Union. The forgery charge relates to documents he allegedly presented justifying the cash.

Investigators say they have been unable to trace the source of the money. Boillon, who is facing four charges, could be fined up to €855,000 if found guilty of each and be ordered to serve up to five years in prison.

No Pasarán Boris Boillon has appeared on No Pasarán before, notably when he went on Canal+

to defend Muammar Gaddafi, saying: “He was a terrorist, he is no longer. We mustn’t fall into cliches. We’ve all made mistakes in life and we’ve all the right to be forgiven.”

One cannot refrain from wondering whether the Frenchman's travails aren't due, at least partly, to a political assassination à la François Fillon, in view of the fact that

Boris Boillon — an Arab-[speaker] who served as ambassador in Baghdad — voiced support for George W Bush during the Iraq War! That, of course, makes his sins all the more unforgivable

As Simon Piel and Joan Tilouine confirm in Le Monde,

En Irak, où il fut ambassadeur de 2009 à 2011, il s’était montré favorable à l’intervention américaine. Nommé à Tunis à la chute du régime du dictateur Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, le jeune diplomate n’avait pas hésité à afficher son corps sculpté sur le Web, uniquement vêtu d’un slip de bain, ou à poser en James Bond dans la presse locale. Son ton franc voire arrogant, mal perçu dans le milieu diplomatique, avait choqué une partie de l’opinion publique tunisienne.

Lorsqu’il reçut pour la première fois des journalistes tunisiens, qui l’interrogèrent sur le rôle de la France durant la révolution, Boris Boillon s’emporta, évoquant « des trucs à la con », des « questions débiles », avant de brutalement mettre un terme à l’entretien filmé et diffusé sur les réseaux sociaux. Une attitude qui poussa des centaines de Tunisiens indignés à se réunir devant l’ambassade de France, trois jours plus tard, en scandant « Boillon dégage ». Contacté par Le Monde, M. Boillon n’a pas donné suite à nos demandes d’entretien.

"I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won't rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated": A Recap of No Pasarán's Che Guevara Posts

Reader, if perchance you don't understand some people's opposition to this most romantic of revolutionaries — if indeed you find it baffling — you might want to peruse through some of the following thoughts on Che Guevara:

• It is customary for followers of a cult not to know the real life story of their hero, the historical truth

• "I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won't rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated"

…The future T-shirt icon … proclaimed to the press that his ideal societal model was Kim Il-Sung's North Korea. … Guevara traveled there in 1965, saw the brutality and poverty with his own eyes, and then made it his goal to import that system to Latin America. As a champion of the poor, Che aspired to emulate a society that truly benefits its poorest inhabitants -anyone not named Kim Jong-il or Kim Il-Sung. … Leftists always have a problem with U.S.-backed dictatorships, but never with Stalinist and Maoist stooges like — well, like Che Guevara. (Benjamin Duffy)

• Stalin II

There is a misperception that [Ernesto "Che" Guevara] was a free spirit. He had cold Stalinist personality. He used to sign his early correspondence "Stalin II." He said early on that he saw the solution to all the world's problems behind (the) Iron Curtain. But this was not some hippie dippie Marxist, Guevara said in speech in 1962 that he regarded the very spirit of rebellion as anti-revolutionary. Figure that out, he said individualism must disappear in Cuba. If you tried to do your own thing under his regime you wound up in a prison camp. (Humberto Fontova)

• The jails of Castro are far worse than those of Batista

Who is the writer of that claim? A capitalist reactionary? An imperialist? A (neo-)fascist? A Batista ally? No. Gustavo Arcos Bergnes is Castro's fellow revolutionary, imprisoned with the future Líder Maximo in the mid-1950s. And he experienced Castro both as a fellow cell-mate and (twice) as a warden. Castro's violent revolutionaries of the 1950s were treated far more humanely by the dictator Batista than non-violent human rights activists are treated by Castro today, he says as he recalls getting special treatment (hospital rooms as cells, private cooking facilities, etc) and pardons after only 21 months. (Since Castro's coming to power, incidentally, there have been 20,000 summary executions, but — unlike Pinochet's 3,000 victims — these are not of any particular concern to "human rights activists")

• Che’s biographers consistently report that he sent thousands to the firing squad:

Che Guevara was one of the regime’s chief executioners during this period and is said to have acknowledged ordering "several thousand" executions. All took place without affording the victims fair trials and due process of law.

• The mass executioner's T-shirt adorns the very people who oppose capital punishment!

• Leftists: Don’t feed them after dark and don’t get them wet

In 1956, when Che linked up with the Cuban exiles in Mexico city, one of them recalls Che railing against the Hungarian freedom-fighters as "Fascists!" and cheering their extermination by Soviet tanks. (Humberto Fontava)

• Where Are the Mickey Mouse Ears?…

Nearly four decades after his death, the legend of Che Guevara has grown worldwide. In this new book, Alvaro Vargas Llosa separates the myth from the reality of Che's legacy, and shows that Che's ideals were a re-hash of notions about centralized power that have long been the major source of suffering and misery in the underdeveloped world. With testimonies from witnesses of Che's actions, Alvaro Vargas Llosa's detailed account of the "real Che" sets the record straight by exposing the delusion at the heart of the Che phenomenon. Vargas Llosa shows that Che's legacy—making the law subservient to the most powerful, crushing any and all dissent, and concentrating wealth under the guise of "social equality"—is not the solution to poverty and injustice but is the core of the problem.

• A la Cabaña, lorsque les familles rendaient visite à leurs proches, Che exigea qu'on les fasse passer devant le mur d'exécution maculé de sang frais

Oubliées, les purges, oubliées, les exécutions sommaires, le plaisir sadique des tortures: Che Guevara est un mythe, et un mythe ne peut être que parfait. … Fidel Castro sut exploiter les pulsions sacrificielles de son ancien compagnon en l'envoyant exporter la guérilla dans le vaste monde — et surtout, coupé de tout lien officiel avec le régime. Che Guevara finirait bien par mourir sur un champ de bataille ou un autre; resterait de lui son image inspirée et intemporelle, contrastant avec une dictature cubaine qui n'en finit pas de pourrir encore aujourd'hui. L'homme devint légende grâce à d'innombrables intellectuels de gauche cherchant à éviter l'erreur du soutien passé à Staline: mieux vaut rendre un culte à la personnalité d'un révolutionnaire mort qu'à celle d'un dictateur vivant. Son histoire fut soigneusement épurée et revue, les moments de gloire mis en avant et les périodes sombres gommées ou effacées. (Stéphane)

• C'était le moyen, pour Castro, de donner une image éternellement jeune à la révolution cubaine, alors que Castro et la révolution vieillissaient

Le statut d'icone de Che Guevara est une construction post-mortem, raconte Jacobo Machover dans son livre, La Face cachée du Che

• La victoire des barbudos a réveillé en l'intelligentsia française une vieille passion française pour la révolution

• Should we love Che Guevara?

• Che Was a Mainstay of the Hardline Pro-Soviet Faction

The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system …
In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. (Paul Berman on The Cult of Che)

• Che Guevara in 10 Quotes

• Commemorating the Death of Che Guevara the Baf Way

• Che Guevara, Revolutionary and Icon

• Channeling the dead for affirmation

• ¿Quiénes son los revolucionarios verdaderos?

• And here I thought under Communism we were all supposed to dispose of our bourgeois pleasures and eat our spinach

• Gaddafi Is Starting to Be Compared to Che Guevara, Allende, and Other Leftist Icons

• Compare with Bin Laden's Death at the Hands of the U.S.: When a Cuban Dissident Is Killed by Havana, Only a Couple of French Readers Bother Reacting

• Ireland to erect monument to Che Guevara
One can imagine many places wanting to build a monument to El Che, but why would precisely Ireland step in to do that? Because Ernesto Guevara had an Irish ancestor, born in Galway in 1715 (and appropriately, perhaps, named Lynch).

Mandela and the ANC: A Look Back

The Diplomad has a good piece on Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress: Certain

informal "off the record" meetings with ANC reps while in Geneva and Vienna [in the 1980s] proved inconsequential, but showed the intense hostility of the ANC towards the USA, capitalism, and Western democracy. Some of the ANC had a very hard pro-Soviet, pro-Castro line, and there was no reasoning with them. These meetings, frankly, shaped my view of Mandela, making me suspicious of him and what he would bring to South Africa were he freed and in power at the head of the ANC.

As it turns out, I was right and wrong. The ANC was a lost cause; they did not believe in democracy, and had a large element of thuggery in their ranks. Many were terrorists who had received training in Libya, and were out for revenge and blood.

Mandela, however, was more complicated than I had thought. He had had his violent phase, but only after trying peaceful opposition to apartheid. Both in and after coming out of prison, he proved an extremely intelligent negotiator and compromiser, reaching understandings with Botha and De Klerk, and turning down the volume of the anti-white message of the ANC. He seemed to have an understanding that whites and other non-blacks were essential for a peaceful and prosperous South Africa. He also, surprise, did not go full Mugabe. He won election--although the vote counting was suspicious--served his term, trying to unite blacks, whites, Asians, and others into accepting the new post-apartheid South Africa. He did not try to drive the whites out, and did not go around confiscating farms and businesses. He did not encourage revenge against whites and sought a reconciliation of the races. A practical politician, he turned a blind eye to the rampant corruption among the ANC, finding it better to let the party members expend their revolutionary fervor making money. At the end of his term, he stepped down. Yes, he stepped down. That is an amazing thing in Africa; he stepped down on completing his term of office. It does not happen much on that continent. He, however, never got over his deep mistrust of the USA, and despite his credentials as a victim of human rights abuse, refused to criticize Qaddafy, never gave up his fervent admiration for Castro--who, ironically, runs a racist regime in Cuba--and remained very anti-Israel.

Related:  Fans of Mandela Like to Forget That One of the ANC's Biggest Supporters Was Muammar Gaddafi

Former French Ambassador Arrested with 350,000 Euros in Cash, Links Money to Iraq

Boris Boillon was arrested on July 31 at Paris’s Gare du Nord station

writes France 24 (merci à Hervé), as the former French ambassador

attempted to board a train to Brussels carrying more than 350,000 Euros in cash, it emerged on Friday.

It seems like a spectacular fall from grace for a man who enjoyed such an illustrious political career. Fluent in Arabic, he served as his country’s ambassador in both Iraq and Tunisia. Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi referred to him as “my son,” and ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy, for whom he worked as an advisor, affectionately called him “my little Arab”.

Boillon was stopped by customs as part of a routine check, according to the French investigative website Mediapart, which broke the story. When asked if he had any currency on him, the ex-diplomat said nothing about the hundreds of thousands of Euros in his bag. A major faux-pas considering that French law requires all people entering or leaving the country to declare any sum of money equal to or exceeding the amount of 10,000 Euros.

Boillon’s bag was subsequently searched, and lo and behold, it was stuffed with envelopes of cash.

A simple explanation?

The 43-year-old said that the cash was payment for past consulting work, which he claims nets him around 500,000 Euros per year. 

 

“It’s money that I made this year in Iraq from the services I provide to Iraqi companies,” Boillon said, according to an excerpt of his testimony obtained by Mediapart. “Because Iraq lacks a developed banking system,www.ekurd.net these companies wired me the cash to Paris.”

See also: the French consulate chauffeur in Jerusalem caught with 150 kilos of gold bars

The Loneliness of the Conservative Blogger (An Open Letter to Instapundit)

• Every day, for the past two weeks, Instapundit was mentioned twice on a French TV web channel in an in-depth one-hour debate between a conservative and a liberal blogger re-broadcast daily at 6 pm. (Right before the end, in the conservative's closing remarks, and some 20 minutes prior to that, the French audience was told "If you want to get a non-caricatured view of American conservatives, you should read the Instapundit blog from time to time".) Is this not worth mentioning on said Instapundit blog?

• Last week, a conservative blogger live-blogged the second presidential debate and the week before that, he live-blogged the vice-presidential debate. (Tonight, he expects to be live-blogging the third debate.) At all times, since he lives in Paris, these took place from 3 am to 4:30 in the middle of the night French time. Were those events not worth mentioning? (Related: What Mitt Romney Must Say at the Third Debate.)

• Last summer, a conservative blogger went on television and had an in-depth debate with a member of the mainstream media, giving as good as he could. May I reiterate that — all the while adding an exclamation mark? A conservative blogger — one of a valiant band of brothers united in fighting against the mainstream medias of countries of the world and the leftist élites in power throughout the west — participated in a televised debate on France 24 television (on its English-language channel) against a member of the mainstream media (Newsweek's Paris chief) and did his best to hit back at the MSM arguments — twice as hard, natch! Was that not worth a link? (If I am looking slightly dishevelled, it's because I had to cut short my vacation after being called up by the TV station the same day around noon and catch a high-speed train 800 km to Paris, where my only way of getting to the television studio in time was to speed from the Gare de Lyon train station on a motorcycle taxi…)

Full disclosure: The conservative blogger in all three paragraphs above was — is — myself.
And before I go on, let me make clear that I am not speaking for the whole blog, as not all my co-bloggers agree with this post, one of them saying that Instapundit will never link us again, plus they point out that nobody has a duty whatsoever to link to anybody you don't want — all of which, needless to say, I am in full agreement with.

And my fellow bloggers have talked me out of posting a version of this post in the past, but I have never been as nervous as now, two weeks before the election, what with the Democrats promising they are going to win the election (and knowing what kind of dirty tricks they are up to), and in these nail-biting times, I need to give some air to a number of arguments I have made over the past few years.

And even should Glenn Reynolds refuse to ever link us again (for which I will have to apologize to my co-bloggers), I will continue reading Instapundit avidly every day; continue suggesting to people I overhear dissing Romney or praising Obama to check out a couple of blogs including Instapundit; and continue linking post after post of his in discussion forums around the web (both in English and in French, on the blog of Le Monde's Washington correspondent, for instance). For the fight against liberalism, and for a beacon of liberty, one named America, is more important than any personal issues…

(Note: when mentioning that I quote Instapundit on discussion threads or quote Instapundit on our blog or will do such things as suggest Instapundit as a blog to read, whether in daily life or on TV, I am in no way saying, or suggesting, that Glenn Reynolds owes me anything or that he should even feel grateful. In fact, it is in no way a favor to him, it is a favor to myself, as copying and pasting an Instapundit post makes, if anything, commenting quicker and easier, while at the same time giving me not one outside authority to refer to, but two — Instapundit and the source the professor is quoting… Plus spreading conservative values, having more people (whether in America or abroad) understand them, and believe in them, through reading a blog like Glenn Reynolds', can only up the chances of bringing about the society conservatives like me dream of… Likewise, when I mention Instapundit on television, it's not gratuitous, to flatter him. I wouldn't mention Glenn Reynolds's blog on a show dealing with graphic novels or with the Danish royal family. And if on a political show I say, "If you want to get a non-caricatured view of American conservatives, you should read the Instapundit blog from time to time", it's because I truly mean it…)

Let me add that, believe it or not, I am not particularly interested in pageviews and stats — per se. A high number always rewarding, naturally, but what I am more interested in is fighting the good fight, and being praised by my fellow conservatives (when and if appropriate) and told whether the job I did was good or not and whether I have reason to feel some pride for a given post.

Because it's true, Professeur Reynolds, you have explained why in the past — that you are a limited resource (without interns). What's more, noone can deny that you have indeed linked No Pasarán in the past!!

But on the other hand, from a reader's perspective, it is hard to get away from the idea that Glenn Reynolds is an extraordinarily open and gentle soul, one who goes out of his way to quote readers and read liberally through a post's comments. "A reader writes such-and-such, reader So-and-So writes bla-bla-bla, Update: reader John Doe adds a link to such-and-such a website. Reader points to the article in such-and-such a magazine." Plus all the "From the comments" add-ons and update after update…

The thing is, I am all for quoting readers myself (whether they are known to me or not); they often deliver a deadly zinger that "says it all" (also known as a Heh™) or uncover an aspect of an issue that not many people have picked up upon (one recent example: Obama Comments on Diplomats Reveal a Lot About His Responsibilities, His Oath, and His View of the Presidency).

The other thing is, we at No Pasarán know perfectly well that we are not the Other McCain or Ann Althouse. One digs up unpublished scoops, gets into danger for his life, while the other is a fellow law professor. In fact, I am quite happy to admit that most of what we send you is destined to nothing else as appendages (updates) to existing Instapundit posts and rarely deserve original stand-alone status. Indeed, I would be perfectly happy never to see us quoted, appearing only — once in a while — as a More Here item.

But on the other hand, I do think we have interesting things to add once in a while, and if you will bear with me, I have added just a couple of examples over the years below (you can easily read it faster by focusing solely on the bold text).

Because at times it feels like being in a football team during a the Fall season, where the same players are called up again and again, while you stay mostly sitting on the side, twiddling your thumbs.

Perhaps a better illustration (for someone who has written An Army of Davids) is a war scenario.

I once wrote a post saying that

In the Army of Davids, you are Dwight (David) Eisenhower — the general-in-chief overseeing the fight against those who hate America, liberty, and the rights of the common citizen.

In a Pearl Harbour illustration, it is slightly different, while Honolulu is being machine-gunned — by the mainstream media and the various élites — you are the one firing back, and there are a bunch of us eager to hand the ammunition to you. And we go, excellent, that person next to us just handed him a handful of bullets, keep shootin'. That other guy is handing him some shells — good for him. And you hand him an ammunition magazine, and… most of the time you are ignored. Alright, no problem. Another man's bullets are gratefully accepted. Another man's ammo belt is eagerly taken. Again, you hand up your ammo magazine, and almost every time… nothing happens. When it happens again and again, you start wondering, What the…?! What am I doing here? What's the hell's wrong with my stuff?! Because of course we have no way of knowing what you turn down on a daily basis. (Like I said, it seems like you are open to accepting all sorts of readers and comments etc…)

And the worst thing is scratching one's head and wondering why the heck is the Blogfather turning our posts or our comments down?! Are my emails even reaching the Blogfather?
Or are they going into the professor's spam box?
If not, is he even opening them?
Does he trash them out when he sees who they're from?
Does the Blogfather think that I am sending him too much stuff?
Am I sending him not enough stuff? Would he prefer that I send only one post per email per day?
Would he prefer that I wait until the end of the week to send one email with designated posts (the best of) from that week grouped together? (No no, I do not send all, or even most, No Pasarán posts in; relatively few, I would say.)
Do I write too much in my introduction to the post?
Do I write not enough in my introduction to the post ?
Am I coming across as too formal?
Or am I assuming too much and acting too chummy?
Did someone start a malicious rumor behind my back? (nah, conservatives don't do dat sh•t…)
Is the Blogfather angry that I wrote InstaPundit with a capital P, instead of Instapundit with a lower-case p?
Maybe the Blogfather doesn't want emails at all, and he'll go visit a blog from time to time?!
(Except The Other McCain says he does, if not want, at least accept them…)
Should I have sent a special email to thank him when he does link a post?
Or will that just add to the bucketload, and would he rather I not?
Was I discourteous to one of the Blogfather's friends or fellow bloggers at CPAC once?
Maybe the Blogfather thinks that the No Pasarán blog is trash?
Maybe — oh, Lord! — the No Pasarán blog really is trash?!?!
Are we so bad that we deserve fewer links?
Is No Pasarán past its prime? Has it run its course? Should it shut down, once and for all?
Have I messed up while trying to order books from Amazon through Instapundit?
Did I forget to go through Instapundit the last time I ordered from Amazon (and can the Blogfather even find out about such things)?!

See all that worrying and hand-wringing, Monsieur Reynolds?!
You are turning me… into a liberal!!

The Dea(r)th of Foreign Blogs

In a sense, it is entirely understandable that foreign blogs should have waned in this day and age, given that Dubya and "his" war in Iraq are (was) no longer at the forefront of events and of the headlines — superceded, indeed, by what is easily a far greater danger — America's liberties eroded (deliberately eroded) from within, by "a little intellectual élite" of "do-gooders", elected or otherwise, "in a far-distant capital [who allegedly] can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves." (As Ronald Reagan also said in 1964, paraphrasing the testimony of a political refuge who had escaped from Castro's Cuba, "If we lose freedom here [in the United States], there is no place to escape to [link to photo of mine taken at the last McCain campaign event from 2008, right before election day in Miami, of a Cuban-American poster saying, appropriately enough, almost exactly the same thing as the political refuge quoted by the Gipper in 1964].  This is the last stand on earth." And Reagan added: "This is the issue of this election!")

(No Pasarán's German equivalent, Davids Medienkritik, has seemed to die a slow death, posting only seven posts in the past 12 months, only one single one of which appeared (so far) in all of 2012. No Pasarán tackled France while Davids Medienkritik tackled Germany, and we were both among the three finalists in the Weblog awards (Europe section) — twice — which you also won (deservingly) or were a runner-up to numerous times.)

But still. Us foreign blogs can have some interesting perspectives to share too, whether they come from a foreign, or from an international, perspective, or simply because we are fellow conservative bloggers, no matter what countries we are citizens of and no matter where we may be based, with interesting and sometimes thought-provoking things to say. (And we like getting quoted too…)

Notably, foreign policy.

And social and health services.

No Pasarán has amassed a wealth of links to fact-filled stories that contradict Obama's claims (and the Europeans' own boasts) about Europe's universal health care.

One Infamous Foreign Contributor 
of Obama's Campaign Identified?

Regarding all the newly-discussed rumors of the Obama campaign accepting foreign web donations: A year and a half ago, No Pasarán wrote to you about this, linking an E-Nough post identifying pretty specifically where part of the money seemed to come from. And if E-Nough was correct, it came not from just some anonymous joe. One of the foreign Obama campaign contributors seems to have been none other than Muammar Gaddafi! Remember: in March 2011, you wrote a post announcing that Gaddafi's son had revealed that the colonel had helped fund the campaign not of Obama but of another Western president, France's Nicolas Sarkozy. I emailed you a No Pasarán post linking the E-Nough post quoting a Gaddafi speech, in which the Brotherly Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya does not state outright, but he does hint rather strongly, that he, along with

the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa … may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him [Obama] to win the American presidency.

Granted, wacky Gaddafi is or was hardly an authority on much, but the content of his speech, on the other hand, is hardly surprising.

Speaking of the Gipper, I think the honors to Ronald Reagan in Europe (notably Eastern Europe and mainly statues of the man) deserve to be mentioned — one in Prague, a statue in Budapest, and not one, but two statues, in Poland — with Lech Walesa (did we mention that like Obama he is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize?) quipping that "Reagan should have a monument in every city"!

Three Stories I Considered "Gold" at the Time (And Still Do)

Before I bring this post to an end, I will recount three stories over the past two years or so with a foreign, or European, perspective where in particular I was thinking "these details are little known and unreported by the MSM, this is gold! this information deserves to get shared!"

• Do you remember the HBO "documentary" done by Nancy Pelosi's daughter in the South? The one from March 2012 which was shown on the Bill Maher show in which the comedian waxes thusly:

When I see the toothless guy, as a liberal, what I say is, "I want to help you get teeth!" Why does that make me an asshole?! (laughter) I don't understand why — "You damn Yankee, tryin' to get me teeth!" (laughter)

Meaning, of course, that clueless Americans should see the light, join the liberal club, and… introduce a system in America of free universal health care like those superb ones that are found in Europe.   A lot of conservative blogs in America hit back. But No Pasarán brought a perspective from Europe:  a couple of weeks prior to Alexandra Pelosi's second appearance on the Maher show, we had blogged about France's newspaper of record, Le Monde, publishing a report saying that dental costs are hardly covered by la Sécurité Sociale at all and, indeed, have never been so expensive. When you wrote about the Alexandra Pelosi/Bill Maher duet, I immediately wrote out a new post quoting Laetitia Clavreul's Le Monde articles; from the Frenchman who opted not to get five (!) teeth replaced and the French maid who had to settle for a botched-up job for her broken front tooth to the 49-year-old woman who no longer has any teeth at all and to the French teacher who would rather have holes in his mouth than wear a (humiliating) set of false teeth. I was going nuts that week. Link the story, Glenn! Link it! This is hitting back twice as hard! This finishes destroying Maher's argument! This is the final nail in his coffin! For the love of Christ, link it! Or so I went…

• Unless I am mistaken, I do not think that any American newspaper or blog has written anything of consequence about what amounts to as a massive transfer of sensitive military technology by a NATO ally to the Kremlin on Obama's watch — France having decided to sell Russia its ultramodern helicopter transportation ship (to the horror of, among others, Georgia). I sent you story after story about the Mistral — many of them written by the most conservative pundit in the entire New York Times organization (far more so than David Brooks), the International Herald Tribune's Paris-based John Vinocur — and I think one single link would have been more than useful for Americans to understand to what degree the idealistic Obama White House has been deficient (or appeasing) in its relations with the Russian bear. The money quote comes in the French defense minister's excuse:

In Lisbon, I heard Barack Obama tell Dmitry Medvedev: "You're not just a partner but a friend." You can not blame France for delivering boats to a friend.

There you have it: that says all about Obama's idealistic foreign policy in a nutshell, doesn't it?!

• When Frances Fox Piven was defended by sociologists and the mainstream media for being a target of the evil Glenn Beck in early 2011 (as someone doing nothing more than "calling for Gandhi-like nonviolent resistance"), you — rightly — hammered home, again and again and again, what those Greek riots that FPG wanted to see emulated in America were actually like:

… tens of thousands of protesters marched through Athens in the largest and most violent protests since the country’s budget crisis began last fall. Angry youths rampaged through the center of Athens, torching several businesses and vehicles and smashing shop windows. Protesters and police clashed in front of parliament and fought running street battles around the city.
Witnesses said hooded protesters smashed the front window of Marfin Bank in central Athens and hurled a Molotov cocktail inside. The three victims died from asphyxiation from smoke inhalation, the Athens coroner’s office said. Four others were seriously injured there, fire department officials said.

(Remember: this is even more noteworthy in retrospective, when one realizes that Piven's calls for "protests and riots" occurred before the advent of the Occupy Wall Street moment.) I felt the Wall Street Journal excerpt was outstanding, as well as Glenn's constant repetition of it, and it so happened that one day here while reading a European newspaper, I found material to illustrate the article: two photos of policemen engulfed in flames after being hit by a firebomb. Later, I found the video of one of the policemen, who turned out to be a motorcycle cop skidding down the street at full speed, getting struck by a club-wielding thug as he comes to a stop, before being hit by the molotov cocktail in an eruption of flames — almost as "exciting" as a scene from a Hollywood blockbuster. Keep spreading one of the photos and the video along with every repetition of the Wall Street Journal report, I figured, and Frances Fox Piven is finished.

In-Depth Posts of Dispassionate Analysis

I have already spent too much time on this, as I have not the slightest doubt you will agree, so I will be brief and finish up quickly.

At times, I have wanted to do to try and get to the bottom — to the very bottom — of an issue, just like an Abraham Lincoln or a Harry Jaffa. Using long research coupled with in-depth and dispassionate analysis, we have written a small handful of extra-length posts over the years, from a thorough dissection of the left's chickenhawk charge to the Why We Blog series (the "we" in Why We Blog applying to all conservatives). And one or two of the posts below are some I admit I wouldn't have minded being linked by the intellectual DJ of the blogosphere.

• The JournoList Issue No One Is Bringing Up
One is the birther issue. (Out of a total of over 11,000 posts, No Pasarán has only mentioned the birther issue five times, so I feel confident in stating that none of us counts among any crazies.) I spent weeks on end on this post and I feel that, even though it came out before Obama finally released his birth certificate, it still holds up (with the addition of a couple of updates) very well. I don't believe anyone has linked the birther issue as much to the JourOlist scandal as we have, while comparing the Birthers with the Truthers and while taking the pivotal decision of contrasting the 2008 election with the campaigns of 1984 and 1988…

• To Understand Liberal Issues Like Gay Marriage Correctly, It Is Vital to Get the Basic Premises Right
Another issue is gay marriage. Again, I believe, rightly or wrongly, that we raise points raised nowhere else, notably pointing out exactly what had to happen beforehand for homosexuals to want to get married in the first place. And unless I am mistaken, our post is among the few who have called on a key constitutional scholar and on his books (none of which bother to address the issue of homosexuality outright, to the best of my recollection) to support our theses. (I will add that I believe that Harry Jaffa's A New Birth of Freedom should be required reading for all college students wishing to graduate — Just like W Cleon Skousen's 5000 Year Leap ought to be required reading for high school students to get their degree.)

• Some Thoughts on American Patriotism…

Finally, No Pasarán has some "basic" posts where we keep adding (not least thanks to… Instapundit) new links so that the post in question forms one bountiful source of information.

Those "basic-themed' posts include:

• The feminist war on men (with the bottom of the post featuring a dozen updates so far) and

• What hides behind the adulation of European health care (it's the same post as the above-mentioned Bill Maher post, with new links added periodically at the bottom of the item). These link to thoroughly-written articles and posts laden with facts and figures — penned by Americans as well as by foreigners (French or Eastern European or other) — that pretty much unravel, if not destroy completely, the leftist argument that Europe's social services (and in particular France's) are the nirvana while America's health system has been (until Obama) little but a hellhole filled with wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Update: Thanks to…  (dramatic pause) Instapundit (!) for linking this post…

Update 2: Instapundit Learns that Le Pen's Front National Is Actually Left-Wing, Something a French-Based Blog Has Been Reporting on (and Trying to Bring to Their Attention) for at Least 6 Years

IdeOlogy Masquerading as Foreign Policy: What Romney Must Point Out in the Third Debate

I think Romney did as well as could be expected in the second debate — although I keep wanting him to bring up the Russian microphone episode, along with Barack Obama's dissing of Russia and China's foes, Lech Walesa and the Dalai Lama — both of whom happen to be fellow Nobel Peace Prize recipients. (I mentioned all of the above several weeks ago during my televised debate with a member of the mainstream media — Newsweek's Paris Bureau Chief, no less.)

Indeed, what I really want the governor to do is tie the individual in with the general, and that means not only emphasizing the Benghazi debacle for the catastrophe it truly is, but tying an individual event like the Libyan attack in with Obama's foreign policy in general — to show it is not an isolated event but inherent in Obama's world view — as well as tying foreign policy (in general) in with economic policy. In other words, a winning strategy for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would not simply be attacking specifics, but also pointing out the underlying patterns.

From bumps on the road on the issue of economic recovery to bumps in the road in America's Mideast policy through four Americans getting killed being not optimal and blocking out any noise regarding Israel and Iran: All those quotes — especially the first two — ought to be put together in one nation-wide ad. And how about America being able to “absorb” another 9/11-sized attack? (See also Dick Durbin.) That choice of phrases show how unconcerned the Chicago politician really is about anything not linked to himself and to his leftist ideology and, indeed, how cold-hearted, as Ed Driscoll puts it, Barack Hussein Obama turns out to be.

You would not know it if you read the mainstream media, but far from rescuing the United States (or its reputation) from George W Bush's "disastrous" foreign policy and thus being the embodiment of Smart Diplomacy, Barack Obama's antics (or refraining from acting), have managed to snub one ally after another, time and again, from the British to the French, from the Poles to the East Europeans in general, and even from the Scandinavians to America's immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico.

This goes from the dramatic (Fast and Furious or switching support from Britain on the Falklands issue in favor of Argentina (while erroneously calling the Malvinas the Maldives)) to (what would seem to be) the trivial, such as petty refusals to make any kind of effort to be original (and thus respectful) when dealing with foreign leaders; petty refusals to offer gifts of any consequence to such dignitaries as Britain's prime minister or to the country's Queen; and petty refusals, while on official (!) visits in foreign capitals, to even attend dinners with the countries' respective leaders, such as the President of France and the King of Norway. Needless to say, we all remember that Obama also refrained from meeting with a single world leader — going on The View and on Letterman was more important — during the September United Nations conference.

What all this amounts to is obvious egotism while refusing to take the office of president of the United States seriously (beyond the left's own ideas of how to use it) and refusing to do the very basics (and not even unpleasant basics at that (double-date dinner in Paree with Carla Bruni and her husband?)) of one's duty as leader of the free world.

Of course, this all puts the left's world view on display (something Mitt Romney must pound home during the next debate and over the next couple of weeks): Obama and the left must not submit to reality (yes, America has enemies, yes, diplomacy requires treating foreign dignitaries with basic courtesy, and no, you are deferential to noone — certainly not monarchs and autocrats and foes); reality must submit to Obama's leftist (and self-serving) view.

Because, in addition to all the above snubs (to America's friends), Smart Diplomacy means that Obama has sucked up to Moscow and Beijing, along with régimes like Tehran's and that of Caracas. The Apologizer-in-Chief has been deferential — whether to autocrats like Saudi kings or to America's enemies. Because it turns out that in the leftists' fairy tale world, there are no enemies. At least, not as foreign nations; a criminal band like Al Qaeda, perhaps… But the Soviets, sorry the Russians, are not enemies — never have been, really — nor are the Chinese; after all, all of us on this planet are brothers under the skin. As are Iran's mullahs. And Hugo Chávez. Who can all live together, quite diplomatically — just like we all do among suit-wearing dipomats in the hallowed halls inside the United Nations…

With the much-vaunted Reset touted so much, (pacifist) ideology has been triumphant to the detriment of reality, with Obama making showing "space" and "flexibility" for concessions to Putin and Medvedev, showing little interest in the human rights situation in Russia and basically ignoring such things as the Russian spy scandal and the Viktor Bout case as well as a NATO member selling sensitive military technology to the Kremlin — never mind arms sales to China.

We have seen many comparisons to America's 39th president. Indeed, Jimmy Carter similarly ignored the misdeeds of the West's traditional enemies, like the Soviets — who in fact, he (Carter) told us, were not our enemies (and whose misdeeds, if indeed they could so be called, were exaggerated) — in favor of weeding out horrific human rights offenders (real or alleged) among our allies (who in turn were not really our friends). Thirty years later, we — America, the world, and Iran's citizens — are still living with the results — which needless to say includes an Islamic Republic that is hostile to America and the West, a régime that sponsors terrorism while seeking nuclear warheads, and a government in Tehran that is more oppressive towards the Iranian people than the Shah ever was. (Sounds like something Obama may have duplicated in Egypt and perhaps in Libya…)

This is the leftist fairy tale: we are all friends and brothers under the skin, and given that "fact", if we (or if any of us) fail to see this in a fellow nation, the fault must lie not with their leaders but with us — or with those of us who see them as enemies, i.e., with conservatives. (Note: try taking the left's talking points to their logical conclusion…)

Thus, there is no real problem with Russia, China, Iran, or countries such as Venezuela, at least none that cannot be worked out by ever-deeper soul-searching — soul-searching on the American side, needless to say. This has led to what Frank Gaffney called the Obama doctrine:
• Abandoning our allies,
• emboldening our enemies,
• and diminishing our country

The only victories the Apologizer-in-Chief is concerned with is over America conservatives, over American military funds, and over the American Way of Life. In the Obama fairy tale (or, as even John Edwards (!) said in 2007, in his Never-Never Land), allies don't need defending and don't even need to be called allies, as we (and they) don't really have enemies (no one does); therefore enemies aren't really being emboldened (as there are no enemies for the Apologizer-in-Chief — who is therefore, and who as senator was in 2007, more than willing to meet with said (non-)enemies "without preconditions"), just encouraged to see us and everybody else in the avant-garde way that we now see them; and we aren't in need of standing out, before (non-existent) foes and friends, in view of the fact that in Obama's brave new world, "there are no senior or junior partners — we are simply partners."

And so a major French party's anti-Americanism is ignored, by the administration as well as by the mainstream media (!), as is the open letter to the administration of President Barack Obama from Central and Eastern Europe, signed by 22 intellectuals and former leaders from the region, including Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, who are feeling "they are getting whacked".

The pretense of this fairy tale reality has gone to such lengths as hastily sending Russian spies to Moscow without garnering information about the Kremlin's spy ring beforehand and hastily announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden on the same day he was gunned down, before the documents discovered at his Pakistan home could be studied, and acted upon, by intelligence officers — never mind the Russian mike episode. Apologies have gone out to the Arab world, as we all know, but how many people realize that they even went out, before the Arab Spring, to Libya's Muhammar Gaddafi?

And then we get Benghazi: there are no enemies — unless it is us, ergo the murder of the ambassador must be due to the Mohammed-insulting videotape. Any other interpretation, unless of course it is due to Western hatred of and bigotry towards Muslims, can only amount to shameful politicizing.

To conclude: Mitt Romney must base his arguments on simple descriptions on the underlying premises and patterns of the Barack Obama administration and the leftists who embody them.
• A set of policies — foreign, domestic, and economic — based on leftist ideology, in other words, imaginary fairly tales
• Imagining that no country, large or small, is in the final analysis a foe, to America or to any of its allies — who aren't really that close friends anyway — and no disaster during the term of a leftists is really that big of a disaster anyway
• Anything going wrong in the world must somehow be the fault of America (or the West)
• A refusal by Obama to take his office seriously
• A lack of concern for anyone who doesn't support, directly or indirectly, his position and his (self-serving) world view or who can't be persuaded to jump on the bandwagon of supporters — for they can of course only be vile bigots and racists and other hatemongers.

Oh. And by the way — go see Dinesh D'Souza's Obama's America 2016.

• Related: Four years ago, I wrote a similar post for the Republican Party's champion: A Winning Strategy for McCain: Not Attacking Specifics, Simply Describing Patterns

Update — Also check out: Three crucial points that Mitt Romney must make

Update 2 — Five Things I Wish Mitt Romney Would Say in the Debate