The Conservative Soldier

Everyone is afraid of something in America.

Afraid of John McCain or Barack H. Obama.

Afraid of gasoline prices and their precipitous rise.

Afraid of inflation. Afraid of job loss. Afraid of declining home values that will keep them from amassing huge home equity debt.

Afraid of salmonella. Afraid of tomatoes. (Will string beans be next?).

Afraid of guns. Afraid of the Supreme Court.

Wallow in all the fear you want. Dive in and wiggle your toes in it. Then grow up and shut up.

Let me tell you what we should be afraid of in America. He’s a 23-year-old guy in Idaho who phoned The Dennis Miller Show on Monday morning. At 23, he is fixated on the War in Iraq, the national debt, his economic stimulus check. He fears we are sending too much of “his” money around the world to support war and foreign aid.

He actually said the U.S. should stop sending food to “people who don’t appreciate it.” Now, I have no idea how often our 23-year-old Hangdog Harry has experienced hunger (beyond the normal pangs that young men feel between meals and snacks), but I have a sneaking suspicion he has no idea what he is talking about.

Dennis Miller, who does not attack guests (to his credit) even when they are really stupid and have teed themselves up for a verbal onslaught, calmly wondered aloud when the kid lost the natural enthusiasm once automatically possessed by youth in America. The 23-year-old did not have an answer. It was obvious he didn’t realize — until that moment — how ridiculous he sounded.

The Fear Syndrome in America is totally ridiculous, too. A democracy is not built on stimulus checks and right-of-birth cheap gas and guaranteed upward mobility. We have millions of people running around this country afraid that they’ll have to stop driving Cadillac Escalades and Lincoln Navigators and other over-sized SUVs, scared to death they might have to rebalance the family budget, worried sick that a third flat-panel TV planned for their homes might have to be put on hold.

But they are not afraid of the threat to America posed by radical Islam. They give nary a thought to the threat posed by Al Qaeda terror cells to stability across the Middle East.

We know this because a majority of vote-eligible Americans refuse to give credit to President George W. Bush for the number of terror attacks on U.S. soil in the past 2,500+ days since 09-11-2001. That number is zero. These same Sulking Sams and Samanthas absolutely refuse to acknowledge the building success of American military initiatives across Iraq. A lot of these folks make up the so-called youth vote, the sector that is underwriting Obama’s campaign $25 at a time (or so we are expected to believe) and will turn out in droves this fall to assure his ticket to the White House is punched.

If I am B.H. Obama, I am counting on these whiners at my peril. Most of them will be too depressed to get out of bed and haul their lazy behinds to a polling place. Count on it.

It also is likely these disillusioned youngsters never will come around. But let us be clear. They can bemoan the evolution of the global economy, which is seeing enormous upticks in oil consumption by China and India (and therefore impacting demand and worldwide prices). They can bemoan the normal economic cycles that see wages freeze and prices rise and jobs vanish and stock markets panic now and again.

Yet nothing we’ve seen to date will compare to the economic devastation that will be triggered by another terrorist attack on the United States. So let’s stop the whining and take a moment to wallow in something other than fear. Let’s put a toe in the waters of hope. Let’s take a second look at what the Bush Doctrine is achieving.

David Brooks, the acclaimed New York Times columnist, observes: “…Before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn (troops) in the depths of the (Iraq) chaos in (2006 and 2007), the world would be in worse shape today.”

And, from the monumental effort by author and embedded war journalist Michael Yon, entitled, “Moment of Truth in Iraq”, are these words from his book that affirm the power of American democracy in the world: “Maybe creating a powerful democracy in the Middle East was a foolish reason to go to war. Maybe it was never the reason we went to war. But it is within our grasp now and nearly all the hardest work has been done.”

Hard work. Staying the course. Waking up everyday, believing in the Founding Fathers’ vision. This is the life a 23-year-old male can choose, whether he is here at home enjoying American freedom, or walking through healed neighborhoods in Iraq in a military uniform, or cornering Al Qaeda militias in Afghanistan.

If young men and women in America really want change, let them get to work. Slogans and rehearsed rhetoric and tax cuts are not change. Change is an attitude, not a campaign pledge. When attitudes are restored, fear is defeated.