I will let pass the fact that, for his campaign slogan, John Forbes Kerry chose words penned by an open communist who praised Stalin. While, of course, no Republican could choose a slogan originally authored by a Nazi and get away with it (and rightly so, I might add), it seems to be the unanimous decision of the mainstream media that it’s a-OK to praise to the rafters people who openly supported an even more monstrous ideology. It isn’t fair but, then, neither is life. Instead, I want to talk about what the slogan means and what it says about John Kerry and the modern Democratic Party.

“Let America be America again.” It, despite its origins, actually captures the essence the present Democratic campaign very well. By “America” they mean the “America” of the Clinton years which, in their vision, was a utopia, with the Republic on the road towards the creation of true social justice and a new internationalist order. This march forward, in their view a process as inevitable as any that Marx ever described, would leave behind the dinosaurs of conservatism, whose irrelevance had been fully demonstrated when they failed in their effort to impeach President Clinton. This process, in their minds, was suddenly and unnaturally disrupted on January 20th, 2001. History, in their view, stopped on that day and we entered into a strange interregnum which will end only when a Democrat is again in the White House and the world is safe for Barbara Streisand to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Of course, in truth, America can never be “America” again. We can never go back to the 1990’s any more than we can follow the wishes of some conservatives and go back to the 1950’s. The security and prosperity of that decade were, if anything, more illusory than real. The giant growth of the stock market was created through a combination of fraud and irrational exuberance furthered by said fraud. As for security: as Bill Clinton was serviced by an intern under his desk and spent a year defending his actions, the threat from al-Qaeda grew. As Bill Clinton guided Israel into a foolish “peace process”, Yassir Arafat and the other leaders of the Palestinians used the time they bought to arm and prepare for another war.

The Democrats are tempting the people with the promise of something they can never really have. What they really offer is botox for America, a quick-fix solution to recaptured the glories of an imagined past. The solutions they offer are temporary and can never be made to fully stick. They’re not entirely real. But they can be made to fool some. At least, for a little while.

After September 11th, President Bush led this nation into a great crusade, a struggle which may, if we are stalwart, redeem the nation’s honor and make America safe once more. It wasn’t the obvious choice. The more obvious option would have been to bomb areas where al-Qaeda was believed to be, send in some Special Forces, and leave well enough alone. It would have been popular with most of the people, and the President could have used the political capital accumulated to pursue other political initiatives dearer to their hearts.

But George Bush didn’t do that. What the President saw was this: he had two alternatives before him, he could “manage” terror and watch it slowly get worse, or he could seek to wipe it out. He opted for the latter. Not because it was the easy course or the politically expedient one, but because it was the right thing to do.

The basic strategic concept of the war goes something like this: terrorism occurs because repressive regimes in the Middle East, in order to ensure their own survival, channel all dissent into the form of religious extremism and then they direct that extremism against external enemies (Israel, the United States, Europe, etc.). Terrorism will never slacken so long as those regimes remain in place. So? How do you replace those regimes? You systematically overthrow them and replace them with new, democratic, governments which will, in turn, provide an example to the other peoples of the region. It’s a new domino theory: turn Iraq and, sooner or later, the Ba’athist regime in Syria and the Islamist one in Iran will fall. Eventually, from there, democracy will spread outwards to Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and, yes, to the Palestinian territories. This is a mission which will be undertaken with American force but in which the Moslems themselves will have to play the prime role. And, as we’ve seen in Iraq, they’re ready to play that role. Given a free choice, the Iraqi people have chosen secular and non-violent politicians to lead them. With ten years under American protection, the Iraqi people will be busy arguing about whether taxes are too high and funding for public schools is sufficient.

If we turn away now and abandon this effort (and, make no mistake, that’s what we’ll be doing if we elect John Kerry and John Edwards), we’ll be sending a signal to liberty-loving people all across the Middle East: you can’t trust America, for a turn away is just an election away. To be sure, it’s doubtful if a President Kerry will abandon Iraq. By the time he might enter into office, events there look as though they will be rather firmly settled. However, it is equally certain that he will decline to provide the force which might be requited to give the necessary shove to the regimes in Damascus and Tehran. Iraq will probably be safe, but what of the rest?

If John Kerry is elected our enemies will be greatly encouraged and emboldened. In their view, they will have changed the course of an American election. Make no mistake, al-Qaeda, the Iraqi “resistance”, and all of our other enemies (such as the French) will believe they have won a great victory, perhaps their greatest victory. And that is how the world will see it too.

John Kerry promises that, if he is elected, America will rest happily upon the idle hill of summer. And yet, elsewhere, others will not be so idle. Those who vote for John Kerry in the hopes of letting, “America be America again,” will get their wish, for a little while. And then it will end. Again. And, the next time, it will be worse.