Welcome 'Big Peace': There Is Another Bear in the Woods

Yesterday, Andrew Breitbart launched his newest web venture, Big Peace. It will do for national security, what Big Hollywood has done for culture, Big Journalism for the media and Big Government for domestic policy. It has also caused me to climb into the way-back machine.

In 1985, I was an exchange student at a gymnasium (high school) in Bremen, West Germany. It was an anxious time; with renewed leftist terrorist attacks and hijackings throughout Europe. (The TWA airplane which took me to Frankfurt was hijacked about a week later.) The Middle East was, predictably, tense. The Soviet Union looked as strong as ever. America was coming out of an economic and psychological malaise, but much of Europe, and U.S. political and media elites, were openly worried about a “warmongering” US President who didn’t understand complex foreign policy and might just start a war for kicks.

[youtube NpwdcmjBgNA nolink]

For those readers under forty, the political debates at the time centered on MX and Minuteman missiles, nuclear disarmament and small dust-ups like the Contras in Nicaragua. One night over dinner, my otherwise gracious German hosts, along with some of their friends, berated me for US foreign policy. Most every problem in the world could somehow be traced back to the U.S. They were particularly incensed about US Government support for the Contra rebels, fighting the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

America should stay out of the affairs of all other countries, I was lectured. It shouldn’t interfere in any of the domestic squabbles in other nations. I replied that I understood that, but the Sandinistas were communist dictators who were supported by the Soviets and Cuba, so it was probable we would be involved.

Support for the Sandinistas from other countries was immaterial, I was told. America should be better and never involve itself in another country’s affairs, they argued.

So, I replied, what about that Berlin Airlift?

Oh, America had to do that, my German hosts replied. That was totally different.

It always is.

For those who didn’t grow up during the Reagan years, it is impossible to appreciate the level of hatred and animosity that was directed at the 40th President during those years. (At my college, there was a day-long protest, attended by hundreds, called “Poets Against Reagan,” which tells you far more about the self-absorbtion of poets than anything about Reagan.) In hindsight, the Reagan years were when the Left became truly unhinged. (That history has proven Reagan right about most things makes them positively homicidal today.)

What bothered them the most, I think, was that Reagan was so popular with the American public. The left had spent the post war years carving and imposing a new “Great Society” and here was this “actor” espousing a competing–and opposite–vision and it resonated with the populace. This was not in their script.

At the time, and still to this day, the left and the elites chalk up the Reagan phenomenon to his skills as a communicator or his sunny, optimistic demeanor. In their minds, it couldn’t be that the public agreed with Reagan; rather, they were “duped” by his rhetorical skills. I think there is a very simple explanation for the strong bond between Reagan and the American public; Reagan provided clarity.

When Reagan famously said in Berlin, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” he gave voice to what millions felt, but no politician had had the guts to say. When he called the Soviet Union “an evil empire,” millions of heads in Chicago, Cleveland, Miami…and Warsaw, nodded in agreement.

For years, I’ve been toying with my own unified field theory of politics. Most of our policy challenges result from our inability to confront the questions directly. We overcomplicate the federal budget, for example, because we don’t want to admit that the overwhelming majority of our spending is to transfer wealth from producers to non-producers. (Probably half of all federal spending is to provide money to senior citizens, to take one example.) If we admitted that, we could probably solve the budget crisis in half an hour.

America and the West faces a threat unlike any we’ve seen since the Cold War. This threat has a simple name: Islamic fundamentalism. But, the left and the elites will never admit that, just as they wouldn’t admit the Soviet Union was “an evil empire.” But, not saying it doesn’t make it so.

To be sure, in some respects, the threat isn’t quite as existential as that of the Cold War. Thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at every city in America is an order of magnitude different than an Iran, no matter how bat-shit crazy, with a handful of nukes. But, in other respects, it is far more challenging. Because, not only do we allow this fundamentalism to thrive in the West, we make excuses for it.

Since launching, Big Government has often published articles about the threat Islamic fundamentalism poses to our Western ideals of freedom and tolerance. We have documented the left’s and elite’s reluctance to recognize the Ft. Hood shooting or the Christmas airplane bombing attempt for what they were; terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists. We have brought you the insights of writers like Bg. Gen Anthony Tata, Frank Gaffney, Andrea Shea King, Kristinn Taylor and Pam Geller, among others. But it hasn’t been enough.

We have our own fights and can’t focus sufficient attention on this critically important issue. It isn’t, if you will, our comparative advantage. So, please join me in welcoming Big Peace and its acclaimed editor, Peter Schweizer. Welcome also, Frank Gaffney and Jim Hanson, from BLACKFIVE. They have the expertise, talent and, yes, clarity to put the appropriate focus on the challenge facing us.

Obviously, Big Peace will go beyond just the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. With a newly assertive Russia and the bizarro-world that exists in North Korea, our nation faces a variety of challenges in the world. Big Peace gets that there is a bear in the woods, no matter how much the left, media and elites try to distract us. They understand that this really is a fight for the values of Western Civilization, whether the challenge comes from zealots or insecure regimes. With Big Peace on the beat, in the words of Capt. Louis Renault, Victor Lazlo, “this time I know our side will win.”