Peter Beinart, hilariously regarded as an intellectual whose opinions matter, (remember how he once championed the Iraq war and using American power abroad but then suddenly “evolved” into your typical leftist Jew attacking Israel?) is now ludicrously claiming that Piers Morgan is the best spokesman for the gun-control crowd.
Acknowledging that Morgan is “haughty, he’s self-righteous…” Beinart actually trumpets:
It’s not because Morgan’s views on guns are correct, although I think they are. Or because his arguments are especially clever.
Clever? If calling opponents absurd, ridiculous, and assorted other Morganisms is Beinart’s idea of clever I’d love to see his idea of puerile. (Sorry, Peter, that means childishly silly; I’ll try to eschew using too many big word in case you’re reading this.)
Beinart bloviates that it is precisely Morgan’s foreign birth that makes him an effective spokesman. Why?
That’s what I like. I like the fact that, as an outsider, Morgan has not been desensitized to America’s gun mania in the way so many of us natives have. I like the fact that he thinks Americans can actually learn from the rest of the world. And most of all, I like the fact that Americans are getting to see, night after night on TV, what it’s like to be judged by the rest of the planet. It’s not fun, but we’d better get used to it.
While Beinart may be quite comfortable getting on his knees and obsequiously begging for absolution from the rest of the world, the red-blooded Americans among us (and Peter, I wouldn’t dismiss us; there are at least 57 million of us here) still know that we are the leaders of the free world, and we don’t give a damn what the world thinks of us.
Wait, there’s more Beinart mea culpa to follow:
Morgan, in his way, embodies Globalization 2.0. Globalization 1.0, whose praises Bill Clinton and Tom Friedman sang to great effect in the 1990s, was really Americanization under a different name. We sent our investment bankers, economists, political consultants, and constitutional lawyers across the globe to judge, and remake, the economic, legal, and political systems of those behind-the-curve nations that had not yet embraced deregulated democracy. But today, with America’s power in relative decline, Globalization 2.0 means that other nations also influence and judge us, whether it’s a company from the United Arab Emirates buying our ports, a Mexican billionaire buying part of The New York Times, or Chinese officials lecturing us on our federal debt. Americans, especially hypernationalistic Americans, don’t like that very much, but to succeed in the years to come we’re going to have accept it. We’re going to have to get better at understanding, and adapting to, the way foreigners view us.
Oh, yeah?
That’s why Al Jazeera’s purchase of Current TV could prove useful. The more Americans watch non-Americans watch us, the better we’ll do in a world where our prosperity depends on meeting their expectations.
Al Jazeera’s purchase of Current TV could prove useful? Beinart is probably disappointed that the ground Zero Mosque wasn’t placed over the White House.
Somewhere, Alex Jones is readying his flamethrower.
Sure, cite Alex Jones. You didn’t happen to see Morgan get cut into little pieces by Ben Shapiro? You did? Did Morgan look clever to you? That didn’t count? Oh.
Beinart concludes thus:
The next round in our endless culture war will likely pit not merely black and brown versus white, and secular versus religious. It will pit those Americans who can accept our increased interpenetration by foreign immigrants, products, money, and mores against those cultural protectionists who see it as the end of the republic. The fight over Piers Morgan is laying bare the terms of that new struggle. And that’s a good thing, especially if the supercilious, judgmental Brit wins.
That’s right; mock us as benighted “cultural protectionists” because we know, as Shapiro put it so eloquently with Morgan in his defense of the 2nd amendment:
But the fact is this; history is replete with democracies going tyrannical. It happened in France in the 19th century, in Spain in the last century, happened in Germany, in Italy. It has happened repeatedly, it has happened in Japan.
Beinart may smirk that we will inevitably have to kneel before the world.
It ain’t gonna happen, son.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.