Newsweek to America: Stop dreaming
Newsweek strikes again!
No, not the now-discredited,
U.S.-military-flushed-the-Koran-down-the-toilet
story. For its Feb. 2, 2005, issue, Newsweek's Asian international
edition
ran a cover showing a garbage pail with a large American flag inside.
The
caption read, "The Day America Died." Inside, an article that severely
criticizes America, by Princeton Professor Andrew Moravcsik, who, among
other things, serves as nonresident senior fellow with the liberal
Brookings
Institution (a relationship not disclosed).
That week's Newsweek European international edition ran a cover of
President
George W. Bush at the presidential podium. The caption read, "America
Leads
.. . . But Is Anyone Following?" Again, Professor Moravcsik's article
ran
inside.
What about that week's American edition? No cover showing Bush at the
podium
or an American flag in a garbage pail. No Professor Moravcsik article.
Instead, the American edition ran a cover with Jamie Foxx, Hilary Swank
and
Leonardo DiCaprio, under the caption, "Oscar Confidential: Hollywood's
Hottest Stars Together - A Candid Talk About Acting, Fear, and Fame."
That's
right, American readers saw an entirely different cover, with
Moravcsik's
article AWOL.
According to Investor's Business Daily, an editor's note accompanied
the
Asian and European international editions. It read: "Verified facts,
not
opinions from any viewpoint, are laid out in this issue."
Verified facts, not opinions?
Moravcsik writes that, contrary to what Americans think, the American
Dream
no longer exists: "But the greater danger may be a delusional America,
one
that believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the American
Dream
lives on, that America remains a model for the world . . . "
America's 2004 unemployment rate was 5.5 percent, lower than Italy,
France,
Spain, Germany and the combined European Union. American GDP grew at
4.4
percent in 2004, versus United Kingdom's 3.2 percent, Japan's 2.9
percent,
Spain's 2.6 percent, France's 2.1 percent, Germany's 1.7 percent,
Italy's
1.3 percent and the European Union's 2.4 percent. America has the
second
highest GDP per capita in the world (Luxembourg is first), more than 30
percent higher than both Japan and the United Kingdom.
Professor Moravcsik doesn't much care for the Bush administration's
foreign
policy: "The truth is that Americans are living in a dream world. Not
only
do others not share America's self-regard, they no longer aspire to
emulate
the country's social and economic achievements. The loss of faith in
the
American Dream goes beyond this swaggering administration and its war
in
Iraq."
Swaggering administration? Please note that the president got a U.N.
resolution telling Saddam Hussein to disarm or else. Congress passed a
resolution supporting the war. The majority of Americans supported the
war
effort, re-electing George W. Bush. Even now, with the persistence of
the
so-called "insurgency," the majority of Americans want us to stay the
course. Does that make most Americans "swaggerers"?
Moravcsik condemns America for not expanding its welfare state: "Once
most
foreign systems reach a reasonable level of affluence, they follow the
Europeans in treating the provision of adequate social welfare is [sic]
a
basic right." A reasonable level of affluence?' What is reasonable?
Defined
by whom? Apparently Professor Moravcsik prefers a command-and-control
economy - maybe the appointment of a wage or benefits czar - to
determine
the deserving and the undeserving.
Moravcsik berates American health care: "'Americans have the best
medical
care in the world,' Bush declared in his Inaugural Address. Yet, the
United
States is the only developed democracy without a universal guarantee of
health care, leaving about 45 million Americans uninsured." But British
media consider their country's state-run health care system in
"crisis."
Their National Health Service (NHS) is heavily in debt, despite huge
taxes
and a doubling in spending over the last seven years.
The U.K.'s press reports that twice as many bureaucrats now join NHS
than
doctors and nurses, and that 858,000 people were on a waiting list for
an
operation at the end of 2004, some of them waiting over a year!
For those still in denial about leftist bias in mainstream news, these
must
be tough times.
Consider the Associated Press story on Janice Rogers Brown, the black
conservative California Supreme Court jurist nominated by President
Bush to
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The AP wire story
began:
"Blacks decried Janice Rogers Brown's nomination to a federal appeals
court
.. . . " Blacks? All blacks? Nobody dissented? All 30-plus million
blacks
held a straw vote, with Brown getting zero votes? About an
hour-and-a-half
later, a "recast" AP story came over the wire. Same article, only this
time
the first line read, "Civil rights lawyers here decried Janice Rogers
Brown's nomination . . . " Maybe somebody felt guilty.
The Newsweek affair and the AP story serve as a window into how many in
mainstream media view our country. They celebrate the welfare state,
consider health care a right, while downplaying the worldwide threat
posed
by extremist Islam. If, as Newsweek's editor note claims, Professor
Moravcsik's article simply advances the truth, why not let Americans,
the
people who stand to benefit the most, read it? After all, it is we
Americans
who "are living in a dream world." Please, wake us up.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/elder060205.asp
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