Funny, and serious too
Fred Thompson, who turns 65 in August, is a pretty funny guy. The actor-senator, who played DA Arthur Branch on five TV shows (four of which alongside one of our favorites), had this to say about his two careers:
“After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood“
We heard a more serious side the other day of the fellow we’ve most often thought of as an actor in this Paul Harvey radio commentary:
I feel bad for Nancy Pelosi and her neighbors. Anti-war activists from the group Code Pink have been giving her the same treatment the president gets at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. Camping on her San Francisco lawn, they’re demanding she cut off funds to the troops in Iraq.
Besides coolers and mattresses, protesters have brought along a giant paper mache statue of Mahatma Gandhi, who is pretty much the symbol of the anti-war movement. Code Pink was founded on his birthday, and when Saddam Hussein was being given a last chance to open Iraq to U.N. weapons inspectors, posters appeared around America asking “What would Gandhi do?” And that’s a pretty good question. At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?
It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is NEVER. During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”
The so-called peace movement certainly has the right to make Gandhi’s way their way, but their efforts to make collective suicide American foreign policy just won’t cut it in this country.
We’ve previously observed from Scott Johnson how creepy Gandhi was, as well as shockingly anti-progress. But the dunderheads hectoring Bush and even Pelosi don’t really engage in thought, do they? Like Carol Doda, they emote! It’s nice to see Fred Thompson saying such true things, and it would appear to be evidence that he has no further political ambitions.
March 16th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
It’s usually poor form to answer a question with another question, but there are exceptions. To “What would Gandhi do?”, I reply “What happened to Gandhi?”
It’s okay with me if people try to commit suicide. It stops being okay when they insist I join them.
March 16th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Sen. Thompson should do some fact checking. I hold no brief with the seditious Middle Temple lawyer, but I can’t find any suggestion that Britain “surrender” to Hitler. He was no fan of any tyrant, and never (again, afaik) said that violent self defence was wrong.
“The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a (preemptive) war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or province.”
“If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment.”
Gandhi was all kinds of strange and wrong about a lot of things, but we should get our facts straight.
March 16th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
staghounds, you should be kind (and honest) enough to finish the particular Ghandi thought you quoted.
“And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the god fearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.”
It seems that Ghandi certainly did advocate laying down for the Nazis.
March 17th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
If Ghandhi (or MLK) had actually been dealing with the Nazis, or the Soviets under Stalin, or Mao, he would have lasted perhaps a week. Instead, he was dealing with Britains (Americans in MLK’s case) who had been brought up with Judeo-Christian values and Anglo-Saxon rule of law. Thus the difference between cultures is exposed.
One of the funniest episodes of the last 10 years was watching the eco-protestors and the anti-globalists show up and protest and riot at every G8 summit held in the West. Then the G8 summit went to Shanghai China and the websites of the anarchists filled with warnings to stay away from Shanghai, because the Chinese government wouldn’t hesitate to open fire. Kinda puts the whole Amerikkka the fascist nonsense in perspective.