THE COMPULSION TO APOLOGIZE
I've written often, such as in Rejecting The Evil Eye, about liberals' fear of envy. This fear is what makes them liberals. Thus the key insight:
Liberalism is not a political ideology or set of beliefs. It is an envy-deflection device, a psychological strategy to avoid being envied. It is the politicalization of envy-appeasement.
Nothing more epitomizes liberals' fear of envy than their compulsion to apologize. Apologize to the world for the existence of exploitative America. Apologize to the Earth for the existence of polluting humanity. Last Sunday (2/25), the Democrat-controlled legislature of Virginia voted to "apologize" for the state's role in slavery.
When you apologize for something that your great-great-great-great grandfather, at the latest, might have done (and most likely not, for the overwhelming majority of Virginia residents are not the descendants of slave owners), you require psychiatric counseling.
Another example of how liberalism is a psychological affliction – a particularly dangerous one when it's the basis of foreign policy.
Which brings us today to a Democrat Congressman from California, "Moonbat Mike" Honda.
Moonbat Mike represents that bastion of liberal guilt, Silicon Valley. He is a member of the Cop Killer Caucus, one of 31 – all Democrats – who last December voted against (368 votes for) a House Resolution condemning the city of St. Denis, France for naming a street in honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted murderer of Philadelphia police officer Danny Faulkner.
One of his favorite activities is raising money for radical Moslem groups like CAIR. His official House website praises Army Lt. Ehren Watada for "risking his freedom for peace," and expresses "admiration" for Watada's "breaking one law in furtherance of a higher, moral one." Watada is facing a court-martial for refusing deployment in Iraq.
Moonbat Mike's latest cause is House Resolution 121, which demands that: "The Government of Japan should formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Force's coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as `comfort women', during its colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II."
One would think Japan had paid its karmic debt for its wartime atrocities by getting nuked twice. But the fact is that Japan has repeatedly apologized for this particular episode. In 1994, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama declared in a formal statement:
On the issue of wartime "comfort women", which seriously stained the honor and dignity of many women, I would like to take this opportunity once again to express my profound and sincere remorse and apologies.
His successors, Prime Ministers Ryutaro Hashimoto, Keizo Obuchi, Yochiro Mori, and Junichiro Koizumi have all written similar letters of apology. Officially speaking for the government of Japan, Koizumi wrote:
As Prime Minister of Japan, I thus extend anew my most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.
Yet here is Moonbat Mike demanding Japan keep apologizing. Why?
Because Japan is an ally of America's.
The issue of "comfort women" is being revived by liberals to damage relations between our country and its best friend and ally in Asia. That's the purpose of H. Res. 121. If Japan were an antagonist instead, like say, Communist China, you can bet Moonbat Mike would be making no demands for apologies.
It's a safe bet because when asked if he would ever condemn the Chicom slaughter of tens of millions of Chinese, the wholesale lack of democratic freedom and civil rights in China, he refused, because "things can change."
What's also a safe bet is that liberal Democrats in Congress will never propose a resolution demanding apologies for atrocities and crimes against humanity committed by America's antagonists.
To test this, a Republican Congressman will soon be circulating a House Resolution demanding that Saudi Arabia apologize for Moslems practicing slavery for over 1,300 years.
Drawing upon massive historical documentation of the Arab slave trade as presented in such scholarly works as Slavery in the Arab World by Murray Gordon, the resolution will conclude that an apology is owed to the world by the country claiming to represent True Islam for the horror of Islamic slavery inflicted upon countless millions for centuries.
The very first of his colleagues across the aisle this Congressman will ask to be a co-sponsor will be Moonbat Mike Honda.
And if he gets a quid-pro-quo I'll-sign-yours-if-you-sign-mine, the Congressman has a ready response: "Sure, Mike – as soon as you show me any letters from Saudi kings apologizing for the Arab slave trade, and regretting that slavery is sanctioned by Allah in the Koran. As I'm sure you know, Mike, Saudi Arabia didn't legally ban slavery until 1962, and slavery continues in many Moslem countries to this day."
Think Moonbat Mike will sign up? Not a chance – because liberal causes like H. Res. 121 invariably have something anti-American at their core. If it's not anti-American, or anti-an- American-ally, deal them out. Bet on it.