There is a bit of video out there where that heroine of the far left Frances Fox Piven, is berating Milton Friedman about how Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Chilean government. It didn’t make any more sense then than it does now – Milton Friedman didn’t have anything to do with the Chilean overthrow. But he’d given a lecture at Catholic University in Santiago a few years before, and the people involved in the revolution took many of their economic cues from him, so the left was all worked up about it.
They were so bent out of shape that when Dr. Friedman was being awarded his Nobel Prize, some dim witted British lefty stood up in the crowd and made a big fuss interrupting the ceremony. Like I said, that sort of thing didn’t make any sense at all. But it’s even more confusing when you consider that Frances Fox Piven has actually been calling for the violent overthrow of the American government for years now. She might as well come right out and say that she’s only in favor of those bloody revolutions where she or someone like her gets to run people’s lives for them afterward.
Anyway, I’m sure it’s a great shock to you all to discover that there is a bundle of hypocrisy on the far left. I mean, who knew - right? So why am I bringing this up? It’s not just that all this talk about Egypt and the comparisons of Obama and Carter have made me nostalgic for the 70’s. But it’s got me thinking about the kinds of violent revolutions I think are OK and the ones I don’t.
That was one of the good things about Nixon, and we’d all be better off if Obama simply took a page from his book. If instead of portraying Carter-esque weakness abroad, he simply said to the Egyptian people something like this:
“We believe in Democracy and the authority that is derived from the consent of the governed. So we will enthusiastically support a new government in Egypt that is more responsive to the desires of the Egyptian people. But we have a stake in the region too. So if it turns out that the desire of the Egyptian people is to add disruption to the greater Middle East through the use of force, then we will overthrow the Egyptian government and replace it with a new one.
The Egyptian people can have any kind of government they choose, and can empower that governmental any way they see fit. That’s for the Egyptian people to determine and should not involve any intrusion from the United States. If they desire to be friends with us we would welcome that friendship. We believe absolutely in the right of a nation to determine its own destiny. But we will not stand by and allow the broader peace of the region be jeopardized. Anyone can choose to burn down their own house without interference from us. But no one can threaten to burn down their neighbor’s house and expect us to stand by and allow it.”
Nixon might have said something like that. Even if he didn’t say it publicly, I’m sure he said something like it in private about Chile. But to do that takes a pair of cajones that Obama, as our first woman president, clearly doesn’t have.
I guess it’s not just a pose on his part. He really is just like Carter. The pansy.
Here is that video by the way. Take particular note of that dashingly handsome and obviously brilliant black man involved the discussion:
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