James Nagy – 7/18/07

This page was last updated on July 23, 2007.

Simple truth; James Nagy; Beaver County Times; July 18, 2007.

You probably recall most of Mr. Nagy’s letters are simply vehicles to bash Republicans in general and President Bush in particular. In a recent letter, Mr. Nagy lobbied for impeaching President Bush.

In a comment posted on the Times website, Mr. Nagy wrote the following under the title “Some Satire Intended”: “The Editor left out my comic alert lead in. It may not have been any better as a camp political lette. [sic] The omitted [sic] lines follow: Some of us like the simple truth. So I’ll just take a simply unavoidable truth from a ‘Books on TV’ talk by Lawrence Harrison, add some facts recalled from my simple brain and serve up what I hope is a tasty bowl of ‘Truth de Jour.’” I don’t have a clue what its relevance is.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Some of us like the simple truth.”

[RWC] As you will read below, Mr. Nagy apparently isn’t “some of us.”

“The late Daniel Moynihan wisely said: ‘The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself and the central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society.’”

[RWC] Here are a couple of Moynihan quotes Mr. Nagy skipped over. “Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.” and “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”

“Adding another parameter, liberals used to be thought less experienced and more theoretical. Conservatives were thought more practical and concrete.

“But over time things changed. Technologies change politics.”

[RWC] Huh?

“Yesteryear’s politics shape today’s culture. Social Security, once a daring New Deal program, is now tried and true. It’s now privatizing government and free trade agreements that represent an unknown commodity.”

[RWC] Mr. Nagy is entitled to his opinion that Socialist Security “is now tried and true,” but the facts don’t support that opinion.

Since 1950, Congress increased the Socialist Security tax rate 20 times! At 12.4%, the current level is 6.2 times its original rate. Further, the max taxed earnings cap increases every year by law. Without changes, the Socialist Security Administration reports Socialist Security will go into deficit by 2017 and will be unable to pay currently promised benefits by 2041. By any definition, Socialist Security is a Ponzi scheme, along with Medicare.

Who’s “privatizing government” and when did “free trade agreements” become “an unknown commodity?”

“Based on Moynihan’s statement alone, the fear or hatred that some conservatives have of liberals cannot be justified. All ideologies when enacted into law have an impact on the culture. The difference is that liberals tend to look before they leap.

“Both the Vietnam and Iraq wars might have been won had we paid greater attention to the cultures of those nations.”

[RWC] If Mr. Nagy wants to have that opinion about Iraq, fine. A Republican – though not exactly conservative – president was in office when we attacked Iraq. As a reminder, though, 39% of House Democrats and 58% of Senate Democrats voted for the Iraq War Resolution, including the 2004 Democrat nominees for president and vice president and the current frontrunner for the 2008 Democrat nomination. Democrats also held the majority in the Senate when it approved the Iraq War Resolution.

To make that implication about Vietnam is a revision of history. Though our involvement began with Democrat President Truman in the early 1950s, when Republican President Eisenhower left office in 1961, U.S. involvement in South Vietnam was about 700 military trainers.

By the time Democrat President Johnson left office eight years later, he, JFK and a Democrat-majority (64%+ in the Senate and 57% to 68% in the House) Congress had turned our involvement into combat and our Vietnam troop strength was about 540,000.

Further, and for right or wrong, it was a Republican – though again not exactly conservative – president (Richard Nixon) who almost immediately began bringing the troops home and who ended our involvement completely several years later.

Of course, I guess it’s possible today’s liberals consider JFK/LBJ-era Democrats to be conservatives.

“Obviously, success means different things in different societies. The best chance of winning a war, it would seem, would be to have liberals do all the planning.”

[RWC] Does Mr. Nagy mean like the liberals who ran the Korean and Vietnam wars? As a reminder, only a cease-fire was signed regarding the Korean War, not a peace treaty. Technically, we’re still at war with North Korea.

“Cultures, like languages, are best learned by total immersion. Conservatives must be stay at home types because they seem to think that all cultures can easily adapt to democracy.”

[RWC] I guess Mr. Nagy believes we’re in Iraq to establish a democracy there. Whether it speaks well of us or not, I believe establishing democracy is way down the list. Had we not believed Iraq to be a potential threat, we would never have attacked Iraq regardless of how Saddam Hussein treated Iraq’s people.

Of the many reasons given in the Iraq War Resolution, one was “Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.” The law referred to was approved 360-38 by the House, by unanimous consent in the Senate, and was signed by then-President Bill Clinton.

“Being somewhat more serious for a moment, we need Congress to add in-depth cultural hearings to its standard operating procedure before authorizing a war to help another country succeed as a democracy.”

[RWC] This passes for “serious?” Were there “in-depth cultural hearings” before WWI, WWII, and the Korean War?