Confidence
By Bruce Walker
web posted March 6, 2006
Victory is coming to the forces of liberty day by day. It is so hard, sometimes, for those of us who care so much about the ultimate triumphant of freedom to remember that the world moves slowly. Let us step back, then, and recall how we are winning and the forces of evil are losing and let us do that over the course of years, not hours.
The satellites of the former Soviet Union are free, functioning democracies. The Iron Curtain is destroyed forever. Some of these nations, like Poland, are our active supporters and allies. The nations trapped within the Soviet Union are free, and when Putin tried to recapture the heart of those non-Russian nations, Ukraine, he failed.
Germany is united under Christian Democrat Chancellor Angela Merkel who supported our invasion of Iraq and who is the most popular chancellor in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the fifth largest economy in the world. The heart of reflexive anti-Americanism in the politics of Europe is dead. Chirac, the most anti-American leader of a major democracy, is the least popular leader of any democracy and his likely successor is pro-American.
Afghanistan, a nation unconquered by the neighboring Soviet Union despite ten years of genocidal war and an overwhelming Soviet advantage in men and weapons, has held free elections and remains in the hands of decent democrats. No nation – not Britain, not Russia, not India, not China – has ever conquered and held Afghanistan. America, with vastly smaller forces, is turning this timeless land into the first and only free, democratic Afghanistan.
Iraq, a nation which also never had a real democracy, has one now. It is messy, as all democracies are, but each day without the Ba'athist Hitler is a day in which the average Shiite, Sunni or Kurd expects more freedom, more voice in government, more safety and more opportunity. The reason that CBS News never filmed angry marching bands of Iraqis during the Baathist regime is because all Iraqis lived in absolute terror. Now, they are beginning to think of themselves as free.
Lebanon is moving toward the freedom which once made it the paradise of the Middle East, and the longer that Syrian leaders and thugs are reeling from the combined pressure of America, Europe, Lebanon, free Iraq and indigenous Syrians, the more likely that Lebanon will become what it was forty years ago, a peaceful, neutral, tolerant and prosperous democracy.
Problems remain, but God make take care of some of those problems soon. Castro will die and meet his mentor soon, and when that happens Cuba will be free. The liberation of Cuba, which should be followed by massive aid from America, will turn this Spanish speaking island into a model of what Mexico could be (and what Costa Rico is today.) A vibrant, free, happy, affluent Cuba will be an object lesson to malcontents in Latin America that Yankees are not the source of their misery: all they need do is embrace freedom and opportunity will follow.
Kim Jong Il is sixty-four years old and he is both hated and feared by those around him, who see that he has turned his own nation into one vast, irrationally savage concentration camp. His father made him the anointed successor and raised him like some pampered oriental potentate, but there is no logical successor to Kim Jong Il, and it is unthinkable that his terrorized proconsuls could have conspired to suggest a successor. When he dies, and some physician may help that process along, it is likely that North Korea will evolve into a more “rational” communist state, like China, and it is not unthinkable that it may move toward a logical union with South Korea, which would create a natural and potent obstacle to Chinese imperial designs.
What of China itself? Freedom is indivisible. Seventeen years ago, Chinese students built a Statute of Liberty at Tiananmen Square. The movement arose quickly, commanded almost instant popular support, and was crushed by the army. Although China is more prosperous today, that very prosperity may well produce another such uprising. The middle class tends to demand respect in all things, not just material wealth.
Two things may converge to accelerate that process. First, the very efforts of the Chinese government to censor information to an increasingly information savvy Chinese people will lead to an increasingly sophisticated discontent. Second, the devastating book, The Unknown Mao, which reveals Mao Tse Tung as perhaps the worst monster in human history, and who victims were the Chinese people – 70 million victims – may spark the de-legitimization of that one party government whose power came from Mao.
Think less of the news today or poll numbers tomorrow. Think more of the world fifty years ago and the world ten years from now. Do this and you will find confidence that those of us who love liberty cannot much longer be constrained by the brutes and tyrants whose Sinisterist heritage dates back to Attila the Hun, Asurbanipal and Genghis Khan. 
Bruce Walker has been a published author in print and in electronic media since 1990. He is a contributing editor to Enter Stage Right and a regular contributor to Conservative Truth, American Daily, Intellectual Conservative, Web Commentary, NewsByUs and Men's News Daily. His first book, Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie by Outskirts Press was published in January 2006.