The next domino
By Bruce Walker
web posted April 11, 2005
In a month, Americans will know whether or not conservatives have gained yet another important electoral victory in the world. While it is hard for any patriotic America to actually root against Tony Blair, the defeat of the Labour Party in the general election this May would be a wonderful boost for American long term goals.
 Howard |
Michael Howard, the Jewish refugee from a communist dictatorship, is the leader of the Conservative Party and would become the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, should the Tories win the general election. Today, several polls show the Conservative Party with a slight edge over the Labour Party and a Conservative victory is very possible.
The hubbub over the merits of the war in Iraq is history. What matters now is the development of a vibrant, market oriented, free democracy in Iraq and a voice against state socialism in the councils of Europe. Howard could serve both roles very well. He can say, personally, that he knows socialism does not work and communism is evil.
As a Jew, Howard come go a long way toward helping to both reassure Israel and reach out to Lebanese Christians and modern Muslims in forming an "alliance of peace and of democracy" in the Middle East. The construction of democracies which stretch from Cairo to Kabul is a dream which may become a reality. Howard understands just how good this would be for the world.
Michael Howard could also speak directly to American Jews in a way that few other people in the world could. While it is quite true that western democracies have elected Jewish prime ministers, a long time ago, in Europe or converted Jewish Christians like Disraeli, Howard would be the first Jew chosen by an overwhelmingly non-Jewish electorate to lead them in a long time.
The fact that he is the leader of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom should help befuddled Jews in America, raised to believe that the Republican Party, not the Democrat Party, was the party of the Ku Klux Klan, to see more clearly their values and their interests. Putting Jewish political support more "in play" could be just as devastating to Leftists in America as putting the black vote "in play."
It is impossible to overstate, also, the importance of a Conservative Party victory -- and election of a Jewish Prime Minister in that nation -- while the world remembers still Pope John Paul II, who is as revered by millions of Jews around the world as he is by hundreds of millions of Catholics. Perhaps no Christian in modern history has done more to comfort and to allay Jewish fears of Christianity that Pope John Paul II.
As American Jews like Norm Coleman, Joe Lieberman and Ed Koch speak with increasing openness about the morality of what we are doing in the war against terrorism and on the lunacy of contemporary Leftism, the measured, clear, crisp English voice of a Conservative Prime Minister who is a practicing Jew and the sweet memory of another man who suffered, like his Jewish countrymen, under both Nazis and Communists in Poland, may open a wonderful door to a world governed increasingly by Judeo-Christian values.
In November 2004, I noted that the next leaders of Europe may well be a Christian Democrat German woman who grew up under Communism and whose faith is real, a conservative Christian Hungarian who is now a French cabinet minister and who genuinely likes America, and a Conservative British Jew, also an immigrant from Communism.
The constellation of these new conservative stars is starkly different than the dreary, envious and lifeless pseudo-leaders of affluent continental Europe. Watch what happens in May. The first domino -- albeit the likeable and in many ways admirable Tony Blair -- may begin the chain reaction that transforms pagan Europe into living and noble Europe. The good guys are winning. 
Bruce Walker is a contributing editor with Enter Stage Right. He is also a frequent contributor to The Pragmatist and The Common Conservative.
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