The promiscuous desire to be liked is a personal character flaw because it often conflicts with acting according the principles one espouses. This homely moral fact is binding on the great as well as the humble, and its pertinence even extends the behavior of nations. The poet Schiller once advised his fellows to render to their contemporaries “what they need, not what they praise.” This is a prescription not for immediate popularity but for lasting respect.
I thought of this recently while reading an interview President Bush gave to the London Times in which he expressed regret for his challenging rhetoric, and actions almost as challenging, in the war on terror. His regret, the Times said, had led him to replace “the unilateralism that marked his first White House term” with “an enthusiasm for tough multilateralism.”
“Tough multilateralism”: what manner of beast is that? Two headlines this morning made me ponder this with renewed curiosity: Bush urges diplomacy with Iran but all options open; the other read: Iran says West fails to stop nuclear advances and contained the useful additional observation by the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that “With God’s help today [the Iranian nation] have gained victory and the enemies cannot do a damned thing.”
The popular option–the option advocated by most of Europe and nearly all Democratic politicians in the US–is to talk and talk and talk about Iran, to propose new “sanctions,” which Iran openly defies and holds in contempt.
President Bush is right that “Iran with a nuclear weapon would be incredibly dangerous for world peace.” But is he willing to take the steps, almost certainly unpopular steps, to prevent that from happening? “Jaw-Jaw,” said Winston Churchill, “is better than War-War.” True, too true. But Churchill also foresaw the cost of appeasing a fanatical enemy. “You were given the choice between war and dishonor,” he said in a speech after Neville “Peace in Our Time” Chamberlain returned from Munich. “You chose dishonor and you will have war.
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2 Comments
1. Karen Colvard:It certainly does make him look like a fool, wanting now to be thought of as a “man of peace.”
Jun 11, 2008 - 8:22 am 2. Steve Skubinna:The desire to be liked is, I believe, the core of Bill Clinton’s being (I should be grateful to the man for providing fodder for entertaining digressions for the rest of my life). I have heard others call him a sociopath, and my response has always been he couldn’t possibly be one, for a sociopath does not care what others think of him, and only sees others as either recourses to exploit or obstacles to overcome. Clinton has a driving need to be liked and admired, it’s the motivation for everything in his adult life.
Including, needless to say, his domestic and foreign policy as President. Now, to demonstrate that this isn’t a gratuitous swipe at Bill, I will note that the compulsion to be liked is at the root of nearly every US leftist. What is the ultimate litmus test of America’s worth? Their perception of how much other nations (by which they mean their “elite”) like us. Kerry’s “Global Test,” Obama’s “we can’t expect other countries to say okay.”
Ultimately this is a childish delusion built upon insecurity. The European intelligentsia has never liked America, going back to before the founding. They never shall, even if we remake ourselves in their image, for then they’ll contemptuously dismiss us as upstarts, the same way the French sneer at the silly Quebecois and their feeble attempts to be French themselves. What is at the heart of the left’s yearning for an international pat on the head is a desire to be accepted by the supposedly more sophisticated and nuanced. They believe that if we elect candidate that they themselves like, then everyone else will like us just as much as they wish they liked themselves.
Meanwhile, those Americans such as myself who reject the European model, and who delight in the knowledge that the US was created to be the anti-Europe, by those who wanted nothing more to do with the Old Country, will be held up as examples of all that is wrong with this country. I think I can live with that reality much more comfortably than the leftists can live with theirs, for in my own simple way I am content and they will never be.
Jun 12, 2008 - 10:12 am