OCR Text |
Show The Paper That Dares To Take A Stand August 21, 1975 The Utah Independent Page 7 George Wallaces Foreign Policy Continued from page 1 this nation and throughout the when the Alabamian said to the Europeans and Asiatics gathered before him, And any of you folks that believe otherwise than in the necessity of strength will wind up like, well, people in Finland, he was demonstrating practical comprehension of one of the laws of political dynamics at which the sophisticated glance obscurely when they throw out the vogue word Finland ' zation, meaning political castration. That Wallace has also followed with a critical eye the growing neurasthenia of U.S. foreign policy appears in his summary judgment: I think this nation the U.S. ought not to be fust I think it ought to be on a parity superior. And he observed logically that The foreign poli- world genuine bilateral and multilateral disarmament But until that day comes, it is the height of folly to have anything but the strongest defensive and offensive military posture of any nation on the face of the earth. Be- .... cause Here the Governor was interrupted self-consciou- .... cy first MATTER One in IS TO BE NUMBER strength militarily. Wallace emphasized: We don't have any bilateral disarmament We have a unilater-- . on the part al disarmament of the' United States, but we dont have it in the Soviet Union, and we dont have it in Red China. ... Sophisticates who suppose that Wallace is simplistic and naive concerning foreign affairs might try their hand at either refuting the truth of the foregoing summation, or else show that it is a matter of such common knowledge that, of course, everybody knows it. The fact is that it is true, that all too few Americans know it is true, and that far fewer than that have to speak the national out on the matter as Wallace has done. Well, it may be thought that, penetrating as the foregoing policy thrust may be, it was a coup de bonheur , a lucky hit not based on broad comprehension of the historical factors involved. On the contrary, Governor Wallaces total discourse proves that he has pondered the problems of America's foreign relations, long and soberly. Let it be granted that he has spoken more frequently to the point on these issues in the past three years than formerly. That is due in part no doubt, as suggested above, to his recognition that the public was not previously ready to receive the message that America must rearm (psychologically, in particular). It is a message which might have been considered platitudinous if interpreted in the most general terms, or incredible if interpreted to mean (the truth) that we have been treacherously disarmed. But Wallaces emerging position on foreign policy is also the stronger because a man who has returned as he has done from a rendezvous with death has learned to face the most serious issues realistically, and in the long hours of (happily successful) convalescence has had ample time for patient reflection. Some weeks after his session with the foreign journalists in Montgomery, Governor Wallace addressed a father-so- n banquet at St. Johns College High School, on Military Road in the District of Columbia. Residents of the Nations Capital are familiar with the cadets of St. trim Johns. The Methodist Governor of Alabama was perfectly at home, with the Roman Catholic Christian Brothers (Institution Fratrum Scholarum whose school it is. To the men of St. Johns, Wallace said: I understand that a great number of you who are in attendance at this school go to the service academies when you leave St. Johns. hope that we because many of you do go, need a strong military. I hope the day comes when we have in self-assuran- gray-uniform- - post-Worl- -- ce ed Chris-tianam- for applause. Now it may seem a very simple thing that an American politician should recommend to cadets at a military school (religiously sponsored) that the country which is. his and theirs should have a strong military posture, and even that he should thereupon be interrupted for applause. But in the spring of 1975 it was not a simple thing, and still is not. For thirty solid years the academic community in America, and much of the religious community too, have labored unceasingly to disparage the militaiy profession, and to denounce all war as at best wasteful and at worst wicked. And when the academic community itself planned, conducted, and then phased out the Vietnam War as it certainly did it took care to make that war as wasteful, wicked, and nationally disastrous as possible. The Liberal Establishment of the d War II years spent unprecedented sums to draft, equip, and deploy American soldiers throughout the world, but at the same time it took care to indoctrinate them with some sense of shame for being soldiers. There would be no more vital element in George Wallaces foreign policy than to Americas restoration of military personnel. It was an augury of such a restoration when he went on, after the applause, to congratulate the men of St. Johns on attending an institution that doesnt mind talking about patriotism and flying the flag arid talking about God. If your soldiers will not avow their patriotism, and and are ashamed of having attended school where prayer are unwilling to speak is forbidden of God except in profanity, then how-i- n the name of God can you expect them to defend their homeland? George Wallace at St John's continued: There is no way in which we can have any generation at peace under the present circumstances that exist in our world unless we are Number One We are living in a divided world today: in fact in a world divided to the extent that a portion of it believes in the existence of a Supreme Being, believes that there is a God in Heaven who made and loves all of usr while there is another ideology that says that there is no God . . . once you leave this earth, therein lies the end and that is, of course, the Communist philosophy that today embraces a great part of our globe. There may be found the basis of a George Wallace's foreign policy dear recognition that the world is divided between militant atheism and. all men who recognize the Supreme Being. There are two fundamental reasons why no true peace is possible between these two camps: (1) since militant atheists do not admit the existence of God, they put themselves in the place of God and see themselves as worthy to wield unlimited power, (2) since they are their own ultimate authority, they recognize no moral obligations other than their own will, and thus they feel no compulsion to keep their word. George Wallace was not unmindful self-respe- ct - -- flag-wavin-g, .... - of this kind of Soviet attitude which is completely consistent with the dialectical materialism when he reminded the men of St. Johns that of every agreement we have had . . . from Potsdam to the Paris Peace Ac- cords of January 1973, supposed to have ended the fighting in Vietnam , has been kept by not a single one our adversaries, the Communists. The Governor of Alabama added: Hopefully and prayerfully, the day might come . . . when there would be genuine multilateral disarmament, and those funds that have been used in every country for the military could be used for other matters and needs of the people not only of our country but of other countries as well BUT UNTIL ... WE CAN GUARANTEE AND KNOW THAT THERE IS GENDISUINE MULTI-LATERAARMAMENT. WE OF COURSE SHOULD NOT TRUST THE WORD OF THOSE WHO HA VE NOT KEPT THEIR WORDS IN THE PAST. How straight do you want it? And bear in mind that the fundaL mental aspect of Governor Wallaces position on foreign affairs is that it is mortised and tenoned with his position on domestic matters. George Wal- -' lace remembers the Depression years in the South years when to get through college (University of Alabama) he waited on tables and had an N.Y.A. job paying $15 a month for flf--' ty hours work. Between graduation in May 1942 and induction into the Air Force early in 1943, he got a job driving a dump truck for thirty cents an hour. He did well during the Depression. Being of good Southern stock, but very modest material inheritance, Wallace has aQ his life been characterized by what the social scientists call upward mobility, and he identifies with what he calls the middle-clas- s Of our nation the great mass of people in this nation who pay their taxes and hold it together and work each - day for a living, and believe in the existence of a living God. Whether this middle-clas- s survives is, in Wallace's judgment, the great social and economic issue of today. He is positive, of course, that Middle America cannot survive if the nation of which it is the Middle does not preserve its independence. In his speech at St. Johns, Wallace repeatedly referred to the resilience or resiliency of the American middle-clas- s as the mainspring of national power and individual hope. Intervention by big government either into the affairs of citizens at home, or into illimitable quagmires abroad could suppress or destroy the elasticity and resilience with which Americans have traditionally met their responsibilities. The almost inexplicable foreign policy of the. Liberal Establishment for a senseless unless generation or. more one assumes a purpose to end national has bewildered, maindependence terially endangered, and at last angered the great majority of the American people. The Vietnamese nightmare is the whole hideous misan example adventure from start to finish following a scenario of Liberal authorship, produced under Liberal direction. The intellectuals of Cambridge, New York, and Berkeley cannot . evade their responsibility for the whole calamitous foreign policy which we may hope has bottomed out in the debacle in Southeast Asia. And this is widely understood -notably by young America. Governor Wallace was again interrupted by ap- - - ... self-accredit- ed plause when he said to the young men at St. Johns: Every time some foreign journalist or some Washington Post Youre correspondent says, from Alabama. What do you know about foreign policy, I say, What do y all know about it up in Washington? Youve had four wars in the last fifty years, and we stand alone in the world by ourselves. What do you know about it? The political necessity of reappraising and revising American foreign policy is permeating Washington even as this is being written. Senator Barry Goldwater said June 6th that the word is that the people lo not want us to be a second-rat- e power, and Senator Alan Cranston, having done what he could, to make us just that, explained the failure of his efforts to cut military expenditures by observing ruefully that the people did not like the American failure in Southeast Asia, but did find some crumb of comfort in the show of national resolution in the Mayaguez incident. The Liberal view is the reverse, but they know that if they do not for the moment roll with the punch of aggrieved and awakened national spirit, they risk seeing the man in the wheelchair become the man a on white horse in Washington. Not that that is his style; there seems to be no in the self-glorificati-on man; neither is there great concern for his own security. But there is much concern for the security of America, and lets face it a good deal of national pride. At St. John's he said: I am one who believes that we should not have gotten bogged down in a land war in Asia, but once we got there we should have determined to win it, and - - if we couldnt win it, we should have gotten out then. But no, we stayed all these many years. And again he said, of the foreign journalists: They asked me the question, and I think that. I speak for the most of you, What would you do if you were in the highest office in the land as far as foreign policy is concerned? I said that first I would be Number One in the military matter until we knew that that wasnt necessary; and second, I would make your country respect us whether you like us or not. You know there was applause at that point applause from young America to make a One Worlder wince. I said that I am tired of some newspaper always writing that we must worry about the viewpoint and the attitude of people 10,000 miles said let them worry away. about our viewpoint and our attitude, because its our money that they are spending. So then there was applause again. And the Liberals had better not just believe it, they had better try and reflect on what it means. For it does not mean xenophobia or hatred of other peoples, other countries; it means love for ones own people, and loyalty to ones own country. Wallace urged the opposite of narrow national chauvinism. Explaining what he had told the foreign journalists about our national dilemma in World War II, when we fought the Hitlerian terror with the objective result of strengthening the Stalinist terror, Wallace told the St. Johns cadets: I said that our foreign policy ' after World War I ought to have been the same as after World i Continued on page 10 |