President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America "all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger." In 1940, Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee. And there is no better example of someone repealing their "private plans" than this good man. He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time. And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue. Shortly before Wilkie died, he told a friend, that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom," he would prefer the latter. Where are such statesmen today? Where is the bipartisanship in this country when we need it most? Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our Commander in Chief. What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in?

The theme is now developed, and brilliantly so. The key with this speech, like most Republican speeches, is that it is simultaneously very simple and exquisitely crafted. The speech's true message, when you tease it out, is truly outrageous: any opposition to this war, and this president, is partisanship, and treason. If you're against Bush, you're a traitor. So, obviously, it cannot be stated plainly. But it can be stated in plain words - which is, in a way, the opposite of speaking plainly. This is what Miller does. To be clear on the facts: In 1940, the evil posed by Germany and Japan was clear. Both nations were on a stated mission of world conquest, and both were threatening the US and its allies. Contrast this with Iraq, a weakened, rogue state with no capacity to harm anyone outside its borders. To contrast Wilkie with Kerry is thus, on the facts, preposterous. But facts do not matter in an election about fear. Miller's audience is desperate to find an enemy, and even more desperate to find a simple, clear way to dispatch that enemy. He speaks to those desires brilliantly.

I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny. It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city. Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today. Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator. And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators. Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers. Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers. Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers. Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home. For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag. No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

'Liberators not occupiers' is the second major subtheme of the Miller speech. Like 'security or partisan politics,' it rests on the two core foundations laid right at the beginning: real American values and real fear. Kerry is not anti-Iraq-war; he is anti-soldier, anti-military. Dangerous.

Notice the binary opposition here. Reporters, poets, agitators on one side; the soldier on the other. Of course, it is not entirely clear how the soldiers who fired on agitators at Kent State gave us the "freedom to protest," or how the current, censorship-happy administration has given us freedom of speech. Historically, the civil liberties we now enjoy were won by lawyers, employed by left-wing organizations. But Miller's point is clear; we could not enjoy such luxuries were our borders not secured. This is the same point made by Jack Nicholson's character, incidentally, in the film "A Few Good Men." To understand this binarism more, it is worth building out the categories to include their subtextual references. What are the characteristics of reporters, poets and agitators, as contrasted with soldiers? They are left-wing, not masculine, not from good old American family backgrounds in Appalachia. They are not really Christian, right? They are cosmopolitan, not really American; they don't really make things. They're kind of airy-fairy.

Possibly of interest to Zeek readers is the similarity of this critique to the American antisemitism of Henry Ford, and of Pat Buchanan: he who is not really part of "our" native fabric. The unmanly man, the non-believer, the skeptic, the intellectual - as opposed to the hard-working, believing man who works with his hands and has bedrock, honest values. Now, to be clear, I am not accusing Senator Miller of antisemitism. I have no ideas what his opinions on Jews are, and thus fully assume that he is not prejudiced or bigoted in the least. What I am suggesting, instead, is that his speech fits absolutely within a worldview of us-and-other which is, historically, that of antisemitism and anti-cosmopolitanism. Although degraded, this is the same rhetoric as Spiro Agnew's famous diatribe against "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals." Effete - impudent - snob - (faux-)intellectual. Deconstruct those terms - what are their opposites? Masculine, disciplined, down-to-earth, unpretentious.

Miller goes one step farther than Agnew. Where Agnew was still participating in an informed discourse (in which one could use words such as "effete" and "impudent"), Miller is fully in populist mode, speaking with about a 6th grade vocabulary. This is much more effective, and is, in a nutshell, the difference between Goldwater Republicanism and Reagan Republicanism. Goldwater spoke to the neo-cons of Princeton; Reagan to ordinary Americans.

But the opposition is clear. Lump Kerry in with the effete corps of impudent snobs, just like Tom Cruise's impudent character in A Few Good Man and claim that none of them ever did anything good for their country. So what if Jack Nicholson / George W. Bush breaks a few rules and pisses off the Frenchmen? That's what real men do. And that's what this speech is about: real men, real values, real America. You are terrified, and threatened - now, who do you want to protect you? Some liberal Frenchie, or Big Tough Bush?

[1]       2       [3]       [4]       [5]       [6]       [next->] Image from miller.senate.gov