A Regressive Foreign Policy Manifold

A Regressive Foreign Policy

We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” wish we possessed a handy formula for the dredging up of potential topics. Heck, we wish we had nice cars and fancy jobs. We’d even settle for one or the other. Or, barring that, Missy Gold. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Alas, dear reader, coming up with fantastic material isn’t easy, as the Official Ideas Department here at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” knows all too well.

Yet there are a few helpful guidelines we could suggest. First, it helps to be literate. In fact, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” believe that reading is fundamental. Gosh: That’s an awfully catchy slogan.

Anyway, dear reader, it also helps to know of the existence of sundry journals that are simply brimming with comic possibilities. Such as, for instance, The Numismatic Chronicle. If that doesn’t scream “mad cap,” we collectively don’t know what does.

Another great example of unintentional comedy is surely The Nation, a weekly whose impressively low-grade paper quality eerily matches its articles’ impressive low quality. We’ve seen better writing on the menus of Chinese restaurants.

Any time we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” can’t come up with a topic to discuss, dear reader, we ineluctably head over to The Nation’s “website.”

A case in point: Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel’s feculent article regarding a “progressive foreign policy.” Those blissfully unaware of The Nation may not realize that its writers employ the word “progressive” just slightly more than they use the word “the.” To put it in the form of an analogy, “progressive” is to The Nation what “diversity” is to the college campus.

Those who trouble themselves to read Ms. Vanden Heuvel’s piece will note that, as crucial as she thinks a “progressive foreign policy” is to this country, she has precisely no idea what this “progressive foreign policy” would be. To her, it’s merely a nice phrase—one that would look awfully good on Louis Vuitton luggage.

To be sure, dear reader, Ms. Vanden Heuvel deftly offers the usual left-wing boilerplate about American foreign policy: Greater reliance on the ultra-effective United Nations; robust disrespect for democracy; &c.

And Ms. Vanden Heuvel even throws in an assortment of far-left gimmicks: She puts the word terrorism is scare quotes, as if it doesn’t exist, and, via the Communist historian Eric Foner, offers some trenchant commentary on what un-progressive folks call “freedom.”

Yet all of this, dear reader, ultimately covers up what should be obvious even to the marginally intelligent: Ms. Vanden Heuvel hasn’t a clue what a real alternative to President Bush’s foreign policy would look like.

That’s where we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” come in. We have penned the following article on a “progressive foreign policy” that we shall submit to the editorial eminences at The Nation, to see whether our humble prose can appear in the same pages as Alexander Cockburn’s anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. We can dream, can’t we?

Toward A “Progressive Foreign Policy” That’s Progressive by The Crack Young Staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly”

Good progressives like ourselves earnestly pine for progress. It is the only hope for the benighted rogues whom we claim to help. Accordingly, we must take up Katrina vanden Heuvel’s call for a genuinely progressive American foreign policy.

We think that the key to such a progressive foreign policy is its progressiveness. Such a policy must move us away from the Police State that the thoroughly unprogressive George W. Bush has ushered in to American life.

By killing terrorists, of course, George W. Bush has helped the terrorists. All good progressives, in search of progress—genuine progress—should aim to put a halt to this, and right quickly.

But what should we good progressives do instead? Many progressives would say we should give up our national sovereignty and allow the United Nations to make military decisions for us. After all, the UN has proven so effective in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia that there hardly seems to be any need for an American military force anywhere in the world. Osama bin Laden quakes when he hears the words “Kofi Annan.”

Yet we, progressive as we are, don’t perceive this to be suitably progressive. As a result, we are left with one clear option: Surrender to the terrorists and allow them to establish their enlightened society in the place of the United States. Nothing says “progressive” quite like sharia.