Soccer Dad

Others remember Jeane Kirkpatrick

OpinionJournal

No one ever doubted Jeane Kirkpatrick's will or courage. Among those who most appreciated her determination to speak truth to totalitarian power was the celebrated Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov. Exiled by the Soviet government to Gorky, Sakharov said later how important it was to have a person of Jeane Kirkpatrick's stature publicly identify jailed Soviet dissidents by name. For the past 10 years she served on the board of the Center for a Free Cuba, which she helped found.

Norman Podhoretz

Jeane Kirkpatrick, then, was a veteran of World War III (or what is more generally known as the Cold War), and I would say of her what the English used to say of those veterans of World War II who had done important and interesting work and had come through unscathed--that she, like they, had had "a good war." And like them, too, she never really found anything afterward that engaged her intellectual energies and her political passions as fully as her own "good war" had done. Back in "civil ian" life after the war had been won, she resumed her academic career, she served on many boards, and as a famous and esteemed public figure, she continued to write and to speak out whenever the spirit moved her (as, for example, in a prescient piece, also written for Commentary, describing "How the PLO Was Legitimized").

Gates of Vienna

Notice a number of important things about her speech:

Jimmy Carter is still awful - “It wasn’t malaise we suffered from; it was Jimmy Carter…”

Jeane Kirkpatrick gave us “Blame America First”

Jeane Kirkpatrick was the first to name the “San Francisco Democrats,” and to pinpoint their squishy incompetence and total inattention to foreign policy.

That’s because foreign policy is for thinkers, not for referees who want everything to be fair. And for this reason, Ms. Kirkpatrick joined the Republican Party. When she served in the UN - the first woman to do so - there was no one her equal until John Bolton came along.

Publius Pundit

My email is down, but soon as it’s back up, I will post an email I got from Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Norman Podhoretz speculates that she withdrew completely from public life after disillusionment with the current direction but that is not true. She fought the good fight up to the very end. The email I got was a letter she wrote, pleading with her rightwing friends to please quit splitting the opposition in Nicaragua and all unite behind one candidate like Montealegre, about a day before the Nicaraguan elections. The most important thing, she said, was keeping the odious Daniel Ortega out. It was a heartfelt note and I am glad I got it. As usual, the great Jeanne Kirkpatrick was right.

UPDATE: Interesting. In a thoroughly disrespectful 'tribute' Firedoglake wrote:

In archetypal, dramatic form, that's the only way (so far) Americans can tolerate women in national leadership roles: unsexed, vexed by and opposed to feminists, upholding the masculine virtues of wreck, havoc and war, scornful of minorities, the poor and working people. In the UK, Margaret Thatcher fit the mold as well, and what's more, all of this goes a long way toward explaining the choices of Hillary Clinton and the media coverage of Nancy Pelosi.

However at the Washington Post William Branigan wrote:

"Many people think a woman shouldn't be in high office," she told Time. "Kissinger is described as 'professorial.' I am described as 'schoolmarmish.' Brzezinski is called 'Doctor.' I am called "Mrs.' I am depicted as a witch or a scold in editorial cartoons -- and the speed with which these stereotypes have been used shows how close these feelings are to the surface. It is much worse than I ever dreamed it would be. My feelings are hurt."

Firedoglake associates feminism with adopting a leftist (or "progessive") political agenda. Kirkpatrick though bristled at being labelled a woman for she succeeded on any terms.

more at memeorandum and here.

Blogdigger tags: Jeane Kirkpatrick.

Posted by SoccerDad at December 10, 2006 6:53 AM