Point of View
Smart As A Whip, Dumb As A Hoe Handle
By John Armor
Jul 20, 2008 - 11:19:14 AM

The great danger in offering unqualified praise to another person is they could turn around, do or say something really stupid, and make you doubt your original judgment. That’s why the greatest praise for public officials comes when they are safely dead. From that position, they are unlikely to offer any new, public embarrassment.
   Still, it’s important to climb out on a limb from time to time.
   There are three people whose bylines I always follow. I have never ceased to be impressed by any column I’ve read from any of these three gentlemen (in alphabetical order): Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Sowell, and Mark Steyn. The one I praise today is Krauthammer. By the way, I’ll save the public figure I am attacking, for last. Dessert first, liver and onions after.
   Krauthammer’s latest column is “The Altar of Soft Power.” He begins with the incredible rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other long-held hostages from the hands of FARC terrorists in Columbia. It was executed by the Colombian military without a shot being fired. American special forces played a critical role in the intelligence gathering that made the rescue work.
   This was, he wrote, a classic example of “hard power.” That means using your military assets to get a result in a confrontation. “Soft power,” on the other hand, means negotiations, resolutions, mild sanctions, but nothing which would be called military or an act of war.
   Krauthammer pointed out that in the six years that Betancourt was held in the jungle, all the governments of Europe repeatedly passed resolutions deploring the kidnappings, and urging Columbia to negotiate with the FARC captors. Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez had offered to be a go-between. Only another use of “hard power,” a raid into Ecuador by the Columbia Army, revealed the truth.
   In the Ecuador raid, Columbia killed a top official of FARC, but also captured computers with files which revealed that President Chavez was financially supporting FARC and working hand in glove with them. That use of “hard power” was attacked by European (and some American) supporters of talking with, rather than acting against, terrorists.
   Krauthammer points out that “soft power” is the preferred action by many sources, including the UN and the G8, against other groups of murderers including Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the Sudanese so-called "leaders" in Darfur, and the dictators in what used to be Burma, who allowed untold thousands of their citizens to die in the aftermath of floods, rather than let in foreigners bringing help (but also lifting the veil of secrecy in that benighted nation).
   As usual, Krauthammer made a logical, penetrating analysis of a major public issue. He offered clear, supportable truth, which needs to be pounded into the mushy skulls of many leaders around the world. It is a pathetic commentary that the UN refused, this very day, to support any sanctions to get rid of the murderous Mugabe.
   And now we turn to the opposite end of the scale, stupidity in public.
   A Dallas County Commissioner in a public discussion of failures of the County’s Central Collections, referred to it as a “black hole.” Documents and money were going into the Bureau, and never being seen again. One black commissioner demanded an apology, and another one, Commissioner John Wiley Price, said that “that type of language is unacceptable.”
   Warming to his task, Commissioner Price went on to condemn in the hearing other terms he considered racist, including the difference between “angel food cake and devil’s food cake.” He also objected to the use of the phrase, “black sheep.” And he used the phrase, “Jew you down,” as an example of a “racist” remark he deliberately would not use, because he is so sensitive to such matters.
   To put no fine point on it, Commissioner Price is as dumb as a hoe handle. “Black hole” is an astronomical expression which means a collapsed star with such high gravity that not even light can escape. It was an excellent metaphor for a failed public agency. It is also a reasonable description of the quality of Commissioner Price’s brain, not because he is black, but because he shows world-class ignorance.
   The more people we have in the public sphere like Krauthammer, the better off we will be. The more we have who are like Price, the worse off we will be. And, anyone thinking of attacking me as racially prejudiced, before doing so, find out the racial backgrounds of the three people I praised so highly at the beginning.

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