I‘m normally a fan of CNN White House Correspondent Jeff Zeleny. His reporting tends to be more balanced and analytical than most. On Sunday, however, Zeleny presented a defective appraisal of President Trump’s speech last week in Warsaw, Poland.
Trump’s message, Zeleny stated, was not one “he could have given anywhere else. This was a white America, ‘America first’ kind of speech.” It offered “a stark view” about “migration, about immigration, about other things.” Zeleny suggested that “it wasn’t a modern-day speech, if you will, it was a sort of throwback speech.” A speech that said “be afraid about what’s happening in the world now.”
I couldn’t disagree more strongly.
For a start, it was indeed a modern speech. Early on in his address, Trump stated, “We are committed to securing your access to alternate sources of energy, so Poland and its neighbors are never again held hostage to a single supplier of energy.”
Ensuring Poland’s access to American liquefied natural gas supplies? This is hardly narrow-minded isolationism.
On the contrary, it is modern American realism in action. It’s also a new development from the White House. After all, a willing hostage to the green energy cabal (which, as I’ve explained, is infected by Russian money and influence), President Barack Obama was, at best, ambivalent on U.S. energy exports. By doing the opposite, Trump can empower both U.S. businesses and Polish independence from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s energy blackmail. As the Washington Examiner has noted, U.S. energy leadership is crucial to western Europe’s improved security.
But Trump was only getting started. He also took a tough line towards Putin.
“We urge Russia,” he said, “to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes — including Syria and Iran — and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.”
Even if they were somewhat diluted by Trump’s delusional meeting with Putin on Friday, these tough words were welcome.
Nevertheless, Trump’s speech was positive for another reason: repeated references to Poland’s struggle against Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Compressed between the despotism of two far more powerful nations, the Polish people never lost their faith. And Trump referenced how Poland’s transition from communist authoritarianism to capitalist democracy has benefited its people.
“This danger is invisible to some but familiar to the Poles: the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people. The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies.”
In this line, Trump plays to the truth of why Poland’s people are so pro-American. It’s because their lives are exponentially better by every meaningful measure than under Soviet domination.
Zeleny would suggest that this positive attitude is a measure of people “afraid.”
Yet the most sensitive part of Trump’s speech, that which Zeleny and others seem to most lament, was his celebration of western values.
“We [the West] reward brilliance,” Trump said. “We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression. We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves.”
Let’s be clear, Trump’s message here is not just righteous, it is absolutely so.
When he talked of “works of art” that “honor God”, and the need to “empower women,” Trump is lamenting the Islamic world’s continuing tendency to see freedom of expression through the prism of theological narrow-mindedness. When he talked of “faith and family,” Trump rightly challenged the authoritarianism of communist China and Putin’s Russia. And when he praised the pursuit of knowledge, Trump summed up why the West is the engine of human-benefiting innovation.
Of course, to Zeleny and many others in the media (read Eddie Scarry), this message was that of a “throwback speech.”
From my perspective, there is a particularly tedious idiocy to this lament of western civilization.
Because the value of our civilization is real, and rendered purely in terms like “democracy” and “D-Day.” Ultimately, Trump’s speech was neither narrow-minded nor malicious against others. Rather, it was an overdue affirmation that Western civilization has made our lives better, happier, and safer.
Correspondingly, those who would lament these words do not deserve our scorn, but our sadness. They lack the knowledge of history that defines the Polish people, and the truth that flows from their knowledge. The truth that courage, capitalism, democracy, and American guardianship remain the world’s best servants of human fulfillment.
I’m no particular fan of the president, but on his Poland speech, I couldn’t disagree more strongly with Trump’s critics.
