The Legacy of Jeane Kirkpatrick

It is with sadness that I note the passing of Jeane Kirkpatrick, President Ronald Reagan's outstanding Ambassador to the United Nations. When Reagan appointed Kirkpatrick to the post in 1981, she was a Democrat. Kirkpatrick came of age back when Democrats stood for liberty, patriotism, anti-communism, and strong defense.

In the 1970s Kirkpatrick increasingly became disillusioned with the Democrat Party and grew harshly critical of their foreign policy decisions, particularly under ex-
President Jimmy Carter who oversaw a great weakening of our national defense in an era when to do so put America at great danger.

These were the days of the Cold War. For at least a decade prior to the 1981 election, the word that best described our foreign policy toward the Soviet Union was 'detente,' that ominous concept that accepted the fact that both the U.S. and the Soviets had nuclear weapons, that any first strike would ignite a nuclear war that would result in the destruction of most of the globe, and thus, neither nation would seek to outright win the Cold War.

Enter Ronald Reagan.

Reagan rejected detente and the inherent pessimism in its precepts. Rather than becoming resigned to the fact that we would forever be held in a standoff with a superpower that was shooting down airliners and murdering its own political dissidents, Reagan insisted that America build up its military resources in such a sweeping manner as to make it impossible for the Soviets to keep up.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1981 the United States embarked on a course to win the Cold War outright. Reagan would accept nothing less. Defense spending skyrocketed. Reagan also proposed his now infamous 'star wars' plan, which was ridiculed at the time but has proved to be an idea ahead of its time which sent the Soviet Union into a frenzy of frightened fury.

With the Soviet Union increasingly losing the support of its citizens due to a disastrous economic policy that left most of the country impoverished, Soviet leaders could hardly keep with the demands created by Reagan's massive military buildup. Thus, within a few short years the Soviet Union collapsed.

At the center of the Reagan revolution, which had every bit as much to do with foreign policy as libertarian domestic policy, was one Jeane Kirkpatrick. At the U.N. Kirkpatrick became a formidable spokesperson for American interests and anti-communist ideology. She took the Soviets to task on the floor of the U.N. for failing to inform their own people of their decision to shoot down a domestic passenger airliner.

In 1984 Kirkpatrick delivered a speech before the Republican National Committee which would be hailed as a masterful rhetorical vehicle by which she would introduce into the modern vernacular the terms 'San Francisco Democrat' and 'blame America first.' Even then Kirkpatrick recognized the danger of the growing tendency of certain sectors within the country that would blame America first for every single woe of the world while failing to call foreign governments to accountability. At the forefront of this dreadful movement were, as Kirkpatrick called them, 'San Francisco Democrats.'

As a lifelong Democrat, Kirkpatrick felt she had every right to issue such scathing indictments against her own party. However, by 1985 she had had enough. She became a Republican.

Following her resignation as U.N. Ambassador, Kirkpatrick would continue to serve her country as an advisor to Senate Republicans and as a professor at Georgetown University.

It is not to be overlooked that John Bolton, our most recent U.N. Ambassador, looked to Kirkpatrick as his beloved mentor. Kirkpatrick's unabashed, patriotic, pro-American philosophy could be readily seen in Bolton. It is a disgrace to the country that Democrats blocked a vote on Bolton by filibuster and then indicated that the new Congress would not allow a vote on the nomination, resulting in Bolton's resignation.

Joseph Biden's claim that Democrats did not filibuster to block a vote on Bolton is a lie. The record is there for anyone to see.

My feelings grow melancholic as I contemplate Bolton's departure from the U.N. at roughly the same time as the death of Jeane Kirkpatrick. Not only is the country itself now deprived of the unsurpassed wisdom and courage of Kirkpatrick, but a void is being created at the U.N. as the voice of Bolton is silenced.

Be assured that those of us who remember Jeane Kirkpatrick with great fondness and who value John Bolton's courageous stand for liberty will not allow to be forgotten the principles that guided both of these remarkable American patriots.