Tuesday, February 08, 2005
I got sick of focusing on this evil elite and am letting it go for awhile.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
another happy neocon new year?
When Mr. Rumsfeld told Specialist Thomas Wilson in Kuwait that the only reason the troops lacked armor was "a matter of production and capability," he was lying. [New York Times]
Friday, December 17, 2004
strange neocon bedfellows
Hell-bent on regime change in Iran, some neoconservative hawks are lobbying the Bush administration to support an organization designated as a terrorist group by the State Department....read it all: In Bed with Terrorists by Laura Rozen
Thursday, December 16, 2004
they eat their young, too
Rumsfeld hit by a Right hook, by Alec Russell, Telegraph:
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, faced a blistering attack from the Right yesterday as an influential neo-conservative figure accused him of "breathtaking arrogance" and called for him to resign. William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, the house journal of the neo-conservative movement, said no wartime defence secretary had ever "so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck."
Monday, November 29, 2004
neoconservadroids' liberal legacy?
One might, therefore, begin a consideration of neoconservatism with its rich history — or, in the alternative, with its contemporary influence. I propose to do neither (though I will indeed touch upon the past and the present). Instead, I want to explore its future — specifically, the ways in which neoconservatism has evolved according to its own premises in the direction of a current and future politics dedicated to the preservation and extension of liberal order, properly understood. To get to neoconservatism’s liberal legacy, however, it is necessary to begin with liberalism’s origins in the nature of politics itself.
...read it all: Neoconservatism’s Liberal Legacy by Tod Lindberg, Policy Review
Sunday, November 28, 2004
pride goeth before the fall
In a seemingly innocuous Thanksgiving message to readers last week, William Kristol, the neoconservative editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, slipped in a surprise demand for Rumsfeld’s dismissal.
“What remains to be done is to announce new leadership for the department of defence,” wrote Kristol. “This, surely, would be an important opportunity for a strong, Bush-doctrine-supporting outsider, someone who of course would be a team player, but someone who could also work with the military and broaden support for the president’s policy.”
Boiled down, this meant: almost anybody but Rumsfeld, whose performance has not always matched his swagger. His failure to install enough troops on the ground after last year’s invasion of Iraq has upset American generals and alienated supporters of the war.
“I am allergic to Rumsfeld,” said Ralph Peters, a former lieutenant-colonel and robust media champion of the war on terror. “We did a great thing in Iraq, but we did it very badly.
“He is an extremely talented man but he has the tragic flaw of hubris. His arrogance is unbearable. My friends in uniform just hate him.”
The calls for Rumsfeld to be dismissed have intensified since the departure was announced of his cabinet rival, Colin Powell, the secretary of state. With the liberal-leaning Powell being the first to go, conservatives no longer see the need to hold back their opinions.
...read it all: Neocons join the lynch mob for ‘arrogant’ Rumsfeld by Sarah Baxter, Times, 28 November 2004
Friday, November 26, 2004
multiple conservative frustrations
From An Era of End-Timers and Neo-Cons: Whatever Happened to Conservatives? by Paul Craig Roberts, Counterpunch:
In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush.
The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. "You are with us or against us."
This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits of no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.
That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal Editorial page, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of the entire concentrated corporate media where noncontroversy in the interest of advertising revenue rules.
Once upon a time there was a liberal media. It developed out of the Great Depression and the New Deal. Liberals believed that the private sector is the source of greed that must be restrained by government acting in the public interest. The liberals' mistake was to identify morality with government. Liberals had great suspicion of private power and insufficient suspicion of the power and inclination of government to do good.
Liberals became Benthamites (after Jeremy Bentham). They believed that as the people controlled government through democracy, there was no reason to fear government power, which should be increased in order to accomplish more good.
The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals' abiding faith in government. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it.
