Letters to the Editor
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Teapot tempest
Mr. Greenwald hyperventilates when he argues that "security brings freedom" is "Orwellian." Of course security is necessary for freedom. That is, in fact, why we form governments: to secure our liberties. Governments exist principally to protect life and property. The question is whether Mr. Bush and his administration have done so effectively. The answer is, for the most part, No.
Equally meretricious is Mr. Greenwald's claim that the Left has no power to make affirmative policy. With Al Gore jetting around the country with an Oscar, a Democratic majority in the Senate, and a signed copy of the Kyoto Protocols treaty gathering dust, it's not power that keeps the Left from trying to enact their favorite international accord; it's lack of guts.
Greenwald should spend more time reading "How the World Works," and pay special attention to the interaction of opinion with fact. Vulgar partisanship is a leading cause of stupidity.
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Why is Reagan included in this?
I know that Reagan was a Goldwater disciple but he didn't use that crap. I'm old enough to know what Reagan did (college student, working minimum wage in a dead Upstate NY economy, and enlisted in the military during that time.) I don't know Goldwater so well to comment on him and his ideas. But Reagan wasn't so much that ideal Conservative. Sure there was a lot of that "get government off your back" bit, but the policies didn't ring true. You could see that the talk wasn't the walk and that, as one of the early commentors says here, Conservatism during Reagan was exactly - We'll tell you what is right to do and what is wrong. Krugman nailed Reagan last week when he said that Reagan would be what George Bush is if he had a Republican Congress. Krugman was limited in his column, but could have expanded to include a whole host of shit that could change ones perspective of Reagan if you knew just a little bit more. I've heard George Will say to others, "You just don't get what Reagan was about." Well, if he's had to explain it time and time again to others it must have been an ideal that only Will and possibly a few others had that in reality didn't exist. Will famously loved Reagan and hated Bush Sr. Poppy famously called Reagans treasury pretzel "Voodoo Economics". And it was. Reagan used the label "Liberal" to mean mud. I was there, I heard his speeches. He had the appearance of a jovial, genteel man, but was, in fact, a two-faced bastard who began to widen the devide between Republicans and Democrats in Congress and elsewhere in America.
As we're seeing - Goldwater was an anomaly. He took an idea and ran with it. Preached it high and low, but it didn't catch on. Not a bit. He had a few, like Reagan, who thought it must have been mighty keen, but no one is using it. Conservatism, Goldwater's Conservatism, is dry rock salt to Americans. To spice it up and make it into a delicious soup "Conservatives" have taken it and thrown in a whole host of things that have come, mainly, from the Pat Robertsons and James Dobsons. This George Bush that we have now is a product of Reagan, and, I'm sure if you asked Karl Rove, is exactly what those Republicans who loved Reagan so much wanted to produce "for America".
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Neocon Iraq logic
To the people that suggest or imply that Iraq has something to do with a war on terror, let me get this straight.... In order to respond to an attack on the US that killed about 3100 people, we started a war in Iraq (with no proven association with the people or organizations behind the 9/11/2001 attacks) that has killed 3200+ of our troops and cost more than $300 billion?
It's as though to get back at the attackers, we built another World Trade Center, filled it with 3200 of our bravest and most patriotic people, and destroyed it ourselves. That'll show 'em.
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Reagan as perfect icon of the movement
If you have the time, read the Reagan biography by Gary Wills.
Reagan lived in a fantasy world of his own imagination. Where he was a war hero because he acted in war movies. Where he made up patriotic stories and believed them because they sounded good, and anyone who disagreed must hate America.
What Reagan was good at was being able to believe his fantasy world enought to convince other people to believe it too.
Hell, he is looked at like the George Washington of the conservative movement and his family made it out of the Depression because of the New Deal public works program of Roosevelt, whom Reagan was a lifetime admirer of.
Something else is interesting, if you read Wills' intro you'll swear he is talking about the Bush administration.
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Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Like Winston Smith's gallows-bound colleague Symes in "1984," David Brooks has summed up the prinicples of Neoconservatism with remarkable if inadvertent clarity.
Many thanks to Mr. Greenwald for this exegesis.
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Your point that Brooks missed
Perhaps someone has already seen this (I haven't had time to follow out all the replies). I agree with Brooks' observation that the 'liberty versus power' paradigm has problems, and has seen its caché wane, but it should be noted that Brooks only goes on to suggest that Republicans need to find something that truly reflects compassionate conservatism - i.e. the need for government to address broad societal concerns. Brooks explicitly does NOT go on to observe, as Greenwald does, that the Republican party, in its current configuration, has adopted adopted an altogether astonishing program aggrandizing a largely unchecked governmental power. This administration has consistently set about exploiting our angers and anxieties after 9/11 to push the program through. Why Brooks does not go on to this point I will leave for others to decide.
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another victory for freedom and democracy
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/03/29/russia15576.htm
Former Guantanamo detainees who were sent home to Russia in 2004 experienced torture and other abuse despite Moscow’s pledge to the US government that they would be treated humanely, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released.
Of course, if you read Michelle Malkin you "know" that HRW is a far left thuggish radical quasi terrorist America hating moonbat unhinged organization that is just promoting terrorist propaganda because it hates America.