Letters to the Editor
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The BBC's "The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom"
The BBC just finished airing a 3 part series by Adam Curtis that explores the idea of political freedom. I found it fascinating and thought that it touched on many of the subjects written about on this site.
Curtis's previous film was The Power of Nightmares.
The Trap can be seen here -
http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_philosophy.htm
Also here:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/03/11/18375640.php
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Wikipedia's Summary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(television_documentary_series)
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What now?
Well enough to see what the Neocons are but what now?
So how do we get the word out to the "small government" conservatives that they need to take their party back? How do we get though to the RWA followers that seem to be willing to defend Bush and willfully refuse to see what the Neocons are doing to them and their ideals?
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Oh Lordy
The crisis created by the Bush administration is much more fundamental and less nuanced than you describe, Glenn. We all know that Bush is out for expanding the executive branch into an Imperial Presidency with zero accountability, surrounded by incompetent cronies whose only qualifications are loyalty and devotion to the empowerment of such a creature. That's a given. We all know that he has sometimes skillfully, sometimes brazenly, sometimes ham-handedly ignored or subverted the constitution. Also a given.
But the real and lasting problem, the ugly legacy, is that by diminishing the constitution with impunity, he has eliminated perhaps the only thing that virtually all Americans through history could agree on-- the sanctity of the constitution itself. The Bush administration's actions have turned the constitution into a quaint relic, a thing that's more of an inconvenient and insignificant nusance than unifying principle. That's the real crisis, and I don't know if it's a damage that we'll be able to overcome.
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Shooter242
Personally I prefer the system that encourages wealth creation and defends my country so I can enjoy it.
Interesting that "wealth creation" has lead to a stagnant or dropping income for the great majority of Americans since about 1973.
Interesting also that someone who is so concerned about "wealth creation" seems to spend so much time stalking the intertubes talking about "wealth creation" rather than going out and creating actual wealth.
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Ain't he just the cutest little fascist?
When reading Bobo Brooks (or as I like to think of him, the Jew who defends the Crusades and the Inquisition because they were so good for capitalism) I always find it ameliorative to keep this lovely portrait of him handy for quick reference:
http://www.johnrozum.com/images/egghead-jr.jpg
Of course, he was a bit younger when that picture was taken, but I think you'll agree he's every bit as adorable today.
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What Matt said about the CIA's use of saying we are "winning," while surely losing, as in Vietnam.
I say we best to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves?
We may get to see bunches of pro-surge people from the Middle East flocked in feigned devotion to the notion of our chilly "presidency's" impossible, incomprehensible, impossible to comprehend goals.
Remember the smiley conical-hat-loyalist to South Vietnamese phony propped up reign....(?)....You can still See them in non-peasant dress waving flags and un-loosening bamboo caged ducks into the Saigon air?
It was all textured prey-rehearsed baloney then. Shame, as it is now, yes. If whopper cough children do not stop; I visualize loyal girls and pundit boys to this malady administration, may be seen sitting in the crouch position, or asshole to belly-button, running for thee western hills with their flowery skirt pulled-up over their head?
I hope all wear panties, if that's the case, and I may be wrong? But these "conservatives" are Noby working for recycle Conservator Cos. The males you mention here do not wear the pants....'um wear girdles to hide chubby bellies from eating too much sauerkraut cake? What a addiction we get at the Salon. It's a place for all Helga's who know it's terrible and the gold has got to be fairly distributed. What cons. Thugs. Weak. 'um jellyfish.
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Faulty Comparisons
The Bush admin can't be compared to traditional conservativism because the current two-term began with an act of war against the United States. 9/11 changed policy, drastically. A new department, Homeland Security, was created out of nothing in response to it. Of course government grew larger. Trying to make a broad comparison using the policies of a war-time government to its traditional ideas is ludicrous and empty-headed. This is as simple as 1 + 1 = ? (Liberals, look below for the answer). Come on, Glenn. I thought you were some kind of genius.
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LBS, Complexities
Your ideas cover the issues well. I think that the concept of the 'military-industrial complex' is a very real thing, one which ties your idea of the importance of multi-national corporate interests for neo-cons to the nationalism promoted by the administration and its sympathisers. Their chain of command, their priorities, would seem to be the enrichment of Me, Mine, Ours, Gods, The United States', Europe, Israel, and finally, Everyone Else. The Mine and Ours consists of the establishment, or any part of society interested in preserving the status quo. The nationaism they promote is one of vengeance and pre-emptive global security enforcement, not the 'I am my brother's keeper' type of (socialist) nationalism. This war-centric nationalism is, of course, required by their larger goals of enriching themselves and expanding the Glory of the Empire.
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Ktwdawg and LBS
I think you both make good points about how our version of nationalism is tied up with economics. It's for a very simple reason, I think. American style nationalism is heavily outsourced to the private sector. The huge MNCs based in the U.S. are just an extension of state power.
Our culture is such that true state fascism would be unlikely to flourish in the United States. But the state, working in very close conjunction with the leaders of the economy forms a de facto mega-state. Bush just took the next logical extension for a nationalist and tried to advance beyond economic power to actual ruling power.
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The Problem Isn't The Size Of Government, But The Shape
Scott Horton :
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/03/accountability-and-renegade-executive.html...Our Founding Fathers had faith in mankind, but also a very real sense of man's corruptibility. "If men were angels," James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51, then we should have no need of government. But men are no angels, and politicians may in fact be closer to what Kant called a race of devils. The genius of the tripartite system of checks and balances that Madison and the other Founding Fathers created was its use of the quest for power latent in so many of us (and especially in politicians) as a brake against itself.
But in the last six years this brake has been dismantled and removed. There has been a fundamental shift in the power structure - a sweeping reallocation of power from the Congress and Courts to the Executive. Much of this has occurred secretly, behind closed doors, as a sort of constitutional coup d'état.
It's telling that the current scandal began with a secret change in the Patriot Act. Unbeknownst to those who should have run the process, including Senator Specter, then the chair of the Judiciary Committee, a provision was slipped in at the last minute giving the Attorney General a direct power of appointment of US Attorneys, skirting the advice and consent of the Senate. This provision was smuggled into the bill by a young legislative assistant who was promptly appointed, at 34 years of age, as the US Attorney in Utah...
- - Scott Horton
If only Waxman had authority to investigate Congress itself, and how Congress allowed the subversion and perversion of its own basic legislative function. I still don't quite comprehend how and why the GOP Congress critters so generously surrendered their own prerogatives.