Letters to the Editor
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Unknown Source
I don't know where I read it, but someone somewhere posited that a side-benefit of perpetual war for neo-con-types was the diversion of government funding from social programs into the war effort (think sex ed, condoms, AIDS ed, all kinds of welfare for the poor). If you think about it, it is a win-win situation where the social programs so reviled by right-wing conservatives, yet so favored by the public, can be circumscribed by the funding demands of 'securing our freedom' through war. The best part?? All the money being diverted from the poor goes damn-near directly to the MNC's like Halliburton. These guys are really good at being really, really bad.
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Protecting Citizens
If they want to protect us, why the resistence to government supported health care? Such a program would greatly help such industries as the auto makers. This topic came up again this week but all Bush could do is talk about biofuels. What GM et al want is for the $1,500 per unit monkey of pensions and health care off their backs.
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Security and Freedom and Big Government?
It's quite possible to diminish all three at once, for instance by outsourcing national security tasks to private contractors like Mitch Wade and MZM.
Using overpriced contractors didn't reduce the federal budget, but it did reduce the number of federal employees, which was apparently a more important goal than enhancing security or preserving freedom.
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I second that
Scott Horton's post @ Balkinization (cited by sysprog)
http://balkin.blogspot.com/
is well worth the read.
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2
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.
If 9/11/2001 was an act of war then why is it that the first World Trade Center bombing was not an act of war?
Note that the planners and executors of the first WTC bombing were apprehended, tried and convicted without the establishment of a "Department of Homeland Security".
Where's Osama bin Forgotten?
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_10.php
"I want justice. There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, "Wanted: Dead or Alive" ... I just remember, all I'm doing is remembering when I was a kid I remember that they used to put out there in the old west, a wanted poster. It said: "Wanted, Dead or Alive." All I want and America wants him brought to justice. That's what we want."
Bush on bin Laden
September 17th, 2001
http://mediamatters.org/items/200410140007
During the October 13 presidential debate, President George W. Bush denied he'd ever said he wasn't worried about Osama bin Laden, as Senator John Kerry stated. In fact, Bush did say it, as a March 13, 2002, video clip, which was played repeatedly by cables and networks after the debate, demonstrates.
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Wealth Creation Infomercial from Carlton "Shooter" Sheets'
Shooter has figured out a way to create something from nothing. He will sell you tapes and CDs. Watch for his 1 hour infomercial at 4 am every morning.
Wealth Creation! Bwahahaha! It's modern day alchemy, but it sounds sexier than investing, pushing paper and basically creating nothing but a profit from usury and speculation.
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Thank you Glenn!
for writing about this column. I was horrified when I read it in the NYT this morning. The line that jumped out at me most spectacularly was:" The sad thing is that President Bush sensed this shift in public consciousness back in 1999. Compassionate conservatism was an attempt to move beyond the “liberty vs. power” paradigm. But because it was never fleshed out and because the Congressional G.O.P. rejected the implant, a new Republican governing philosophy did not emerge." What? Bush was the grand visionary leader and all those damn pesky congressional republicans didn't let him call the shots enough? This was the most blatant attempt to prop up the administration in the face of congressional repucblicans finally turning on him-really sickening.
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neo-con cultists under Reagan
Thank heaven for Glenn Greenwald for his insights on this neocon "cult". However, I wouldn't lump Reagan with Goldwater. Reagan started the large government spending for military buildup at the decline of the USSR's power but used the rational of a "big bad soviet threat" to justify the massive expenditures. Documents from the FBI & CIA released indicate that the administration was grossly overestimating the Soviet threat when reality was the USSR was broke. And Reagan actively courted the religious right a la the Christian Coalition who helped get him elected as a family values guy, a group whose ilk Goldwater mistrusted. And though he wasn't personally authoritarian in his management style, Reagan approved and supported those running the Iran-contra shadow government. If Iran-Contra wasn't a lesson in "security as freedom" philosophy I don't know what else you would call it. Those neo-con cultists were getting their jihad training in the Reagan whitehouse.
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Orwell via Brooks
How seriously should anyone take the musings of David Brooks? The man's set himself out to be the Jimmy Stewart of the pundit set, based on an aw-shucks-I'm-just-a-normal-guy persona, unlike these liberal elitist folks on the coast. I wonder, where does Brooks live, exactly? I'm guessing the East Coast, otherwise he would know that his ideal of happy normal Southerners and Midwesterners hopping out of bed each morning to the strains of Copland's "Rodeo Hoedown" is just a misty product of his befogged brain.
But then my dad in Texas sends me his columns sometimes, as if they were nuggets of gold. This makes me worry. It makes me worry because a lot of people are probably reading Brooks this morning and thinking "Security is freedom" sounds good to them. And if Brooks is saying it, it must be reasonable and true, because Brooks is just a normal guy, like Jimmy Stewart, even if he does write in the New York Times.
In his own way, he's worse than some of the more virulent neocons. He gets around to saying the same things eventually, but a lot more people take him seriously.
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MD
"To Neocons, the nation of the United States is merely an empty vessel into which they can pour their ideology, and apply it for their purposes."
You distilled an idea which took me a full paragraph to try and convey-- very nicely done, thanks. As LGS noted, neo-con strategy uses nationalism, but their motives operate at a larger scale, namely global economic dominance and exploitation.