Letters to the Editor
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Typo
sites = sights
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jojo...Two things that may provide for a different outcome...
The collapse of the center
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-op.schaller02may02,0,7506945.column
And the nutroots comprised of us dirty effing hippies is moving the Overton Window back to where it belongs.
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small world !!
Roger Simon, "chief political columnist of Politico" is formerly of the Chicago Sun, which was owned by Rupert Murdoch and then Conrad Black . These guys seem to move in such tight little circles
From the Wikipedia:
After Murdoch sold the paper (ironically, to buy its former sister TV station WFLD to launch The Fox Network,) the Sun-Times was acquired by Hollinger International, controlled, indirectly, by controversial Canadian born businessman Conrad Black
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@jojo++
I'm not touching that bet...but I am also careful not to equate honesty, integrity, and ethical behavior with Democrats. Clinton was a dirty politician just like the current set in power. The difference is he was also very smart with true political accumen, and played similar policy games under the radar.
I'm careful not to confuse ideals/world view with political parties who generally use views/ideals rather than allow themselves to be guided by them honestly.
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Jumbled And Inconsistent
'All of this may seem jumbled and inconsistent but it is actually quite coherent and clear.'
I'm not exactly sure why your article may seem jumbled and inconsistent, I agree with you 100% that your premise is quite coherent and clear. Actaully I would describe it as quite obvious and painfully clear, but maybe that's just me.
I don't think the behavior you describe is limited only to neocons, however. I have seen this exact pattern in every scandal that has plagued the Republicans over the last 6 years. Whether the scandals have real merit or not, the Republican have a clear playbook they have been operating out of and you have described it in great detail in your post.
I think a rather illustrative, and recent, example is the Mark Foly scandal. Immediately after it broke, and before any of the facts had entirely solidified, the messages were consistent from all quarters: it wasn't a big deal, it wasn't like Foley was hitting on young children (they were "almost" adults), liberals are the ones who are anti-gay, and even (as could even be read on Salon, from Camille Paglia) it's the Democrats fault for holding back information.
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@LWM, Svensker
In practice, I think it depends on who the Dem president is. HRC is a very likely target for the neo-cons. Obama might be malleable too. I think the netroots is going to have to keep their feet to the fire if the neo-cons are to be kept out.
Once the elitist, made-in-DC syndrome takes over, the neo-cons will have a fairly easy time switching horses. They're not an ideology - they're a virus.
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one more time...
Sectors of the American Right...
http://www.publiceye.org/research/chart_of_sectors.html
Study the right: http://www.publiceye.org/study_right.html
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@ Elephantman
Amongst the dross and effluvium, we have this:
If Glenn Greenwald had an ounce of journalistc integrity, he'd deal squarely with the fabulous, textbook reporting done by the WSJ editorial writers on the Wolfowitz story.
The WSJ editorial staff are "reporters"?!?!? More like paid shills for the Republicans.....
Elephantman seems to overlook the acknowledged fact that Wolfowitz was up to his eyeballs in cronyism (and that various hangers-on are jumping ship for "new opportunities" like rats from a sinking ship).
Cheers,
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Jojo
I think anything that slams the brakes on and keeps the bus from going over the cliff is better than nothing. It may take 30 years to move things back to some sort of political balance and equilibrium.
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Vishnu:
I'm not exactly sure why your article may seem jumbled and inconsistent, I agree with you 100% that your premise is quite coherent and clear. Actaully I would describe it as quite obvious and painfully clear, but maybe that's just me.
I didn't mean the post might be jumbled and inconsistent. I meant that the contradictory claims of the neocons - from situation to situation - might seem to be.
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Neocons are ultimately tribal
There seems to be a parallel here. In the MSM, neocons are always right, and anyone not a neocon is always wrong. In criminal prosecutions, neocons are always innocent, and anyone not a neocon is guilty.
This is the kind of absolutist attitude one expects from hunter-gatherer clans in pre-history (“there is the people, and then there is not-people”), not in a political movement in the modern world.
Maybe at this point I need to reiterate something that shouldn’t have to be said.
Gays, heteros, bi, lesbian, transgendered, black, white, yellow, brown, red, women, men, liberal, conservative, libertarian, socialist, democrat, authoritarian, nun, priest, atheist, agnostic, slave, CEO, subsistence farmer, cop, mass murderer, muslim, witch, role-playing gamer, NASCAR fan, soccer fan, football fan, astronaut, homeless paranoid etc. ad infinitum…
WE ARE ALL HUMAN. We all deserve to be treated equally before the law. Without that guiding principle, there is nothing special about our civilization.
“Better the pride that resides, in a citizen of the world,
than the pride that divides, when a colorful rag is unfurled.” (Neil Peart)
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Good catch, Arne
My eyes tend to glaze over...
Amongst the dross and effluvium, we have this:
If Glenn Greenwald had an ounce of journalistc integrity, he'd deal squarely with the fabulous, textbook reporting done by the WSJ editorial writers on the Wolfowitz story.
The WSJ editorial staff are "reporters"?!?!? More like paid shills for the Republicans....
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The Rights Of The Nobility
http://chicagoreader.com/features/stories/hottype/070105
The other day I stopped by the Dirksen Building to pick up . . . a proffer laying out in broad strokes the government's case against Black and three lesser Hollinger officers . . . The proffer quotes him telling another Hollinger officer in a 2002 e-mail:
"There has not been an occasion for many months when I got on our plane without wondering whether it was really affordable. But I'm not prepared to reenact the French Revolutionary renunciation of the rights of the nobility."
- - The Chicago Reader
- - Conrad BlackEven his own lawyers concede that their client has an attitude problem.
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Speaking of Neoconfederates
I ran across this last night when the issue with kdwmson's affiliation with the Evening Bulletin (L.W.M. might have linked to the site originally; I don't recall offhand). It's a review of S.M. Stirling's The Domination, a compilation of his "Draka" trilogy (Marching Through Georgia, Under the Yoke, The Stone Dogs); I think it speaks well to the Randian/Libertarian notion of the state:
The interesting thing about Draka society is that it is simply an exaggeration of societies that have really existed. The political culture of the Domination was not so different from that of some southern states in the United States before the Civil War. In places like South Carolina, the state was little more than a police force. Militias led by local notables controled the large servile population. The state was also an engine of war; it was always the southern states that were so eager to invade Canada and Mexico. Otherwise, the state did very little.
This style of government achieved sophisticated expression in the work of people like John C. Calhoun. Some unusually foolish southerners sometimes expressed interest in a monarchy when secession from the Union became a real possibility. (The Romanticism of Walter Scott's historical novels has sometimes been cited as a contributing cause of the Civil War.) However, serious southerners did endorse the idea of a highly restricted "Greek democracy," and not without effect.
The thing to keep in mind is that the no-tax, no-services state proved to be singularly incompetent. The states of the Confederacy, and the Confederacy itself, had been designed not to function. They had grotesquely inadequate fiscal systems, spotty transportation and a dearth of educated citizens. More important, they also had a large population of non-citizens who could not be trusted. Like the Domination, the Confederacy was a callous, Romantic society. It was quite capable of producing dramatic geniuses. What it could not produce was stable administration. To the extent that the Confederacy worked at all, it worked through extra-legal emergency measures.
"No-tax, no-services state" - sound familiar?