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• Wednesday, June 18, 2008 12:08 PM

  What did Marx call it?

  Republicans have made hay for decades by portraying Democrats as spend-thrift, reckless liberals. Their side is supposedly "conservative" -- sober-minded, prudent, level-headed -- while their opponents are "radical" -- dangerous, risky, foolish.

  But what is the truly "conservative" position on offshore drilling, or energy policy in general? Recklessly exhausting all available resources now, and letting the future take care of itself -- or conserving those resources, investing carefully for the future, and thinking about the long term?

  I can't remember what they called it, the thesis-antithesis-synthesis theory of history, but it sure has hung around a long time. Even though central planning a la the dictatorship of the proletariat has long since been discredited, the supposed dichotomy that supposedly would lead up to it -- conservative vs. liberal class struggle -- is still assumed to be valid. For me, it is not so much that the Republicans are two faced. Both they and Democrats have been (for the Democratic version, read Glenn Greenwood's current work on Hoyer) for a long time. What these incidents show, in my humble opinion, is that the whole conservative vs. liberal dichotomy exists mostly in our heads. The only effect this supposed dichotomy really has is that resulting from the fact not that it is true, but that people believe in it.

  I am for establishing a new dichotomy; between the patrons and their clients (the rich and their politicians) on one side and the rest of us on the other side. Obama defines this as the Washington insiders versus the rest of us. He implies (rightfully, I think) that the red versus blue is just something they use to keep us occupied while they rob us of our present and our future. The success of his strategy of hope lies in the fact that most of us understand this in at least some unarticulated way. This is one reason why I, a Clintonite, will support Obama. I have some doubts about his ability to pull it off, but if he can, he may go down as one of the truly great presidents. What he is going to have to do is a lot and real fast, before the forces of power and patronage cant tempt the new congress in the ways that have ALWAYS worked before. Let us pray.

  —logicalresponse Read logicalresponse's other letters
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