Here’s an old-style definition from Derb. He’s writing about the emergence of actual genetic data in discussions of social policy:
The news is worse for liberals, who want to transform people, than it is for conservatives, who want to leave people alone.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if most conservatives still wanted to leave people alone?
One conservative Brit asks:
Have we reached the moment when the United States is downgraded as an economic, political, and military power by the rest of the world – permanently – reflecting its new status as a super-debtor with $3 trillion in external liabilities?
Another answers: naaah.
A great post:
One of the key things that conservatives ought to remember (and which we notice all the time in liberal proposals) is that INTENTIONS DO NOT EQUAL OUTCOMES. The government is horribly incompetent at all sorts of things and we ought not abandon that insight when analyzing proposals of people who allege that they are our allies (the idea that Bush is a conservative ally is something I’d like to argue about on another day–but my short answer is that he isn’t).
As with limitations on free speech, I don’t trust the government to be able to fairly and nimbly navigate the rules that would be necessary to make certain that it only used a legal right to torture when it was the right choice. Sadly this is no longer a hypothetical question. In actual practice, we find that Bush’s administration has tortured men who not only didn’t know anything about what they were being tortured about, but weren’t even affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Let me say that again. Bush’s administration has tortured men who were factually innocent.
Not men who got off on technicalities. Factually Innocent.
We also have over a hundred deaths in US interrogation/custody. God knows how many of the murdered were innocent. You give government these tools – let alone one man with no oversight – and you are risking oblivion as a free society. This is a conservative position.
Maybe Hewitt should have thought of this before injecting theology into politics years ago:
"I have voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election to date (I’m currently 41 years of age), but will not vote for Romney if he is the nominee. Mormons embrace the blasphemous notion that each of them (if deemed worthy enough) can, one day, become god of his own planet…As an evangelical Christian, I would have no trouble voting for a Catholic or a Jewish candidate, and would even consider voting for an atheist, but can and will never vote for someone whose ambitions include becoming god," – Mike Butz, emailing Fox News.
Amy King: "You’d better believe that I refuse to vote for a man without the personal character to withdraw from a racist, sexist organization, and I’m very nervous about turning over the most powerful office in the world to a man who thinks he’s going to become a god and collect trophy wives in the Celestial Kingdom."
I think theoconservatism is busy refuting itself. It seems to me a shame that a largely competent, decent, Rockefeller Republican like Mitt Romney should be a victim of the party the Christianists have constructed. Compared with Giuliani, he is a blast of adulthood.
(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)
"Animosity towards Bush is based almost exclusively on the policies he has implemented as President. Berkowitz all but acknowledges this, as the social events that have so upset him primarily involved his defense of Bush policies and strong reactions from critics — little things like starting a war based on false pretenses, introducing torture to our country, spying on Americans in violation of our laws, etc."
You think? As readers will remember, I have always found it very hard to actually hate George W. Bush. He maddens me, his policies have shaken my political allegiances and identity to the core, but I’ve always found him pretty congenial as a person from a distance. I’m glad I’ve never met him because I’d probably be totally suckered. Even on some of the deepest betrayals – spending and torture – I think his main crime has been criminal negligence and shallowness, not evil. But I do despise what he has done to this country, the wreckage in Iraq, and the dishonor of the torture/interrogation policies. I despise what he has done to conservatism, and the economic and environmental debt he will pass to the next generation. But I really, honestly don’t hate him personally. Certainly not in the same league as my visceral dislike for the Clintons.
These are odd conflicting emotions, I concede. They’re not entirely rational, but they’re real. They affect politics and political thought because no one in those fields is an automaton. I can happily defend Clinton’s record, but not his deceptive, calculating character. I cannot defend Bush’s record, and I cannot really defend the callow character that lies behind it. But I don’t think hatred of Bush is what I feel. It’s more pity, sorrow and outrage at what he’s done.
Ron Paul is now guilty by association with dead people:
[Paul and his supporters] have to take their lumps as well for echoing shameful voices of the past. The history of right-wing isolationism is that it has been a hotbed of classic and unambiguous anti-Semitism throughout the 20th century, as represented by leading-edge spokesmen from Henry Ford to Father Coughlin to Gerald K. Smith to the America First Committee.
Non-interventionism was the term they preferred, and the fact that Paul echoes them is understandably unsettling to a lot of people.
Publius says that even if certain conservative arguments are not racist, and many conservatives aren’t racists, more candor about the historical underpinnings of current Republican coalition would be useful.
Along with conservative desperation at the Republican betrayal, no one else is urging a withdrawal from Iraq. It’s as simple as that, in some ways. And in Iowa, that could mean something: 53 percent of Republicans there want a withdrawal of all US troops within six months. The poll also confirms Huckabee’s current second place and the extremely tight race among the Dems. And check this out:
2. Do you see President George W. Bush as a conservative Republican in the mode of Ronald Reagan?
Yes 7%
No 74%
Undecided 19%
Know hope.
Dave Weigel reports from a traveling carnival of conservative refugees from today’s big government, bellicose, Christianist GOP. Larison can barely believe his eyes.
Even in liberal-soaked Britain, the right fails to make any decent plays or films:
We can argue long and hard about the political hue of New Labour’s economics, but only those on the very fringes of the debate could deny that the establishment is now both liberal and left of centre. Even the Tories have been drawn towards the consensus, with an increasingly touchy-feely social policy which makes the old Conservative grandees look like bigots (which is what too many of them were). Yet where is the theatre that challenges that liberal consensus, which makes those of us who consider ourselves a part of it think a little? Where is the theatre of the right?
I’ll make do with Stoppard. My kind of right, I guess. You know: the kind that once opposed torture.
(Hat tip: Arts Journal.)
The Dish 