The Old Man In The Slum

A reader writes:

Wow! I’m just floored. Thank you so much for turning me onto that soldier’s blog. What incredibly poignant posts. He gives me hope and also reminds that for every soldier willing to take part in Abu Graib-type abuses, there are 10, 20, 50, 100 who are fighting as honorably as possible, who embrace their humanity even in the most hellish of situations.

It’s an important reminder. The reason some of us have gotten so enraged by torture and abuse is that the policies betray the noble service of the vast majority of the troops. If you missed Sean Anderson’s blog, check it out. It really gives you hope – and even more respect for the soldiers out there.

Post-Conservative Huckabee?

A reader writes a challenging email to Jonah. Well worth reading. I think Huckabee represents a natural evolution of Rovian sectarian politics, and would lead to the end of conservatism as I understand it. Jonah doesn’t dispute this, but doubts Huckabee’s potential:

I think what Huckabee represents — as I wrote here —  is compassionate conservatism on steroids. I don’t know that I’d call it post-conservatism so much as paleo-progressivism (a term that pops up in my book). If carried to its logical conclusion Huckabeeism is rightwing progressivism. If I have to choose between leftwing progressivism and rightwing progressivism, I’d probably choose rightwing progressivism on most issues and leftwing progressivism on a few issues. But I don’t want to have to make that choice. I don’t think I will have to either.

I wouldn’t be so sure. Once the Bush Republicans signaled that they had stopped supporting or believing in limited government conservatism, the potential for paleo-progressivism expanded exponentially. Huckabee’s charm may be one of those contingent historical wrinkles that tips the balance. I fear the consequences. But I warned ya.

“Uncle Rupert”

Rod Dreher welcomes Beliefnet’s new boss. Which prompts this vent from Roy Edroso:

If there is one person on the face of God’s green earth who is the anti-Christ of Crunchy Conservatism, it’s Rupert Murdoch. His commercial endeavors are a perfect synthesis of the values of what Dreher himself called "the Party of Lust" and "the Party of Greed." Yet Dreher calls him "Uncle Rupert." It’s enough to shake one’s faith in modish rightwing movements. Next we’ll be hearing that metrocon thing was all bullshit.

Oh, please. Rupert Murdoch leaves almost all his writers alone. Suck-up hereby endeth. I love my Sunday Times column.

Quote For The Day

Newtonwilliamblake

"Politics today is largely a question of management and administration. Blake, by contrast, viewed the political as inseparable from art, ethics, sexuality and the imagination. It was about the emancipation of desire, not its manipulation. Desire for him was an infinite delight, and his whole project was to rescue it from the repressive regime of priests and kings. His sense of how sexuality can turn pathological through repression is strikingly close to Freud’s. To see the body as it really is, free from illusion and ideology, is to see that its roots run down to eternity. "If the doors of perception were cleansed," he claims, "everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." Political states keep power by convincing us of our limitations," – Terry Eagleton on William Blake. (Illustration: Newton by Blake.)