Posted on 10/25/2004 6:29:07 PM PDT by RWR8189
The southern separatists were no less legitimate than the colonial revolutionaries who overthrew the British government.
Do you think Richard Perle would support a separatist movement on the West Bank?
Slavery is an affront to the unalienable rights of some and to the freedom of all.
The southern separatists were no less legitimate than the colonial revolutionaries who overthrew the British government.
The colonial separatists fought for a higher degree of freedom. The southern separatists did not. You can't have a higher degree of freedom when one of the primary things you are fighting for is to protect slavery.
You bet the colonial separatists were more legitimate.
The Bush doctrine is fighting foreign fighters -- Al Qaeda -- in Iraq.
Actually the term neocon was coined by their founder Irving Kristol to desribe 60's liberal intelligisia who were as he put it "mugged by reality."
Even I, frequently referred to as the "godfather" of all those neocons, have had my moments of wonderment. A few years ago I said (and, alas, wrote) that neoconservatism had had its own distinctive qualities in its early years, but by now had been absorbed into the mainstream of American conservatism. I was wrong, and the reason I was wrong is that, ever since its origin among disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the 1970s, what we call neoconservatism has been one of those intellectual undercurrents that surface only intermittently. It is not a "movement," as the conspiratorial critics would have it. Neoconservatism is what the late historian of Jacksonian America, Marvin Meyers, called a "persuasion," one that manifests itself over time, but erratically, and one whose meaning we clearly glimpse only in retrospect.
Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the "American grain." It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic. Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked.
But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on "the road to serfdom." Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable.
People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today's America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not. Though they find much to be critical about, they tend to seek intellectual guidance in the democratic wisdom of Tocqueville, rather than in the Tory nostalgia of, say, Russell Kirk.
Although neoconservatism and traditional conservatism overlap in many areas, the above quotes make it clear that there is a profound difference between the two.
Only if the doctrine has morphed into nation building from regime change.
Because we have slipped the mission into nation building in the context of not finding WMDs, we gave the left an opening to undermine the doctrine. They would risk American cities to advance their dream of world gubmint.
My neighbors here in Germany actually fear Bush more than the terrorists. They openly say the world was better off with the Soviet Union to offset America. About half of America feels the same.
By any historical standard, the Bush doctrine is working. In just over three years, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein have been eradicated. Consensual societies are starting to emerge in their place. Syria and Iran are jittery, fearing new global scrutiny over their longstanding, but heretofore excused, terrorist sympathies. Libya and Pakistan have flipped, renouncing much of their past villainy. Saudi Arabia and the other autocracies of the Gulf region feel the new pressure of American idealism. For all their vocal resentment, strategically critical sheikdoms are inching toward political reform and terrorist-hunting
Before you point out the evident inconsistencies in these positions, let me hasten to observe that the "threat" of effecting regime change in Iran or North Korea, for example, is no longer very credible, even if Bush wins and this come from the historical fluke of finding no WMDs and the shameful politicization of the war by the libs. See Hanson again:
By any historical standard, the Bush doctrine is working. In just over three years, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein have been eradicated. Consensual societies are starting to emerge in their place. Syria and Iran are jittery, fearing new global scrutiny over their longstanding, but heretofore excused, terrorist sympathies. Libya and Pakistan have flipped, renouncing much of their past villainy. Saudi Arabia and the other autocracies of the Gulf region feel the new pressure of American idealism. For all their vocal resentment, strategically critical sheikdoms are inching toward political reform and terrorist-hunting.
BUSH'S PROBLEMS
Bush's popularity problems, however, are threefold, and explain the present divisions in this country over the war. First, this is an election year in the postmodern age. Two- and three-minute media streams from the battlefield are delivered with amateurish editorializing in real time to American living rooms, and are then recycled as political soundbites. Given both the wealth and security of American society, and the spectacular ability of our military to defeat enemies at minimal costs, Americans have come to claim as their birthright automatic victory without casualties. To a country that lost hundreds an hour at the Bulge and Iwo Jima, 1,000 fatalities in three years to liberate 50 million people 7,000 miles away might seem an amazing achievement; but 60 years later, voters of a far richer society, inundated with political commercials showing the missing limbs or flag-draped coffins of a few, are told that any sacrifice is tantamount to failure. We have forgotten that in war there are always setbacks like looting, Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, or the rise of a Zarqawi — but that the key is determining to what degree such reversals impair the overall success of the war. So far in Iraq, they simply do not, despite the media sensationalism.
Third, after the meteoric rise of Howard Dean's boutique antiwar campaign in the Democratic primary season, both John Kerry and John Edwards retracted their prior Trumanesque bipartisan support of the war. Instead they sensed political capital in equating daily images of Americans killed with everything from alleged Halliburton profiteering to tax cuts for the wealthy. Their efforts have been energized by millions of dollars in third-party contributions, and sensationalized by the American elite in the arts, universities, and media, who are as culturally influential as they are politically weak and envious.
http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson102604.html
If this were the reason why the Union wanted to outlaw slavery, then you'd have a point. And if this statement were true, then the Union had no business allowing it in the first place. Abraham Lincoln even stated that the basis of Civil War was the preservation of the Union, not the elimination of slavery.
The colonial separatists fought for a higher degree of freedom. The southern separatists did not. You can't have a higher degree of freedom when one of the primary things you are fighting for is to protect slavery. You bet the colonial separatists were more legitimate.
For all intents and purposes, the United States as the colonial separatists envisioned it no longer existed by the time 1860 rolled around. I have often made the case that the United States really only lasted a few years -- until the events that culminated in the Whiskey Rebellion in the early 1790s made it clear that the U.S. government was really not all that much different than the British crown.
Do you have a link for that?
Thanks.
Neocons are complete pussies when it comes to domestic policy. I have no use for them.
Sorry, I forgot to include that:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/000tzmlw.asp?pg=1
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