Posted on 03/12/2006 3:11:35 PM PST by FairOpinion
The author, Jeffrey Hart,is a professor of English (emeritus) at Dartmouth College, a former speechwriter for presidents Reagan and Nixon and, most recently, the author of "The Making of the American Conservative.
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William F. Buckley Jr. has defined conservatism as "the politics of reality." Ideology is the enemy of conservatism because it edits, omits or ignores reality. George W. Bush is an ideologue.
Iraq is commonly said to be the centerpiece of Bush's presidency. The United States invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction. But nearly three years after the invasion, no such weapons have been found. And evidence is mounting that the intelligence used to bolster the claims for Iraq's WMD was cherry-picked, politically pressured and, to use intelligence expert Thomas Powers' word, "fabricated."
Ideology.
As Buckley wrote in two recent columns, our Iraq policy "didn't work." The Bush centerpiece has been an astonishing flop.
A major triumph of American conservatism since World War II has been general acceptance of free-market economics in political discourse. This economic system works. It produces goods and services efficiently.
Yet free-market economics pushed to exclude other worthy goals becomes an ideology.
Bush is not a conservative. He has bushwhacked the term. He is a right-wing ideologue.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Bush is prime example why I wont be voting for a moderate in the primaries.
Different people have different definitions of freedom, based upon their personal belief system.
Right, hence the desire of people in other countries to have a system which allows them to resolve such conflicts without having a dictator simply impose his will.
Some find absolutely no problem with dictators and/or kings, at all (some in the US, even). Once again, this goes back to one's personal belief system.
You have a very peculiar defenition of freedom. Personally, I'll take John Paul II's:"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."
My point exactly. For example: the 9/11 Jihadists committed murder/suicide because, in their particular spiritual belief system, they were doing the right thing. They were simply following the teachings of Islam. Doing exactly what their conscience told them they ought to do. Only Catholics feel obligated to follow the Pope's guidance in spiritual matters. Some people's spiritual leaders exhort them to do things that we in America consider unspeakable atrocities.
You seem to be arguing that freedom is a relative concept, because others have different ideas as to what it is. This is noncense. Just because some may prefer a king, that doesn't mean that now sefdom=liberty. Just because a terrorist wishes to redefine liberty as the ability to blow up an Israily bus, that doesn't make it so. In other words, their culture&religion leads the to make the wrong conclusion about what freedom is.
Exactly.
Which is why we must continue to defend the American culture of freedom, and recognize the religious foundations on which it was built, otherwise it will be re-defined or destroyed by those who either do not understand or care for it.
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