Posted on 11/18/2006 9:46:14 PM PST by beckett
Ideology Has Consequences
Bush rejects the politics of prudence.
by Jeffrey Hart
Many Republicans must feel like that legendary man at the bar on the Titanic. Watching the iceberg slide by outside a porthole, he remarked, “I asked for ice. But this is too much.” Republicans voted for a Republican and got George W. Bush, but his Republican Party is unrecognizable as the party we have known.
Recall the Eisenhower Republican Party. Eisenhower, a thoroughgoing realist, was one of the most successful presidents of the 20th century. So was the prudential Reagan, wary of using military force. Nixon would have been a good secretary of state, but emotionally wounded and suspicious, he was not suited to the presidency. Yet he, too, with Henry Kissinger, was a realist. George W. Bush represents a huge swing away from such traditional conservative Republicanism.
But the conservative movement in America has followed him, evacuating prudence and realism for ideology and folly. Left behind has been the experienced realism of James Burnham. Also vacated, the Burkean realism of Willmoore Kendall, who aspired, as he told Leo Strauss, to be the “American Burke.” That Burkeanism entailed a sense of the complexity of society and the resistance of cultures to change. Gone, too, has been the individualism of Frank Meyer and the commonsense Western libertarianism of Barry Goldwater.
The post-2000 conservative movement has abandoned all that to back Bush and has followed him over the cliff into our calamity in Iraq. On top of all that, the Bush presidency has been fueled by the moral authoritarianism of the current third evangelical awakening.
(Excerpt) Read more at amconmag.com ...
This guy is brutal - - tough to read. And, frankly, he comes off as an idiot. He clearly doesn't like the "ideology" of tax cuts, for example.
Ideology is inherently unconservative, because its aims are unlimited and unlimitable in both physical and temporal scope. The "ideology of freedom" Bush invoked in his Vietnam speech needs a "long march" across the globe and plenty of governmental and military action before victory can be declared, and victory is never declared.
Those who suggest the necessity of limits on such goals are easily demonized as enemies of the ideologically pure position. But since any ideologically pure program must run into the limits of the real world, the projects of ideologues must collapse into recriminations and purges.
On another subject, I am concerned that Hart overcorrects in dismissing metaphysics. Though abstraction certainly runs wild in our present age, its domestication rather than death seems the most prudent option.
You are obviously the one with the reading comprehension problem.
...though anyone paying attention should have realized the game he has played.Was part of his game to make you go barking mad and post drivel to right-wing websites?
"When all the evidence is in, I think historians will agree with Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, who wrote a carefully argued article judging Bush to have been the worst president in American history."
William Henry Harrison was the worst President. The guy did nothing his entire time in office!
The Declaration's preamble seems a very meager foundation for principles. Here's its take on the foundation for principles:
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.These principles seem quite pragmatic. The DoI then goes on to invoke prudence. I doubt we can truthfully claim an American ideology to have been in continuous existence from the time of the War of Independence to the present.
Well, I am an historian and I judge Bush the best president of my lifetime.
Where do you put William Henry Harrison?
Uh, conservatism is an ideology. I also don't think there is much evidence to support the notion that conservatives per se have followed Pres. Bush. It would be easy to use the recent election as proof that it hasn't.
The post-2000 conservative movement has abandoned all that to back Bush and has followed him over the cliff into our calamity in Iraq.
What? We were attacked. I swear we were. I remember it. Self-defense is not an ideology it's a principle. The "conservative movement" didn't 'follow' Bush into Iraq America demanded that he respond. Bush didn't talk America into it and America didn't talk him into it. It may seem like it was all his idea now to the amnesiacal left but he was just on the same page from day one on that. It's the left and boneheads like this who have decided that fighting against suicidal maniacs is unPC. To them it's better to sit and wait and see what happens.
With two ridiculous statements like this at the beginning of the article I have no need to read the rest.
Intellectuals only exist if you think they do.
"No Gondring, it is weasel words. He is using historians to project his own opinion because he hasn't the balls to say it for himself."
He's also using Vice President Dick Cheney:
It is worth considering a statement by Richard Cheney:
"Once you get to Baghdad, it’s not clear what you do with it. It’s not clear what kind of government you put in place of the one that’s currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime, a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that going to have if it’s set up by the American military there? How long does the United States military have to stay there to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens once we leave?"
Smart man, that Cheney. The only problem is that he said that back in 1991 during the first Gulf War when he was secretary of defense in the administration of George H.W. Bush. At that time, Brent Scowcroft was national security adviser and James Baker was secretary of state. Recently, Scowcroft has said that though he has been friends with Cheney for more than 30 years, he no longer really knows him. What has happened to Cheney is anybody’s guess.
It can’t be 9/11. We know from many sources that Bush had decided to invade Iraq long before 9/11. In The Right Man, David Frum recounts being interviewed for a position by Michael Gerson, head Bush speechwriter and also policy adviser, not long after Bush became president. Gerson told Frum that Bush would topple Saddam. At that time nothing was being said about weapons of mass destruction.
I wouldn't go that far. Jeffrey Hart is a professor, at Dartmouth I believe, and a long time editor of 'National Review'. This piece came from 'The American Conservative', Pat Buchanan's new magazine, which called for the GOP to be defeated this election.
Hart opposes a robust response to terrorism and Supply Side economics, among other policies supporter by most conservatives.
IOW, the administration didn't go into the conflict with blinders on. We knew it, but did it anyway.
So tell me beckett, did you ever support the conflict? Why or why not?
Yes, I'm too stupid to read. Just as you are too stupid to see that saying historian will judge someone in some way, is a judgement statement by the author, not fact. And it definitely is NOT fact.
And judge GW any way you want to, but if you rank him near the bottom, then you have forgotten all of his conservative accomplishments, for reasons of your own. Despite his failings, he's been one of our very best presidents, and if I disagree with him on some issues, I agree with him on most. If you think he's betrayed conservatism somehow, I think you are being too harsh. He's compromised too much in some ways, but held his ground in many others, and you withhold credit unfairly.
"Supply-side ideology led to large tax cuts and mountainous deficits."
Huh? Tax revenue is higher than it has ever been. Again the problem is spending. The same happened under Reagan. The "deficits" today are substantially lower as a percentage of GDP than they were under Reagan and Bush 1 and most of Clinton. Bush had to deal with both ressession from the dot-com bust and a terrorist attack that was a major economic hit.
"Privatization ideology led to an incomprehensible and unnecessarily expensive prescription-drug plan."
What type of "privatization" was that??? That is so blatantly false there's no point in further discussion.
This statement alone in the context of people not wanting to be bullied, and wanting the same things, as Bush said in his speech, is so idiotic that the mask of learning is torn from the face of a demented fool, which Hart obviously has become. How can someone write this tripe, supposedly exploring what people want in society and never address the biologic imperative of bearing and rearing children?
TRUE
When all the evidence is in, I think historians will agree with Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, who wrote a carefully argued article judging Bush to have been the worst president in American history
Gee, I thought that was left up to historians to decide, MANY, MANY years after the fact and not while a President is sitting?
I can just imagine what this moron would have wrote about Lincoln during the height of the Civil War and who is now deified as one of our greatest Presidents?
What drivel and I (while I voted for W twice and like him as a man and President, could NOT disagree more on many of his policies) take exception to this "rush to judgment."
How can anyone soberly reflect on past presidencies (not the least of Jimmah Carter) and even hint that W could be worse than that useless POS, Nimrod, who from his foreign policy debacles is MOST responsible for the conditions we find ourselves immersed and fighting for/against in the middle East?
Good summary of the opening of the article. We have as many, if not more, more Big-Nanny-State initiatives from "conservative" President Bush than we get when a Dem is in there.
- Truman lost China, having a State Department that wanted the Communists to win it. Without Communist China it's hard to see how there would even have been a Korean War.
- Kennedy had the Bay of Pigs and the assassination of Diem which committed the US to Vietnam.
- Johnson had the (political) loss of the Vietnam War on top of the disasterous great government (he called it "Great Society," but he meant great government) program. Which wasted a trillion dollars, at a time when a trillion dollars was real money.
- Carter had the loss of Iran and stagflation.
- Clinton had Black Hawk Down and the genie of Islamism, plus Filegate, Coffeegate, "the meaning of 'is'" - and so on and so forth and so on.
Bush undoubtedly could have done some things better - but it's pretty hard to seriously nominate him as a contender for the title of "worst POTUS in history". The competition for that "honor" is actually pretty stiff.
Then you come to the table with really low standards. Blackbird.
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