Posted on 11/19/2006 2:39:53 AM PST by Tom D.
The trouble with this column - its failure to come to terms with the concerns of small government conservatives - shows in Steyn's failure to acknowledge that Friedman was opposed to the Iraq invasion. (He said so very explicitly in an interview this past July, which is on the internet) Instead of just ridiculing that position, Steyn needs to treat it as something worthy of arguing with, maturely. He's not going to persuade people of the intellect of Prof Friedman by put-downs. Friedman had it wrong, I agree, but he was a brilliant man and he was committed to freedom, so you can't dismiss his positions with snide asides, you have to engage them.
Excellent article.
Thanks for posting.
Thanks for the ping. Steyn's always a joy to read!
And right on the money as well.
Reading that at first I felt anger. "Myth"? How dare you?
Then reality set in.
At 60 years of age, I remember an America quite different and morally stable growing up as a young boy in the 1950's.
It's an effin mess today, and I wonder how responsible is my generation?
History will look back at the flower children and the VietNam War...the Woodstock Generation and Im afraid they will be judged accordingly.
I hold back on criticizing radical Muslims sometimes now too... there's an overlay of feeling that on some basic level, we've lost. Same with some of the higher ideals of being conservative - our Pubbies threw away principle to get security for themselves - and a few friends... and lost. Maybe Steyn's right - maybe people would rather opt out of the dignity freedom brings - and settle for the bullied slave structure of dependence. Or maybe Steyn's just reacting to the death of a great man ... Let's hope it's the latter.
IMO, you have a poor understanding of the Office of the Presidency. Get a life...or get a grip.
We should invoke Godwin's Law for all you immigration groupies.
What is it that you perceive President Bush is not telling us?
The vast majority of Muslims don't follow radical jihad and "death to infidels" crap.
I'm sure the three of us realize that without the President gravely stating it in a fireside chat.
Sorry, I was just thinking of WWII in general - the Japanese should have been included in that. But my point was that the only thorough defeat was under a Dem president, which I think is rather hard to explain.
My big problem with pursuing "self-determination" abroad is that, witness Iraq, most Muslims will self-determine immediately to adopt sharia and enslave themselves again. It was a bad move to let them enshrine sharia in their constitution, although the only thing I can say in defense of Bush et al. is that it has taken everybody awhile to learn and understand what Islam really is (a tyrannical religious-political system) and at that time, most folks hadn't really grasped it.
Theoretically, it is not legally possible or permissible to sell yourself into slavery. But many of the people we liberate or people who live in the free world seem ready to do just that.
There's an unwritten bargain between the President and the Congress. The President fights the terrorists, and the Congress fights big government. The President's done his end of the bargain, but the Congressional Republicans have performed abysmally, at times even obstructing the War President with cries about terrorists' rights. The only reasons that Congressional Republicans could give to vote for them are: (1) supporting the President against our enemies abroad and (2) the Democrats are even worse. Republicans generally took (1) off the table, at times even acting like liberal Democrats on the defining issue of our time. And the Democrats refused to articulate (2) believably during the campaign season; the Republicans surely wouldn't. Republicans gave American no good reason to vote for them--many defeated incumbents spent their campaigns gloating about odious pork-barrel corrupt spending.
President Bush isn't the problem; he's practically the only elected official in Washington with ANY of our interests at heart, and the time has come for those on this forum to reserve their vitriol for the big-government Congress-creeps who act ambivalent in the war on terrorism yet represent RED districts. Sure, the President's made many mistakes, but Congress has made almost every bad one far WORSE--especially the terrible boondoggle of a Medicare entitlement.
Good points. I think that to a great extent people were simply voting against a Congress they do not feel has served either them or their president well. And it's true, the theoretically GOP Congress has been an obstructionist force from the word go. The Dems couldn't be any worse.
That said, I think Bush should have been a little more aggressive and given out the message that he wasn't going to play with people who didn't support him. However, at the same time, that's just not something that is in his personality, and while he could have been more aggressive in both dealing with the GOP and using his veto pen, it was simply something that wasn't going to happen.
"""I dunno. I'm not particularly religious, but I'm also socially conservative. One does not have to be religious to believe that abortion is both the taking of innocent life and thinly veiled eugenics, that marriage -is- supposed to be about providing a stable platform for children, etc. etc. """
I agree. I'm a not very observant Jew, but a strong believeing one, and I agree with you about abortion, in fact, I think that anyone, libertarian, conservative, or otherwise, who is concerned about individual freedom, should always give the unborn the benefit of the doubt. If they are not sure when it becomes human, assume that it happens sometime before birth, and is therefore entitled to live.
I swear, the next time any whining feminist tells me that the right wing wants to get into her bedroom, I'm going to ask her why anyone would want to get into her bedroom.
But, I agree with Steyn. If the liberty abroad, and the liberty at home conservatives cannot find common ground, the Reagan/Gingerich revolution is over, and won't get re-started for a long time.
Perhaps, but the immigration groupie would be you pal.
Sorry, I meant Japan, too, but I was just thinking of WWII in general. Your point is well taken, however; many Dems and leftists did support the war effort primarily because Stalin was being attacked. Maybe they'd support the US now if France were being attacked...(well, by more than a few thousand teenage thugs every Muslim holiday).
Your mentor, Helen Thomas, told me to "Get a life" when I wrote her. Try arguing the idea instead of ad hominem.
"thorough defeat [of Germany] was under a Dem president, which I think is rather hard to explain"
Maybe not so hard if you accept the notion that the Republican party of today IS the Democratic party of pre-1970. JFK's 'ask not' is a mantra for small government and individual responsibility. The Democratic party of today is a Labor party.
I suppose under that scenario, the only real conservatives of today are the paleos, ala, Barry Goldwater and Ron Paul, which leans into the realm of libertarianism... But that's just speculation.
This doesn't really represent the major division among republicans.
The divide is between large government, pro globalist, apathetic towards family values business types and small government, america first, family values voters.
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