Posted on 05/25/2007 10:13:26 AM PDT by Irontank
So-called "neo" conservatism has its roots in a Marxist view of the world. So it is not surprising that the neocons are trying to silence their most prominent conservative critic.
That would be Texas Rep. Ron Paul. He outraged the neocons during the Republican presidential debate last week by advocating that the GOP return to the traditional conservative stance of noninterventionism. Paul invoked the ghost of Robert Taft, the GOP Senate leader who fought entry into NATO. And he also pointed out that messing around in the Mideast creates risks here at home.
That prompted Rudy Giuliani to interrupt Paul and demand that he retract his remarks. Paul not only refused to bow to Il Duce, but after the debate, Paul told the TV audience that the self-appointed saint of 9/11 might consider reading the report of the 9/11 commission, which makes the same point in some detail.
....
I put in a call to Andy Napolitano, the Fox News legal analyst and my brother's old buddy at Notre Dame Law School. In addition to appearing on TV, Andy co-hosts a talk show called "Brian and the Judge" on Fox radio.
"Our calls have been going 10 to one in favor of Ron Paul," said Napolitano, a former Superior Court judge in New Jersey who supports Paul's libertarian views.
....
Clearly, the doctor had hit a nerve. The neocons are fond of arguing that we can't simply retreat into "fortress America," as they call it. But the impulse to do so is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. If you doubt that, look at the polls on immigration. The neocon in chief is an open-borders guy, but that view has no support in the base of the GOP.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
The opposite of a RINO which is to say the Anti-Moonbat.
The Libertarian wing you have in mind is the Rockwellites (www.LewRockwell.com) who are against war under any circumstances, even when America is attacked (they believe that Pearl Harbor was our own fault and that we should have stayed out of WW II). This is not a majority position among Libertarians.
statism generally refers to a policy of lack of personal freedom. Neocons promote personal freedom around the world so the term statism doesn’t fit here. Isolationism does though and that’s always been an arguable point.
I’d just rather spread our system to the world than to have the world crashing our borders. Different strokes for different folks.
You’re right; he’s a constitutionalist.
Here are their 25 criteria: ACU Chart
Paul voted "the wrong way" on 6 of the 25 issues. Two of them were war-related, which Paul opposes; the other four were opposed by Paul because they were either unconstitutional or a violation of states' rights.
Furthermore, I would avoid calling myself a conservative if "conservative" means the open borders, budget-busting liberalism of George W. Bush.
1970's and '80s originators of the NeoConservative movement like Irving Kristol, Daniel K. Bell, Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz, and Nathan Glazer used to sort of define a Neo Conservative as 'a Liberal who's been mugged by reality'( a play on the old saying that a conservative is a liberal who's experienced a mugging.)
A lot of the movement's 'leadership' were bright, academic, former Trotskyists from City College in New York. They'd often been leading scholarly advocates for the Left in the 50's and 60's who had the intellectual honesty to re-assess their position when the empirical results of liberal programs('Beyond the Melting Pot' -Glazer and Moynihan) started to pile up ('Losing Ground'-Charles Murray).
'Commentary' was/is their primary advocacy journal(now along with the Weekly Standard), and they've tended to retain their emphasis on the importance of Israel in U.S. foreign policy, and their Left/pre-conservative adherence to 'Wilsonian'foreign interventionism. They vary on fiscal policy, but generally tend to not mind deficit spending as much as Conservatives ('Paleo-Conservatives'?) do. They usually favor a 'free trade/globalism' foreign trade policy associated with the WTO, NAFTA, FTAA, etc. On these points they differ from traditional Conservatism.
Check out 'Arguing the World', a fun profile documentary of the neoconservatives, available at any good video store.
Actually, most of the time they are trying to force a conclusion by labeling the other side with a "dirty" name. Only in rare cases does it really refer to neconservatism, and then, the author would be better using the full word rather than the shortened version.
But this is getting way off the tracks... my original comments were intended to be lighthearted humor, not a deep philosophical discussion. :/
LOL! Touche!
And that's how it ought to be, what's wrong with many plastic politicians. One should be who they are and let the name fit them, not try to fit a name. The respectable former Senator Jesse Helms comes to mind.
Who said anything about “gaining territory?”
I understand the rating system just fine. Dr. Paul say he isn't a conservative, and his recent voting record bears that out.
It really is remarkable.
Count me in on your page, too. I remember what Paul said about campaign finance reform. “the reason there is so much money in politics, is that there is so much money in government. You cannot put an uncovered cake under the sink and expect that it will not attract cockroaches.”
But his take on foreign policy comes straight out of the liberal fantasy land.
Perhaps, but there is no denying that Ron Paul and Rudy Guiliani (and President Bush) are definitely not on the same page philosophically or politically. The question is in what direction should the Republican Party move.
Would that more so-called conservatives were “constitutionalists.” I’m not happy with his foreign policy, but domestic policy wise, I haven’t got much to complain about with Rep. Paul.
If English Christians
had stayed home, defined themselves
just as "Britains" and
not thought globally,
the US wouldn't be here.
We must be as brave,
as free-thinking, and
as globally proactive
as the Dissenters
were in old England.
They set a high standard. We
must live up to it.
FDR made a bad business cycle worse (along with the failure of the Fed). Making labor more expensive through taxation (like social security taxes) and through regulation made the Depression worse, not better.
Probably true, but what would have have done to get us out of the depression? Just curious not being a jerk.
The Fed failed to inflate the money supply when the market crashed is the short version and my opinion. Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, whose very influential work “A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960” advanced this thesis. Making labor more expensive through taxation (social security tax) and regulation (minimum wage laws) is going to make for unemployment worse, too. All in all, and based his policy actions that ran directly contrary to his rhetoric, FDR was likely the most cynical politician in American history.
“So-called “neo” conservatism has its roots in a Marxist view of the world. So it is not surprising that the neocons are trying to silence their most prominent conservative critic. “
I have seen the tactic of projection used by the best of them, but this????? WHAT??? It would be comical if it weren’t so nasty.
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