Posted on 05/11/2009 3:33:27 AM PDT by Scanian
LOL!
These Freepathons are taking longer. If everybody would contribute, they would not. The conservative movement needs FR.
“So I have no great regard for Mr. Powell’s strategic thinking, at home or abroad. As the general sees it, the Republican Party ought to be a “big tent.” Right now, the tent is empty, with only a few “mean-spirited” and “divisive” talk-radio hosts chewing the limbs off live kittens while gibbering to themselves.”
Lines like this is why I adore Mr. Steyn.
The Sheeple need to be reminded every time that socialism doen’t work. The siren song of getting everything free suckers in the stupid. When the bill comes due they want out. It’s depressing that it has to come to this but, every time the people get in trouble, they realize the conservative are right.
If Conservatism is over then why is there such a big following on talk radio and the internet? If Conservatism is finished then how is it the number of tea parties are increasing both in frequency and size to stop BO and his socialist minions moving us towards socialism?
If Conservative is over, why do I usually see the comments on the MSM sites run almost entirely against the Leftist POV?
Steyn Ping
Yes! true conserativism has disappeared...what we have is varying degrees of liberalism....right, center,and left liberals...
“The first President Bush’s decision, at Mr. Powell’s urging, not to topple Saddam Hussein but to halt the coalition forces at the gates of Baghdad sent the world a message about American purpose whose consequences we live with to this day.”
Obviously one of the greatest strategic mistakes that I have seen in my 64 years.
I just NEVER understood it.
Mark nails it.
I’m Barack Obama and I apporove of this message:Americans do want to pay taxes for services. Americans want more government in their lives.
Fairly simple. The UN and coalition war aim was to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. Had Saddam been dethroned, we would have had something similar to the insurgency of 2005 to 2007, just 15 years earlier.
This would have resulted in the immediate collapse of the coalition, and we would likely be talking today of how the overreach of Bush Senior was a great strategic mistake. We absolutely did not want to conquer and occupy Iraq at that time.
IOW, extremely limited war aims was a precondition of creating a large diverse coalition. If you don't want limited war aims and the consequent restrictions, avoid coalition warfare.
Over in the other [Democrat] tent, they celebrate diversity with ruthless singlemindedness: In the Democrat parade, whatever your bugbear government is the answer. Government is the means, government is the end, government is the whole magilla. That gives them a unity of purpose the Republican Party can never match.Bears repeating!And yet and yet.... Last November, even with the Republican Party's fiscal profligacy, even with the financial sector's October surprise, even with a cranky old coot of a nominee unable to articulate any rationale for his candidacy or even string together a coherent thought on the economy, even with a running mate subjected to brutal character assassination in nothing flat, even running against a charming, charismatic media darling of historic significance, even facing the natural cycle of a two-party system the washed-up loser no-hoper side managed to get 46 percent of the vote.
It bugbears repeating!
BTTT! Thanks for the smackdown of Colin Powell while subbing for Rush last week, Mark.
Correct in a nutshell.
Alex, you should remember under what authority any of this occurred; the United Nations.
Like most other endeavors sponsored by the U.N., there was never any specified goal of "winning".
This piece wasn’t that well written. This isn’t Steyn at his best. This is probably because he isn’t a natural born American that he doesn’t see it.
Steyn gets the premise of conservatism wrong. Conservatism is not a coalition. It is not a collection of interest groups. While some issues are ‘hotter’ than others to different people, like the Second Amendment is ‘hotter’ to people than say cutting taxes, all of it is rooted in the American mythos from which this ‘heat’ springs. Activists for the Second Amendment as well as those wanting to cut taxes literally believe they are arguing the American Revolution ideas in twenty first century ways.
Conservatism is the conserving of the foundation of America. It is timeless because life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are timeless.
One of the reasons for Reagan’s popularity was not so much the conservative ‘movement’, in political terms, but in American mythos (people instinctively distrust ‘movements’, liberal, conservative, or whatever). Reagan clearly loved America, called it the ‘shining city on the hill’, and that warmth for America hit people’s hearts. Most Americans, even to this day, love their country with that intense pride. And yes, they still do, just look at the reaction to 9-11.
Obama has two massive weaknesses. One is that he is not a grassroots politician. He won all his early elections by throwing the opposing candidate out of the race. The later candidates, like Hillary Clinton and john McCain, which he could not throw out, were the most mediocre candidates he could be faced against. (Come on! Hillary Clinton? And he struggled to beat even those two)
But the second, even more glaring weakness, is that Obama does not love America. While he wraps himself in the flag during the election and all, which is standard stuff for politicians, he is on extremely thin ice because he will be blown away by any opposing candidate who radiates a love of country, a love for the American mythos.
Steyn should realize that America, unlike other nations, does not consider its founding to be its government. July the Fourth is not celebrating the adoption of the Constitution, it is celebrating the signing of Independence.
Americans love their country. They fear their government. This is believed by people of both parties. In no other nation on the Earth do people seperate their country and their government in quite the same way. The first lines of Paine’s “Common Sense” begins with highlighting this point.
Obama’s obsession about Reagan is really about the American mythos. Americans rejected The Great Society and LBJ, after winning a massive landslide electio of around 40 states, couldn’t even run for re-election. The point is that the ‘Reagan Revolution’, that rejection of big government, occurred well before Reagan.
The thing conservatives and liberals do not understand why FDR was ‘adored’ has nothing to do with FDR’s politics or even the ‘New Deal’. FDR knew how to speak. He had an orator’s flair. Many of his phrases have become legendary and have transcended politics. The political disccusisons have everyone focused on statecraft when it is stagecraft that people remember. JFK and Reagan also transcended the political process as their lines have become legendary.
The least known fact about FDR is that he was the ‘failed candidate’ who was the Vice President candidate in the 1928 election. Senator Hoover won by one of the biggest landslides in American history, 60+ % I believe. Yet, FDR came back an election later stronger than ever. Much of it was due to the economics at the time, but it was also due to FDR wearing the mantle of American mythos.
Obama is the twenty first century Hoover. He is the plucky senator elected. The bet that Axelrod is betting is based on a flawed premise: that FDR got loved because of economic bad times. No, he was elected because of economic bad times (and Republicans retook Congress after the ‘depression within the depression’ which Americans blamed FDR for). FDR is loved only because he wore the mantle of American mythos. “Nothing to fear but fear itself,” and so on.
The bet of the Obama administration is that people will equate economic bad times with the failure of capitalism. No wonder the Tea Parties scared them. But no one equates economic failure to the failure of freedom. Not even liberal bastions such as California to New England. What happens is that the people pack up and move elseware. They abandon their state and go to another state because they correctly see the failure of the government there.
Historically, Palin is poised to be the new FDR. She wears the American mythos mantle so openly which is why she is so loved (and by all. More people tuned in to the VP debate and her SNL skit than anything else.) Her life fits the American mythos of frontier woman and all. No member of the political class, Republican or Democrat, can stand up to that.
As with all things in cycles, a depression is coming. Social Security and Medicare will crash. But no one will blame capitalism because they aren’t blaming capitalism now. No one is moving TO California or Michigan because of government there. They are moving away. As polls show, more people fear the government getting too big than anything else.
Everyone will blame Obama for it because Obama has fingerprints on everything and is making sure everyone knows it. And unlike Hoover, Obama will definately deserve some of the blame. Mainstream press won’t be able to stop it because if things are bad now, they will be completely out of business when things really get bad. People will tire of Obama’s stagecraft because people tire of every president’s stagecraft after years of it. The only ones they don’t are those who wear the American mythos mantle. Obama doesn’t. FDR did. Reagan did.
And so does Palin. And that is the true source of her political invincibility... and inevitability. Obama won mostly due to the woman’s vote. A female presidential candidate would be extremely difficult to defeat. She must be taken out now because, from the moment she runs, like an avalanche, she will only gain in strength (as is shown by the few American mythos politians).
At last, my wife and I have always tried to figure who's decision that was or who suggested it that caused us to jump up from our chairs when they stopped short of killing that dictator screaming at the TV "Our youngest son will be fighting those people somewhere down the road you idiots!!"
And so it came to pass, he has fought almost 2 1/2 years in Iraq, now we know what POS started that. We no longer supported GHW Bush after that either.
And as a footnote, when "W" labeled that cult "the religion of peace" we immediately knew how flawed his thinking was, and we don't even have degrees from some Ivy League college, just working folks. Mark Steyn is outstanding.
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