Posted on 01/29/2003 1:37:40 AM PST by JohnHuang2
The syntax-challenged Darell Fowler is one of the more enlightened neoconservative responders to my "Tuned-Out, Turned-On, and Hot for War." And that's not saying much, considering that the linguistic repertoire of these ruffians consists mostly of four-letter words. He managed to identify my position against Bush's impending Saddam Sojourn with that of the isolationist pre-World War II crowd, which was of the Right, but then called me a "media liberal."
Our confused New World Order Couch Warrior, who mistakes himself for a conservative, takes life's lessons from the Hollywood grotesquerie. In Darell's World, it all happens in slow motion. Confronted with our "men in uniform," the Iraqis fall to their grateful knees and kiss the liberator's feet. Somalia-type native impulses are an anomaly.
Predictably, and given their not-so-distant pedigree, neoconservatives easily slip into Marxoid consciousness-raising talk. Iraqis, even when they express a wish to be left to their devices, don't really know their minds and, says this neocon, must be led to the truth – to American-style democracy – even if it's delivered with daisy cutters.
Typically, the Maniac of the "Managerial State" firmly believes that if the subject, be he a national or an international renegade, doesn't capitulate to domestic or exported ideology, then you make him capitulate.
"I am a student of history," writes Paul Grant, who also hates "wanton violence." This neocon goes on to align his faith with that of Mao: "All political power," he says, "flows forth from the barrel of a gun." It's uncanny how neocons cling to their brutish muses, the Marxists. In the same vein, from the hateful holster of Stephen Anderson come Lenin's words: He calls me a "useful idiot." Name-calling, incidentally, is a blue-blooded Bolshevik, or rather Stalinist, method of besmirching the opponent.
Comrade Grant also believes that the Iraqi oil just happens to be on Iraqi soil, but is really collectively owned by the world. To real conservatives, you see, property rights matter. Not to the Trotskyite neocons. At least Grant is more honest than his leaders about the spoils of war. Significantly, not a word will you hear from this bunch as to why the U.N. is often – and rightly so – condemned as a sovereignty-impeding, loathsome Global Government, while American global hegemony is touted as benign and beneficent.
Grant and Fowler are the creme de la creme of my neoconster readers. From here on, things get ugly. From the pen of the "80 IQ Crowd," Danny Harnett hollers, "You're a goofy f---ing b--ch," going on to describe unedifyingly how I might apply to take Lewinsky's place at the feet of another poor white like himself, Bill Clinton. He joins Richard Mogelson, whose idea of a clever quip is to implicate my mother's morals.
Troy Johnson is a neocon who speaks in tongues: "If you were in North Korea or Iraq your head would be chop (sic) off. There (sic) not the good but they are evil." Given how little he is working with, Towering Troy is at a loss to explain when the presence of evil in the world became a ruse for war.
These "illiterate leftists posturing as conservatives" have, largely, helped make Martin Luther King Jr. more important, historically, than the Founding Fathers. They've also helped conflate the messages of the two solitudes, even though the Founders' liberty is related to the egalitarianism promoted by the commie King as a neocon is related to intelligence – never the twain shall mix.
Naturally, then, my neocon dumb detractors wouldn't know that the correct foreign affairs position is that of their libertarian Founding Fathers. Or that Thomas Jefferson preached, in the First Inaugural Address, March 1801, "[P]eace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."
Historically less remote, but as mindful of his country's Constitution, a Taft Republican would have concurred. This near-extinct political good guy would also refrain from reconstructing the Middle East. As would the late classical liberal economist Ludwig von Mises have condemned such folly as futile.
Mises didn't go so far as to say that the "Mohammedan countries" (his delightful appellation) were barbaric, but he did genteelly point out that there was a reason the East – far and near – had not contributed anything to "the intellectual effort of mankind" for centuries. You cannot force the culture of freedom and individual rights where it never arose, and where the legal framework that would protect private wealth and guard against confiscation by the rulers is missing.
Like any leftist, neocons support the meddlesome expansion of the "Managerial State" at home. Somewhat at odds with many liberals, the neocons want to take the same intrusive crusade abroad. This is what defines Bush's neoconservative administration: social engineering both at home and abroad.
Hey, didn't Jefferson once go to war without a formal declaration? Against some 'Mohammedan country'?
Miss Mercer disagrees about the necessity of this particular war. I think she's wrong, but at least she's not one of the "No Blood For Oil" crowd. Nor does she compare the United States to Nazi Germany or say that Bush is a greater threat to "world peace," that pleasant illusion, than Saddam Hussein.
If we can't disagree about something this serious without having our intelligence, morals, or patriotism called into question, what's the point of ever talking to one another? What more will we learn from those who disagree with us than we learn from those who agree -- precisely zero?
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
So what? How does that make him any different from North Korea's Kim Jong Il? Or Communist China? Or a dozen African nations? Or, in some respect, our allies the Saudi's? When we're done in Iraq, are these countries next?
What gives the U.S. or worse, the U.N., the right to arrogate for itself decisions about what a sovereign nation - no matter how vile it may be - should or should not do? Do we realize that post-Kosovo and post-Iraq we've virtually conceded that the U.N. and the world community at large have the right to determine what goes on inside the borders of another nation?
What you're left with is the flimsiest of circumstantial cases: i.e., since Mohammed Atta is reported to have met with unnamed Iraqi intelligence officers, therefore Iraq must have helped the terrorists plan 9-11. That sort of flimsy circumstantial evidence wouldn't convict someone of a speeding ticket, much less serve as a basis for invading a sovereign nation.
By the same token, there's much more evidence that the 9-11 terrorists were directly financed by individuals within the Saudi government. When do we march on Riyahd?
"Our confused New World Order Couch Warrior..."
"Predictably, and given their not-so-distant pedigree, neoconservatives easily slip into Marxoid consciousness-raising talk."
"Typically, the Maniac of the 'Managerial State'..."
"Comrade Grant..."
"To real conservatives, you see, property rights matter. Not to the Trotskyite neocons."
"From the pen of the '80 IQ Crowd'..."
"...illiterate leftists posturing as conservatives..."
"...as a neocon is related to intelligence ? never the twain shall mix."
"my neocon dumb detractors..."
"Name-calling, incidentally, is a blue-blooded Bolshevik, or rather Stalinist, method of besmirching the opponent."
It's called precedent and has force of truth and law.
Good point, but Hobbes and Rousseau are extreme alternatives. Most philosophers fall in between them. There's also a realist case to be made, closer to Hobbes than to Rousseau, against preventive wars and imposed regime changes if they aren't absolutely necessary.
Depends on how you define weapons of mass destruction, I suppose.
However you define it though, the Communist Chinese, the North Koreans, the Israelis, the Pakastanis and the Indians all have real, live WMD's. The North Korean's are frothing at the mouth with hateful threats against the U.S. The Communist Chinese are constantly practicing for nuclear war with the U.S. Both of these last two regimes have killed many times more of their own citizens that Saddam's best wet-dream.
I don't see Bush agitating to go to war with North Korea or China. I think it's a reasonable question: why not?
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