Reader JWO writes: “Has anyone read the article “A Fighting Faith,” by Peter Beinart, in today’s New Republic? I would love to see this discussed on this blog.” We at ObWi live to serve, so here’s a post on it. Since it’s behind a subscription wall, I’ll excerpt below the fold.
Beinart begins by describing the meeting that led to the founding of Americans for Democratic Action:
“On January 4, 1947, 130 men and women met at Washington’s Willard Hotel to save American liberalism. A few months earlier, in articles in The New Republic and elsewhere, the columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop had warned that “the liberal movement is now engaged in sowing the seeds of its own destruction.” Liberals, they argued, “consistently avoided the great political reality of the present: the Soviet challenge to the West.” Unless that changed, “In the spasm of terror which will seize this country … it is the right–the very extreme right–which is most likely to gain victory.””
He then argues that we need something analogous today:
“Today, three years after September 11 brought the United States face-to-face with a new totalitarian threat, liberalism has still not “been fundamentally reshaped” by the experience. On the right, a “historical re-education” has indeed occurred–replacing the isolationism of the Gingrich Congress with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s near-theological faith in the transformative capacity of U.S. military might. But American liberalism, as defined by its activist organizations, remains largely what it was in the 1990s–a collection of domestic interests and concerns. On health care, gay rights, and the environment, there is a positive vision, articulated with passion. But there is little liberal passion to win the struggle against Al Qaeda–even though totalitarian Islam has killed thousands of Americans and aims to kill millions; and even though, if it gained power, its efforts to force every aspect of life into conformity with a barbaric interpretation of Islam would reign terror upon women, religious minorities, and anyone in the Muslim world with a thirst for modernity or freedom.
When liberals talk about America’s new era, the discussion is largely negative–against the Iraq war, against restrictions on civil liberties, against America’s worsening reputation in the world. In sharp contrast to the first years of the cold war, post-September 11 liberalism has produced leaders and institutions–most notably Michael Moore and MoveOn–that do not put the struggle against America’s new totalitarian foe at the center of their hopes for a better world. As a result, the Democratic Party boasts a fairly hawkish foreign policy establishment and a cadre of politicians and strategists eager to look tough. But, below this small elite sits a Wallacite grassroots that views America’s new struggle as a distraction, if not a mirage. Two elections, and two defeats, into the September 11 era, American liberalism still has not had its meeting at the Willard Hotel. And the hour is getting late.”
Why hasn’t this happened? Beinart takes over a distinction from the 1950s: “The hards, epitomized by the ADA, believed anti-communism was the fundamental litmus test for a decent left. Non-communism was not enough; opposition to the totalitarian threat was the prerequisite for membership in American liberalism because communism was the defining moral challenge of the age. The softs, by contrast, were not necessarily communists themselves. But they refused to make anti-communism their guiding principle. For them, the threat to liberal values came entirely from the right–from militarists, from red-baiters, and from the forces of economic reaction.” And he argues that the Democratic Party is currently dominated by ‘softs’ like MoveOn and Michael Moore:
“Moore views totalitarian Islam the way Wallace viewed communism: As a phantom, a ruse employed by the only enemies that matter, those on the right. Saudi extremists may have brought down the Twin Towers, but the real menace is the Carlyle Group. Today, most liberals naïvely consider Moore a useful ally, a bomb-thrower against a right-wing that deserves to be torched. What they do not understand is that his real casualties are on the decent left. When Moore opposes the war against the Taliban, he casts doubt upon the sincerity of liberals who say they opposed the Iraq war because they wanted to win in Afghanistan first. When Moore says terrorism should be no greater a national concern than car accidents or pneumonia, he makes it harder for liberals to claim that their belief in civil liberties does not imply a diminished vigilance against Al Qaeda.
Moore is a non-totalitarian, but, like Wallace, he is not an anti-totalitarian. And, when Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and Tom Daschle flocked to the Washington premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11, and when Moore sat in Jimmy Carter’s box at the Democratic convention, many Americans wondered whether the Democratic Party was anti-totalitarian either.”
The anti-communist left in the 1950s made two main criticisms of the right. First, they were unwilling to pay for a serious fight against Communism, and second, they had the wrong strategy for fighting it:
“For Schlesinger … it was conservatives, with their obsessive hostility to higher taxes, who could not be trusted to fund America’s cold war struggle. “An important segment of business opinion,” he wrote, “still hesitates to undertake a foreign policy of the magnitude necessary to prop up a free world against totalitarianism lest it add a few dollars to the tax rate.” … Schlesinger and the ADA didn’t only attack the right as weak on national defense; they charged that conservatives were not committed to defeating communism in the battle for hearts and minds. It was the ADA’s ally, Truman, who had developed the Marshall Plan to safeguard European democracies through massive U.S. foreign aid. And, when Truman proposed extending the principle to the Third World, calling in his 1949 inaugural address for “a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas,” it was congressional Republicans who resisted the effort. “
Beinart argues that liberals today could make both arguments against Bush and the Republican leadership. They are pursuing fiscal policies that undermine and underfund the war on terror, and they are doing a terrible job in the battle for hearts and minds. Some liberals, he says, are trying. But if they are to succeed, “they must first take back their movement from the softs.” His article ends this way:
“Islamist totalitarianism–like Soviet totalitarianism before it–threatens the United States and the aspirations of millions across the world. And, as long as that threat remains, defeating it must be liberalism’s north star. Methods for defeating totalitarian Islam are a legitimate topic of internal liberal debate. But the centrality of the effort is not. The recognition that liberals face an external enemy more grave, and more illiberal, than George W. Bush should be the litmus test of a decent left.
Today, the war on terrorism is partially obscured by the war in Iraq, which has made liberals cynical about the purposes of U.S. power. But, even if Iraq is Vietnam, it no more obviates the war on terrorism than Vietnam obviated the battle against communism. Global jihad will be with us long after American troops stop dying in Falluja and Mosul. And thus, liberalism will rise or fall on whether it can become, again, what Schlesinger called “a fighting faith.”
Of all the things contemporary liberals can learn from their forbearers half a century ago, perhaps the most important is that national security can be a calling. If the struggles for gay marriage and universal health care lay rightful claim to liberal idealism, so does the struggle to protect the United States by spreading freedom in the Muslim world. It, too, can provide the moral purpose for which a new generation of liberals yearn. As it did for the men and women who convened at the Willard Hotel.”
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Commentary: I agree with Beinart’s most basic point: that the left needs to be serious about national security, and that it can do so without compromising its core principles. I have, after all, been arguing that Bush has a terrible record on the war on terror, and that we needed to do much more in Afghanistan and on homeland security, while not going to war in Iraq, for quite some time. But I find his generalizations about the left maddening.
First of all, I am tired of having to say that the Democratic Party is not epitomized by Michael Moore. He’s a talented filmmaker, and he was willing to criticize Bush when our Congressional leadership was silent, but, and let me make this very clear: he does not speak for the Democratic Party. He holds no position in the Democratic Party. Just because he attended the Convention does not mean we agree with everything he says.
More to the point, Beinart writes as though the grassroots of the Democratic Party are not just unconcerned with the War on Terror but, among other things, ambivalent about the war in Afghanistan. Now, I am no more in communication with the grassroots as a whole than Beinart is, but besides my usual anecdotal sense of things, I did spend a lot of time working on the Clark campaign in ways that involved a fair amount of contact with the grassroots (not just grassroots Clarkies), and I think I can safely say that I have yet to meet anyone who did not think the war in Afghanistan was justified, who does not think that terrorism is a threat, and who would not agree with Beinart that al Qaeda is more illiberal that Bush. And besides anecdotal evidence, it’s worth noting that only two of the Democratic candidates had serious and enthusiastic grassroots support: Dean and Clark. And Clark was both extremely good and thoughtful on national security policy and absolutely (and obviously) devoted to the army. The grassroots as Beinart describes them would never have given him the time of day.
(For what it’s worth, in my view what did his campaign in was not so much inexperience per se, but the following problem: whereas everyone else knew all the political consultants, operatives, and so forth first hand, having worked with them for decades, Clark did not; so he was at the same sort of disadvantage with respect to the other candidates that they would have been at had the primaries been decided by combat on the field of arms: they had a much better idea than he did of who to hire. So the odds of his getting that wrong were much higher than usual. Moreover, since he had never run for office before, he was more than usually at their mercy: it takes either experience or stupidity to disregard your advisors when they all say to do X. Clark is not a stupid guy, and you’d have to be stupid to overlook the fact that for every inexperienced person who defies the experts and goes with sheer instinct and succeeds, there are dozens who are sure they’re right and fail. So it was more than usually likely that he’d hire the wrong people, and more than usually likely that he wouldn’t be able to correct for that. I worried about that from the outset, hence my decision to be my very own campaign and render his superfluous among everyone I met, and I think that’s what happened. Oh well.)
Also, I think that the picture Beinart paints has a lot to do with the fact that Kerry did not run an effective campaign on national security or anything else. But Kerry’s nomination was, in my view, a sort of horrible accident: I really think that the reason he won the nomination was that people wanted someone who could defeat Bush, and confused having won somewhere with being electable. This gave Iowa a hugely disproportionate influence, which was unfortunately sealed by the fact that he had the neighbor state advantage in New Hampshire. (Also by the fact that Dean’s campaign imploded, and Clark was actually quite beautifully positioned to take on Dean in NH and, like everyone else, did not expect Kerry to come back from the dead in Iowa.)
In any case, the point is: I think Beinart is wrong about the Democrats. He would have been right had he simply said that we had not coalesced around a vision of national security, and that the primary candidates who offered one lost; but he completely loses me with this idea that the composition of the Democratic grassroots would be materially affected if we “required” (huh?) people to say that they think that Osama bin Laden is more illiberal than George W. Bush, or that terrorism is bad and worth opposing.
Moreover, he doesn’t offer any such vision himself. To the extent that he does, it’s just this: that fighting terrorism should be our “north star”. I don’t really agree with this either. I think we face a lot of external problems that urgently need dealing with, and that terrorism is surely one of them; but I also think that it is not alone. There are also, for instance, nuclear proliferation, the promotion of democracy, the immiseration of large chunks of the world, the long-term implications of developed nations’ dependence on oil (plus the increased demand that economic development in the rest of the world will bring), and also global warming. These other issues are not in conflict with fighting terrorism: working on nuclear non-proliferation is important in its own right and as a means of keeping nuclear weapons away from terrorists; working to promote democracy and reduce poverty are important to the ‘hearts and minds’ part of the war on terror; reducing our dependence on oil both helps with global warming and reduces our need to curry favor with Saudi Arabia, and so forth. It’s just that I think that some of them have as good a right to be called my north star as fighting terrorism.
So basically: I agree with Beinart’s basic point, but find the way he makes it maddening, both because he accepts uncritically claims about the Democratic Party that I don’t think are true, and because I think his suggestions about how we should change, to the extent that they exist, are simplistic.
Discuss away!
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Update: Kevin Drum has an interesting response to Beinert here.
If I wanted to read garbage from TNR, I would subscribe. If you feel the need to quote at length from such garbage, would you at least have the decency to print:
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every few paragraphs so I would know where to tear when I wipe my butt with it?
I mean really:
Um…yeah. I am negative. I am against restrictions on civil liberties. How negative of me. I am not for civil liberties, I am not strongly in favor, in a pretty damn positive way, of civil liberties, I am against restrictions on civil liberties.
How negative of me.
Don’t let these people frame your issues for you. That way lies defeat. And this post is, of course, garbage. Garbage in, garbage out.
Let me see, how do I phrase this without offending everybody? If this is about politics, and broadening the base:
1) The Cold War Democratic party contained many more Southern and rural members and leaders, and that they have left the party, or that the party has left them is important. Both are true.
2) Beinart is full of it, to the ears and overflowing, if he thinks Kyoto and feminism is going to win back Missouri and Kentucky. The point of this is not neat foreign policy accomplishments. The difference between parties is understanding the Romance of War.
Not necessarily the reality of war, tho the reality is usually hidden or forgotten or rationalized away. The images, the uniforms, the neat weapons, the plausible opportunity of heroism. Reagan did very little ass-kicking (got his ass-kicked in Lebanon), but he sure looked like he could and would. And he fed the Romance like crazy.
The liberals here will say that is disgusting and evil to like war. The conservatives will say nobody ever wants war, but sometimes, maybe often, well almost all the time America got to go and kick butt. For five thousand years young men have wanted to go beat up somebody and burn something down, physically, day-trading ain’t gonna hack it. And most of the rest of the population throws flowers as they march out.
Any culture or subculture that doesn’t understand that is in decline. And until the Democrats get in touch with that they are gonna lose.
For five thousand years young men have wanted to go beat up somebody and burn something down, physically, day-trading ain’t gonna hack it.
Let them unionize Wal-Mart, if they have such balls.
“Let them unionize Wal-Mart, if they have such balls.”
Better advice to Democrats than Beinart or Yglesias have given. But they do need to be given a plausible enemy, and an opportunity to fight.
Similar conversation (in a post written by commenter praktile, that heavily quotes emails from me) here. It doesn’t discuss Beinart directly but touches on a lot of similar issues.
Hilzoy could be my clone, I think.
I agree absolutely and as strongly as I could say that Al Qaeda is a much greater threat than Bush, and I do not have any problem with making the fight against terrorism our “north star”–I think most of the hilzoy lists are very much part of that fight, so I do not see any need to neglect them by making terrorism our North Star.
I think we would be wise to marginalize Moore and boycott ANSWER protests. But I see, in many article’s like Beinart’s a very cynical attempt to put me, hilzoy, Clark, Dean, MoveOn, and everyone who opposed the Iraq War in the same category as Moore and ANSWER.
I see this as not only wrong on the merits, but a major tactical mistake–both as far as developing a message in opposition to the Bush administration, and as far as marginalizing the fringe of our own party.
You know why ANSWER got hundreds of thousands of people at their protests?* You know why Michael Moore made a fortune on a lousy movie? It wasn’t because we think the Afghan War was some UNOCAL conspiracy. It wasn’t because we believe Zarqawi is a freedom fighter. It wasn’t, God knows, because we’re anti-Semitic, Stalinist apologists for Kim Jong Il and Slobodan Milosevic. It was because they were the only game in town. Virtually the only organized voice of opposition to the Iraq war before it started, and one of the only strong statements of condemnation afterwards. If you want to marginalize them–yes, you denounce them. But you also provide an alternative, more decent, more effective means of opposition. And even if you support the war, you don’t try to marginalize the people in your party who could help provide that decent opposition. You don’t pretend Howard Dean is Michael Moore because he’s not Joe Lieberman.
*not including me. I would never, ever ever attend one of their events. I did go to Moore’s movie but it was a waste of money.
Aah! I did not press post, just enter. What is my computer doing?
Did that fix the html?
I usually agree with McManus, if not in substance then in tone, but …
…I’ve got a 15-year-old son who doesn’t want to beat up anyone or burn anything down. Nor will I let him (he’ll decide later for himself of course, but I will speak my mind).
But I’ll take Felixrayman’s challenge about these ballsy bullcrap macho tough kids and the strutting, smirking Bush a step further. Screw Wal-Mart, though unionizing their workforce and getting them health insurance is a noble cause for a later, militant date. But, try to take my kid for this lousy, dishonest, Iraqi war. Go through me. If you dare. Please. Come and get it. Bring it on.
Maybe, maybe, probably not, but maybe if, double if, this war had been honestly, thoroughly vetted and presented by half way honest people in either Party, you would be permitted to put my son’s life in harm’s way.
Too late now.
Katherine: “Hilzoy could be my clone, I think”
— I wish.
By the way, when I left Dean’s foreign policy out of my post, it was just because I didn’t know enough about it. (I mean, I know the essentials, but not enough of the details.) I had found my guy in the primaries and was, in general, more concerned with discussing his many virtues and dispelling misconceptions than with running other candidates down.
Yeah, that’s okay.
His message went completely off the rails when he took the lead–he stopped talking substance about his stands on the issues in favor of all that red meat “You have the power!” stuff. That’s all well and good, but come on dude, you’re running for President, not motivational speaker in chief.
“…I’ve got a 15-year-old son who doesn’t want to beat up anyone or burn anything down.”
Does he play Halo or Quake? Does he like the Matrix movies or Troy or watch any of the four military channels I have on my complete cable? Nobody wants to get crippled or die.
And I didn’t mean every young man certainly, tho it isn’t a Red/Blue split either.
I just read Kevin Drum (read him) on Beinart a while ago, telling me that liberals just could not be convinced that Islamism is a dire imminent threat to Western Civilization. Which misses the point. There has always been a dire imminent threat out there in my lifetime that was only answerable by military force or massive preparation. If 9/11 had not happened, besides Iraq, which was a lock, Bush would have discovered Chinese ambitions or something. And won re-election.
Like I said, something to offend everyone.
Bob: When my brother was 15 years old he was an active member of CND. So were many of his friends his age. (This was in the 1980s, when a President with Alzheimers – okay, we didn’t know he had Alzheimers, but it was pretty clear he wasn’t all there – had his shaky finger on the nuclear button.) Last year, many 15 year olds were active in the anti-war movement.
There is a definite directness in teenagers – a belief (God, I remember having that shining certainty!) that their actions can change the world. Teenagers don’t join the army because they want to change the world, though – they join the army because it strikes them as a good job to have. (At least, that’s what I’ve gotten from those people I know who joined the army when they were teenagers.)
Teenagers have fewer brakes and more surety than they’re right and they ought to act on their rightness than adults do: and are capable of more despair: I’m going by what I remember, by what I know I knew when I was that age, when people I know were that age. (Hell, some people I know are that age.)
The idea that all 15-year-old boys are naturally aggressive and want to tear things down and that’s why war? No.
Plus, John Thullen? If I had a son, I’d feel exactly the same way – and I applaud you.
I agree absolutely and as strongly as I could say that Al Qaeda is a much greater threat than Bush, and I do not have any problem with making the fight against terrorism our “north star”
Let me play devil’s advocate here. Al Quaeda took down two buildings and four airplanes on 9/11. They’ve done other things as well. They would like to do more. They are a threat. We need to fight them.
But.
George Bush has claimed absolute wartime powers, irrespective of the constitution. He has held American citizens, without counsel or trial, for a couple of years. He has bogged down our military in Iraq, reducing our flexibility to deal with potential problems from North Korea or China/Taiwan.
He has increased spending and cut taxes, jeopardizing our economy long-term, and the value of the dollar short-term. Even Alan Greenspan is worried about what might happen should foreign central banks stop propping up the dollar, and buying our bonds.
He has promoted an atmosphere of arrogance that reminds me, at least, of Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Athenians lost their democracy then. They got it back, but weaker, and soon lost it again to conquest.
That is what I fear from George Bush, and the people he has brought into power. Al Qaeda can at worst take out a handful of cities. Bush can bring down the whole country.
Sadly, I think Amos is right.
Al Qaeda is a threat. Bush ‘s policies are making Al Qaeda a bigger threat.
His foreign policies are pushing moderate Muslims to support Al Qaeda, and alienating our allies.
His domestic policies have weakned the economy to such an extent that another major Al Qaeda attack could completely ruin the country.
It may be on pupose, you know. A free society depends on a large and powerful middle class. A large impoverished lower class is much more easily subject to authoritarian rule by a small elite.
A Clean Break
Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings joins the conversation:
It appears Katherine and Hilzoy have been sucked into the Glenn Reynolds-LGF reality world where every liberal is Noam Chomsky and those against the Iraq Misadventure are dupes of ANSWER.
Mel Gilles via Matthew Gross offers practical advice
I disagree with most of what you and Bienhart are saying here — the ADA ran with an idea that was at best only partially true. Monolithic Communism was never the threat that they thought it was. It was the “Wars of National Liberation.” The home grown movements that were both economically and politically democratic and had the support of the Soviet Union that seemed to threaten. Threaten what? Our economic status, look at Guatamala and Iran in the 50s and what we did there to see what Bienhart is encouraging.
Is that what you want to see now? That is what is probably going to happen in Iraq. Either a strong man beholding to us or a fundamentalist government voted in by the people.
The democratic party can encourage real democracy, both economic and political both at home and overseas, but will it? Not with the leaders we’ve got right now. And not with the kind of criique the you and Beinhart are engaging in.
HTML fixed?
Jadegold: Huh? I am, and have always been, completely opposed to the war in Iraq, on a whole variety of grounds. Nor did I say that all liberals were anything; just that I was tired of having people assume that as a liberal I must necessarily agree with Michael Moore on all things. So, to be clear: I am a liberal; I have always been a liberal, and while no doubt life is full of surprises, I see no reason to think that I will not live the rest of my life as a liberal.
I think terrorism is a serious problem, as I said, though not of course the only problem there is. And I think that liberals need to think seriously about how to address it. Many of us already are. How exactly does this point (which I would have thought was pretty bland and innocuous) get me anywhere near LGF territory? — I guess I should say explicitly that I think that the war in Iraq was a disaster not just generally, but from the point of view of combatting terror in particular, and so I emphatically do not mean to suggest that liberals, in the name of combatting terror, should support it.
lawguy: the ADA is Beinart’s point, not mine. I agree with most of what you say.
just that I was tired of having people assume that as a liberal I must necessarily agree with Michael Moore on all things.
Only the rightwing says this–and I strongly suspect they don’t believe it. They understand Moore is a powerful voice and they’re seeking to vilify and hopefully neutralize him. That’s how we get the foolish and false meme that Moore believes Iraq was only about oil.
Same goes for MoveOn; it’s a powerful and effective grassroots effort, so the GOP will attack it.
The fact is both Moore and MoveOn are right far more than they’re wrong; throwing them overboard plays into the GOP strategy of trying to make Dems believe success is contingent upon becoming more like the GOP.
Well, what conservatives often say to me is: liberals think X. When pressed, they offer as evidence: that Michael Moore thinks X. I am tired of explaining the difference; that’s all. And for certain values of X — e.g., that the Afghan war was about pipelines — it gets really tiresome. That’s all I meant.
I blame myself for the blockquote problem. Nonetheless, all good Americans should read my trackbacked post. Actually, I blame Moe (peace be upon him) for the blockquote problem.
I agree with Katherine that there needs to be more voices of opposition. Don’t attack Michael Moore, just provide a better alternative (and I don’t mean FAUX News). Liberals NEED a media network.
Well, what conservatives often say to me is: liberals think X. When pressed, they offer as evidence: that Michael Moore thinks X.
Surely you see the problem with this. If we allow conservatives to mischaracterize or misrepresent liberal views, we’ll lose every time.
Look, it’s like the classic wedge issue; just because liberals oppose flag-burning amendments–it doesn’t mean we like or want people to torch flags.
First off, I’m not sure where anyone got the idea Hilzoy substantially agreed with Beinart.
Bob McManus: We are on the same wavelength, particularly in regard to the cynicism about Bush finding many levers to pull for the wage-war-and- get-reelected point.
And, yes the kid plays video games similar to the ones you mentioned. And his testosterone and other hormone levels race and surge and you can tell his aggressiveness is hepped up. And then he sets up his toy soldiers and does some fairly complete strafing. Then we watch a war movie or two and think it’s pretty cool.
But .. several points. First, there is NO similarity between those activities and real war combat, except for perhaps the heightened pulse rate. There is a reason why combat veterans from any war you want to cite do not come home and talk about their witness to combat experience: because it is unspeakable. And, yeah, I’m aware our therapeutic culture and certain politicians have made talking about combat slaughter more acceptable.
So, I suppose as an object lesson to the 15-year-old I could follow up his rush on the video game with some sort of unspeakable violence, say, turning his cat (thought experiment, folks; I love cats) into a fine pink aerosol mist with a hand grenade and spraying the room with automatic gunfire just over his head. If I repeated that many times, I’m sure I could inure him to violence and he would be ready to tackle Fallujah singlehandedly. But I suspect his initial and perhaps secondary reaction as well would be to cry, vomit, and experience the stunning sensation of his bowels liquifying.
The Marine Corps could relieve him of some of these weaknesses in 12 weeks or so, but I’m just saying it would be behavior modification more radical than silly pop culture.
My real point, however, is that George Bush and Dick Cheney and the glib one at the Pentagon are not the leaders I will permit my son to follow into war. They are liars and cowards whose bowels would liquify if they came any closer to slaughter than swaggering out of a a duck blind. The only individual with the character to lead men and women into combat will be leaving this so-called Administration soon. And I’m not ruling out the idea that civilians can order our children into war. But not these civilians, who in my book hardly qualify as civilians. And that goes for all the tough guy and gal bloggers too who know nothing about a firefight, including a few who served in the military but saw very little if any combat.
If my son wants to volunteer specifically to hunt down Osama Bin Laden, I won’t like it and I will cry and vomit but at least there will honor attached to the tag on my son’s toe when he comes back feet first.
So what do I mean by “not permit” my son in this context. I don’t know. I don’t have a martyr complex and I’m not interested in doing anything by myself. I would be interested in a massive radical social movement involving millions, which it would need to be because the dreaded coercive power of government would be used absolutely ruthlessly against domestic enemies by the current crowd.
I would be interested in a massive, punitive tax hike on the war-lovers in both Parties to at least pay for the slaughter, but if you want to see crying and vomiting and liquifying bowels try suggesting that. They aren’t only cowards, they are cheap into the bargain. Plus, draining the Treasury through war expenditures makes destroying the New Deal easier.
End of rant. Time to start the next one.
I wish wars:
— required a referendum, if “pre-emptive”
— could only be funded by voluntary donations
I’m sure you’re going to advocate this position for nearly every other government function as well. The ability to wage war is at the top of the list of reasons for having a government – so I suppose education, highways, et. al. will be voluntarily funded as well? Or is it just things you’ve decided you don’t like?
Or is it just things you’ve decided you don’t like
Just the things I’ve decided I don’t like. 🙂
Ha! I’m glad thats cleared up then 😉
Most of the conservatives who run around saying “liberals think X” (hilzoy above) are probably listening to Rush Limbaugh.
The guy specializes in “reading the left,” broadcasts 3 hours a day on almost all media markets, including, incredibly, NYC, and gets the 6-7 pm slot in Europe on the Armed Forces Radio Network (Dr. Laura gets the 7-8 slot, and then, at 9, when most people have better things to do, NPR mercifully comes on).
Rush Limbaugh is so talented at what he does that he has set the tone for A LOT of contemporary American discourse. Like him or loath him (personally, I think he’s criminally dangerous), you have to listen to him a bit to understand his impact.
Modern conservatives almost have to parrot his line, unless they want to isolate themselves from Rush’s huge base. Rush doesn’t talk about religion, per se; he’s almost certainly not particularly religious and probably knows that those of his audience who want to hear religious stuff can get that elsewhere. Rush doesn’t talk about Walmart or living wages or being poor, even though a lot of his audience is likely not making his millions. He talks almost exclusively about what the “loony left” is thinking. “It’s that simple, folks,” he’ll say, “they don’t think the terrorists are all that bad!”
I do like the idea of funnelling the violent energy of young men into unionizing Walmart. But man, oh man, it’ll be an uphill battle against a massive propoganda machine.
The blog ate my post, which was too long anyways.
The gist of it was, basically: It’s all Rush Limbaugh’s fault.
I think when we engage in this time of discussion (are we or are we not synonymous with our “fringe”) we inadvetantly play into conservative hands. Once again we are on the defensive, fighting off their framing and defining of us. We should be attacking them. If someone asumes Micheal Moore speaks for all liberals, just attack back on the assumption that Rush Limbaugh speaks for all conservatives. Get out of the business of defending and defining ourselves and get into the business of attacking and defining them.
Isn’t Peter Beinart overlooking the tremendous distinction between a Cold War among National States and a Hot War of Rogues against Cities? (What bothers me more every day is the persistence of Cold War thinking – the Administration is not alone in this deep freeze.) Rather than talk about hard and soft and Military Romance, liberals need to model the reinvention of armed services and then sell their idea to all Americans. Battalions of young men going off to war – that’s history. That’s why Iraq is the mess it is. Conservative military hierarchy, based on disciplinary authority, will never prevail against rogues (terrorists); it can’t begin to move fast enough.
Go slow on uncritically accepting Beinart’s glowing worship of the 1947 ADA. An impressive list of names, but not to be forgotten is that they were and represented the Democrats who in the late 1940s, in effect, set the legitimating “bi-partisan” stage for the horror of the 1950s, for McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and that whole era of loyalty oaths, red-baiting, witch hunts, and “domestic terror” in the name of fighting the global “Communist Menace.” This is not even to mention what the US Cold Warrior mentality championed by the ADA visited upon peoples in countries throughout the Third World, most horrendously in Vietnam and Indonesia.
Also noteworthy is that the #1 attendee listed by Beinart of that 1947 Willard Hotel conspiracy – what else can we call it – is none other than Reinhold Niebuhr, from whose chilling 1932 “Moral Man and Immoral Society” Noam Chomsky took the main title of
his book “Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies.” Tellingly, Beinart, very much in the Neibuhr elitist policy-maker vein, sees the problem not in the Democratic Party establishment elite, which he judges sufficiently “decent” “hard” and “hawkish,” but in us, the great unwashed, indecent, “soft” masses of the grassroots left who just don’t get it that the noble, moral, quasi-religious “calling” of killing Islamic fundamentalists is the “north star” of our generation, that guiding sign in the heavens leading us out of the darkness of slavery to Red State Republican domination at the polls.