| Topic: |
Religions > Bible |
| User: |
"John Brown" |
| Date: |
26 Jan 2005 12:04:16 PM |
| Object: |
END-TIMERS & NEO-CONS: The End Of Conservatives |
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=76&ItemID=7056
ZNet | Politics
End-Timers & Neo-Cons
The End of Conservatives
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts; January 19, 2005
(Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic
Policy during 1981-82. He was also Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal
editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.)
I remember when friends would excitedly telephone to report that Rush Limbaugh
or G. Gordon Liddy had just read one of my syndicated columns over the air. That
was before I became a critic of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush
administration, and the neoconservative ideologues who have seized control of
the US government.
America has blundered into a needless and dangerous war, and fully half of the
country's population is enthusiastic. Many Christians think that war in the
Middle East signals "end times" and that they are about to be wafted up to
heaven. Many patriots think that, finally, America is standing up for itself and
demonstrating its righteous might. Conservatives are taking out their Vietnam
frustrations on Iraqis. Karl Rove is wrapping Bush in the protective cloak of
war leader. The military-industrial complex is drooling over the profits of war.
And neoconservatives are laying the groundwork for Israeli territorial
expansion.
The evening before Thanksgiving Rush Limbaugh was on C-Span TV explaining that
these glorious developments would have been impossible if talk radio and the
conservative movement had not combined to break the power of the liberal media.
In the Thanksgiving issue of National Review, editor Richard Lowry and former
editor John O'Sullivan celebrate Bush's reelection triumph over "a hostile press
corps." "Try as they might," crowed O'Sullivan, "they couldn't put Kerry over
the top." There was a time when I could rant about the "liberal media" with the
best of them. But in recent years I have puzzled over the precise location of
the "liberal media."
Not so long ago I would have identified the liberal media as the New York Times
and Washington Post, CNN and the three TV networks, and National Public Radio.
But both the Times and the Post fell for the Bush administration's lies about
WMD and supported the US invasion of Iraq. On balance CNN, the networks, and NPR
have not made an issue of the Bush administration's changing explanations for
the invasion.
Apparently, Rush Limbaugh and National Review think there is a liberal media
because the prison torture scandal could not be suppressed and a cameraman
filmed the execution of a wounded Iraqi prisoner by a US Marine. Do the Village
Voice and The Nation comprise the "liberal media"? The Village Voice is known
for Nat Hentoff and his columns on civil liberties. Every good conservative
believes that civil liberties are liberal because they interfere with the police
and let criminals go free. The Nation favors spending on the poor and disfavors
gun rights, but I don't see the "liberal hate" in The Nation's feeble pages that
Rush Limbaugh was denouncing on C-Span.
In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate.
It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from
self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians
have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who
are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush.
The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative
frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female
promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and
attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America.
Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. "You are with us or
against us."
This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits no facts or analysis.
Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the
debate.
That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street
Journal Editorial page, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of
the entire concentrated corporate media where noncontroversy in the interest of
advertising revenue rules.
Once upon a time there was a liberal media. It developed out of the Great
Depression and the New Deal. Liberals believed that the private sector is the
source of greed that must be restrained by government acting in the public
interest. The liberals' mistake was to identify morality with government.
Liberals had great suspicion of private power and insufficient suspicion of the
power and inclination of government to do good.
Liberals became Benthamites (after Jeremy Bentham). They believed that as the
people controlled government through democracy, there was no reason to fear
government power, which should be increased in order to accomplish more good.
The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals' abiding
faith in government. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties
from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that
as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or
to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a
person's civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof. Thus,
preemptive war, which permits the President to invade other countries based on
unverified assertions.
There is nothing conservative about these positions. To label them conservative
is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.
American liberals called the Brownshirts "conservative," because the Brownshirts
were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they
worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts' delusions were protected
by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts
from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless doctrines.
Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their
leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from
being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision when I wrote that
the US invasion of Iraq was a "strategic blunder."
It is amazing that only a short time ago the Bush administration and its
supporters believed that all the US had to do was to appear in Iraq and we would
be greeted with flowers. Has there ever been a greater example of delusion?
Isn't this on a par with the Children's Crusade against the Saracens in the
Middle Ages?
Delusion is still the defining characteristic of the Bush administration. We
have smashed Fallujah, a city of 300,000, only to discover that the 10,000 US
Marines are bogged down in the ruins of the city. If the Marines leave, the
"defeated" insurgents will return. Meanwhile the insurgents have moved on to
destabilize Mosul, a city five times as large. Thus, the call for more US
troops.
There are no more troops. Our former allies are not going to send troops. The
only way the Bush administration can continue with its Iraq policy is to
reinstate the draft.
When the draft is reinstated, conservatives will loudly proclaim their pride
that their sons, fathers, husbands and brothers are going to die for "our
freedom." Not a single one of them will be able to explain why destroying Iraqi
cities and occupying the ruins are necessary for "our freedom." But this
inability will not lessen the enthusiasm for the project. To protect their
delusions from "reality-based" critics, they will demand that the critics be
arrested for treason and silenced. Many encouraged by talk radio already speak
this way.
Because of the triumph of delusional "new conservatives" and the demise of the
liberal media, this war is different from the Vietnam war. As more Americans are
killed and maimed in the pointless carnage, more Americans have a powerful
emotional stake that the war not be lost and not be in vain. Trapped in violence
and unable to admit mistake, a reckless administration will escalate.
The rapidly collapsing US dollar is hard evidence that the world sees the US as
bankrupt. Flight from the dollar as the reserve currency will adversely impact
American living standards, which are already falling as a result of job
outsourcing and offshore production. The US cannot afford a costly and
interminable war.
Falling living standards and inability to impose our will on the Middle East
will result in great frustrations that will diminish our country.
.
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| User: "Tony" |
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| Title: Re: END-TIMERS & NEO-CONS: The End Of Conservatives |
27 Jan 2005 10:38:51 AM |
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So essentially we have one far right ahole claiming to be better than the
other far right aholes. A hole is a hole, and most aholes are Brown.
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| User: "The PhAnToM" |
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| Title: Re: END-TIMERS & NEO-CONS: The End Of Conservatives |
27 Jan 2005 02:45:18 PM |
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"American liberals called the Brownshirts "conservative," because the
Brownshirts
were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional,
and they
worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts' delusions were
protected
by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented
Brownshirts
from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless
doctrines."
So that would make the Left wing regimes which Liberals worshipped and
worship (regimes responsible for the slaughter of almost 1/6 of a
billion civilians within a few decades) also "conservative."
Paul Craig Roberts is an idiot.
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| User: "John Brown" |
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| Title: Re: END-TIMERS & NEO-CONS: The End Of Conservatives |
27 Jan 2005 08:44:07 PM |
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On 27 Jan 2005 12:45:18 -0800, "The PhAnToM" <victorthecleaner@gmail.com> wrote:
Paul Craig Roberts is an idiot.
And your credentials?
J.
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| User: "The PhAnToM" |
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| Title: Re: END-TIMERS & NEO-CONS: The End Of Conservatives |
28 Jan 2005 01:18:23 AM |
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John Brown wrote:
On 27 Jan 2005 12:45:18 -0800, "The PhAnToM"
<victorthecleaner@gmail.com> wrote:
Paul Craig Roberts is an idiot.
And your credentials?
Worship at the Cult of Personality, eh?
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