Many nice people feel the need to remind those of us who opposed the Iraq invasion that freeing the Iraqi people is a good thing. I understand this, but I think it needs some examination.
(In any event, for any visiting freepers, I would just like to say that going forward, any discussion by me of foreign policy and war on this blog implicitly carries the disclaimer that I am happy that that bastard Saddam is gone, I believe that it is wonderful that the Iraqi people at least have a chance of a government of their choosing and of course, I support the troops and hate the Dixie Chicks.)
Under different circumstances, I would have supported deposing Saddam purely on the basis of his horrifying human rights record. However, as much as I agree that a free Iraq is a good thing, just as free North Korea or free China or free Sudan or free Tibet would be good things, I believe that allowing the Bushies to get away with using that argument is a mistake for all people who believe in human rights.
By agreeing that the ends justify the means in this case we are allowing them to pretend that the motivation of the US was always to free the Iraqi people (a fact which is clearly untrue since they haven’t even seen fit to free the Cuban people who live just 90 miles off our shores and whose exiles are a powerful political constituency.) Their arguments must be evaluated on their own terms by what they hoped to accomplish and what the results have been.
In that light, the best they can claim is that freeing the Iraqi people was a collateral effect of whatever it was we really wanted to do, whether it was eliminating the threat of WMD or terrorism or something else entirely that was never mentioned. Personally, I believe the administration officials who now admit that they were “sending a message” to the world that we are not soft. In fact, it’s the only thing that makes complete sense. (We could have easily cut lucrative deals for the oil by lifting sanctions.)
So, on their own terms of “sending a message,” was the end achieved and was it worth it? Was that a justifiable reason to flout international law and severely damage our relationships with allies? It’s too early to know for sure but regardless of the ultimate result, it is unprecedented and many, many people around the world are not likely to understand or support it.
There is already some collateral damage from this action, one of the most serious of which is the disintegration of American credibility. That means nothing to those in power who believe that “might makes right.” But, I don’t believe we are omnipotent and this administration, in behaving as if we are, may have set a very dangerous series of events in motion. By creating an order in which the United States does not believe that credibility is important and one in which the rule of law is inconsistently applied, we have made ourselves difficult to understand and predict.
Those who believe that force is the only viable way to ensure security think this is a good thing. But, history suggests that it invites miscalculation and overreaction. Therefore, because the stated goals of Iraq were so confused, I believe that in addition to freeing the Iraqi people, the “ends” are also likely to be an escalated arms race and a breakdown of the international rule of law among powerful and near powerful nations, on top of the “rogue” states who already flout the rules.
The people of the US deserved to know that in order to “send a message” (and incidentally free the Iraqi people) we may have destabilized the world and made it more dangerous than it has been since the height of the cold war, if not longer. Perhaps the American people would have sanctioned freeing the Iraqi people anyway, in which case I commend them for their generosity and compassion. But if that’s true, it seems strange that on the heels of our great victory over tyranny (at very little cost to ourselves in lives) we aren’t seeing a groundswell of sentiment to free any of the other of the billions of oppressed people on this earth.
Which then begs the question of whether we are also, after the fact, “sending a message” to ourselves — of warm and hearty congratulations for our righteousness and good intentions. The fact that it was all based on lies will not be allowed interfere with the overwhelming good feeling and love we now have for ourselves, regardless of the real means or the real ends.
Sam Heldman, in his invaluable ongoing expose of Federal Court nominee Pryor, linked today to this article in the Washington Post that points out Pryor’s use of almost exactly the same language to describe the effects of a right to privacy, (in an amicus brief he filed in the Texas sodomy case) to the language Santorum used in his AP interview.
Pryor:
“Petitioners’ protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, a constitutional right that protects ‘the choice of one’s partner’ and ‘whether and how to connect sexually’ must logically extend to activities like prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia (if the child should credibly claim to be ‘willing’)”
Santorum:
If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”
And, of course, Santorum also mentioned that the right to “man on dog” and “man on child” sex would inexorably follow any ruling upholding a right to privacy.
Pryor, as hideously theocratic as he is, isn’t quite as stupid as Santorum (even a sea anemone isn’t quite as stupid as Santorum) so he didn’t add bigamy and polygamy to the list of clear and present dangers to America, seeing as they are matters of contract law in which the state has an interest. (As, it would seem to me that adultery is as well. Any lawyers out there who can let me know if that’s correct?) But, he neglected to mention the serious threats of prostitution and necrophilia.
Does Rick Santorum think that prostitution and necrophilia aren’t among the serious problems affecting America today?
Perhaps he believes that prostitution is not a threat to his definition of what a politically correct family should be. Perhaps he doesn’t view it as consensual, since it’s obvious that many fine religious Republican men are bewitched by scantily clad women into doing things they shouldn’t do.
But, what to make of his not mentioning the immediate danger to our children by necrophiliacs?
Why wouldn’t he be concerned about people who might expose their small children to corpses, make them handle them and talk to them in strange and unusual rituals that the mainstream Americans find deeply disturbing?
This article by Michael Tomasky in The Prospect is great. (In fact, his column is a must read every week.) I agree with everything he says except the argument that the uproar over the Santorum remarks only benefits the gay community.
I think the uproar should be aimed at all Americans who believe in the constitution and don’t practice bigotry for fun and profit. But, it also should be aimed at Americans who don’t like the idea of the government intruding on their private lives. And, I would suggest that is most of them.
The GOP is revealing itself as the anti-privacy party. They are enabling the state to rummage through everybody’s medical records, they want corporations to be allowed to buy and sell your purchase records and any other information they may have, they are more interested in medical marijuana than the serious issue of identity theft, and they want to make permanent the ill considered Patriot Act which gave the government vast new surveillance powers.
Now, along comes Lil’ Ricky telling a reporter outright that he doesn’t believe there is any right to privacy (an article of faith in the anti-abortion cult), that he thinks gay civil rights are a slippery slope to perversion and that he further believes his view of sexual morality should be enshrined as the law of the land for everybody.
This desire and ability to invade the homes and private lives of our citizens is UnAmerican. It goes against every tenet of freedom that George W. Bush constantly preaches about, particularly the All American belief in individualism and the inalienable right to life, liberty and happiness. Who the hell gave John Ashcroft and Rick Santorum and Jack Welch and Dick Cheney the right to information about me without my permission, to investigate me without probable cause or to tell me what I can do in my own home?
The Republicans do not believe in freedom any more than they believe in equality. This negation of the right to be left alone is coming from all GOP quarters — religious, government and corporate and it is a potent example of their lack of patriotism and any sincere belief in traditional American values. Just what do they think liberty consists of? The freedom to be harassed and coerced by every interest group in the Republican Party until you either join up or shoot yourself in the head?
Jeez. Even France has more respect for individual rights than Republicans do.
“… in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.
Smart guy, no doubt about it. That surely explains why so many Americans believe that Iraq and 9/11 are connected and why many probably believe that WMD have been found or that they were destroyed in the days before the war or any other of the improbable explanations as to why the fundamental rationale on which this war was based simply must be true in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. A good number of people simply do not want to believe that the President of the United States would blatantly lie over and over and over again on a subject of such importance.
(It also explains the seemingly incomprehensible fact that a president was just recently impeached for supposedly lying about a consensual sex act, a crime Republicans considered to be so heinous that it had to be prosecuted or risk undermining the entire concept of the rule of law.)
But what to make of this? I read that editorial (courtesy of the indispensable Mediawhoresonline) and found myself staring off into space trying to understand how we will be able to function as a society when we finally cast off even the pretense of a requirement for honesty in democratic leaders.
”Would it bother you if we were to discover that George Bush lied about the case for going to war?” I asked.
He knew what I was referring to. His blunt answer left my jaw hanging.
“Everyone knows he lied about weapons of mass destruction being the point of the war.”
Just a few weeks ago, any statement from me that Bush’s case for war was riddled with inconsistencies and illogic would have brought swift and fierce condemnation from this fellow.
Now, basking in the glow of military conquest — and confronted by a thus-far futile search for chemical and biological weapons — this hawk breezily conceded the point while also waving it away as inconsequential.
The difference between the gullible average guy who refuses to believe his President would lie and the guy quoted above is significant. The first holds that honesty is so important that he must cling to a belief in the honest nature of his leader even in the face of evidence to the contrary. The latter thinks honesty or even logical consistencies are unnecessary.
Instead of insisting that WMD were present and then manufacturing the evidence to back up that claim, which is what I expected in the event that the WMD claim proved bogus, we now find the administration and Jack Straw in the UK beginning to indicate, like the fellow above, that we lied about the WMD and it doesn’t matter, either in practical terms or as a matter of principle or that what they plainly said was not what they plainly said. Josh Marshall points out that Ken Adelman is even claiming that the UN forced us to lie about WMD.
The editorial writer of the piece quoted above calls it hypocrisy, but that’s really not completely correct. It’s hypocritical in the sense that these people all lie yet proclaim themselves virtuous and honest, yes. But, the phenomenon of lying to persuade people of the rightness of an action you wish to undertake with their permission and then saying later that what you said never mattered at all is something else entirely.
My first reaction was to see it as yet another audacious display of arrogance and privilege. They simply believe they can get away with anything. But, after thinking about it, I actually think it is far more insidious than that. It is an insult designed to get a particular reaction.
Like the boss who requires his staff to obsequiously and insincerely flatter him (because he delights in forcing them to say something they don’t believe purely to please him, and knowing they know it) it is less an act of narcissism than a demonstration of power. Regardless of whether they had bad intelligence or just bad intentions, for the administration to straightforwardly say to their supporters that the arguments they had them put forth with such fervor prior to the war were never correct and don’t matter anyway is, in effect, demanding a loyalty oath that says they are willing to give up any claim to personal integrity in support of the party. You can believe me or you can believe your lyin’ eyes.
And to those who expressed skepticism about the imminent threat presented by Saddam, these people are saying , “We have demonstrated that we can get away with lying outright, over and over again and no one has the courage or the will to hold us accountable. You are powerless to defeat us through logic or rational argument. Might makes right.”
When you add this to the ongoing and systematic attacks against any criticism of the President or his policies, you have the makings of a new order. From this, Brownshirts are made.
I honestly don’t know if it can get any more surreal than what I am seeing on television this afternoon. In fact, the Fox AllStars are more restrained than CNN and MSNBC in their prostrate, hysterical reaction to seeing George W. Awol alight from his “fighter” plane that you would think he just flew single-handedly, one engine on fire, from the war zone where he shot Saddam Hussein right between the eyes.
I have never seen a more sickening display of pandering penis envy from a bunch of pasty faced, bespectacled, doughboys in my life. Some Bozo on MSNBC could hardly keep from pleasuring himself under the desk as he swooned on and on about how “great the President looks in that flight suit.” It’s so tight and form fitting and he looks so potent. Why, he’s just like Tom Cruise in “Top Gun.” Ooooh baby.
He does like his costumes, doesn’t he? If he can find a reason to wear that Calvin Coolidge Indian headdress, he’ll be a one man version of the Village People.
During my little hiatus I received a lot of great e-mail, many of them asking why I made the assertion that the Democrats (and a majority of the country) are unified in support the democratic agenda, and wanting me to provide some back-up for that claim. I base some of my belief on this analysis and some on my own observations of the nature of the internecine warfare within each Party.
I never said that the Democratic Party is one big happy family. I said that we have a remarkably coherent philosophy and agreement on policy for such a large coalition of interests and that this is a great strength. Our disagreements, and they are significant, are about strategy.
First, let me reiterate that the unified support within and outside the party does not apply to national security. Americans (including many Democrats) have consistently said that the Democratic Party is weaker than the Republicans on national security for more than 30 years. It is why Democratic politicians twist themselves into pretzels on the issue, trying to be sane and tough at the same time while fighting off the charges of cowardice and fecklessness by the manly GOP. It is a huge problem for us.
But, the fact that George W. Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” with a program of “affirmative access” and “saving social security,” and even the red, white and blue mid-term campaign featured Republicans across the board pushing their phony prescription drug program is evidence that they know that they cannot win elections on their program of tax cuts, Jesus and the flag alone.
Poll after poll suggests that support for individual policies as well as measures of trust on bread and butter issues accrue to the Democrats. Even on the hot button issue of crime, the Democrats managed to pull even in the last decade. People expect service and support from the government and consistently seek more as the need arises. This is certainly true of Democrats and a large percentage of the independents required to gain a majority as well.
So, to the extent that disagreement within the Party exists, it is strategic not substantive – pragmatism vs principle, accommodate the middle or lead from the left. Certain politicians from red states often accede to their brainwashed constituencies on taxes and some other right wing issues, but with the exception of Zell Miller who seems to really believe in a Republican agenda all of a sudden, I believe this almost always in the context of a sausage making deal or other practical considerations. The basic philosophy of the party is not really in contention. Democrats of all stripes share the same goals of ensuring a stable society through a reasonable redistribution of wealth, equality of opportunity, respect for civil rights and civil liberties, a social safety net, and environmental and consumer regulations to protect the health and welfare of the citizenry.
Certainly, there are those who would like to see more done in certain areas but if one has a philosophical disagreement with those principles, one is highly unlikely to be a Democrat. Our internal battles on policy are almost always a matter of intensity and focus, not policy goals themselves.
Granted, welfare reform was a very divisive issue as was NAFTA. Clinton tried to realign the party and neutralize the image of Democrats as being big-spending protectionists. I believe those issues have largely been settled, unhappily in some cases. There are continuing sharp disagreements on guns as well as this ongoing Wurlitzer induced skittishness at being labeled a “liberal” or “feminist” or “politically correct,” or “outside the mainstream.”
In my opinion, trade is an issue that continues to require attention. Democrats have an affirmative responsibility to workers here and elsewhere and we must fashion a coherent policy on this issue. It is moral as well as practical. If Democrats don’t stand for unions, we have lost our souls (and our best organizers.)
Guns, I’m afraid, should be viewed in the context of civil liberties. In the era of John Ashcroft and terrorism, it is probably a mistake to advocate fooling with the bill of rights in any way, even if the interpretation of the 2nd amendment is contentious. In my view it’s not worth it.
These are issues that I agree still cause some serious disagreement within the party.
As to the third, the discomfort some people feel with being labeled “kooky” or “deviant,” I would suggest that this is the ultimate strategic issue. It’s a result of the silly culture war that has been used to great effect by the other side; it has no basis in reality. Democrats are Americans just like Republicans. We share the same culture, we eat the same food, we watch the same television, we shop in the same endlessly boring mall stores. None of us are exotic foreign creatures who don’t belong, not even the crazy kids on campus and the so-called extremists of the National Education Association or Greenpeace. We should reject this labeling outright. Besides, everybody’s got their weirdoes and the GOP glass house is crawling with them. It’s time to shine the spotlight in their direction.
And finally, the left end of the spectrum is extremely distressed (the centrist faction being typically only somewhat distressed) at the extent to which the party is dependent upon big business donors and the resultant necessity to pay heed to their requests. However, I would suggest that this also is a strategic issue, not a substantive one. Unlike the Republicans, whose governing philosophy is inherently plutocratic, the Democrats have competing constituencies such as unions, consumer advocates, lawyers and civil rights groups which balance their obligation to business donors. Like most other contentious issues within the party, this seems to me to be one of emotional intensity rather than a serious philosophical difference. Our political system has become quite obviously corrupt in a perfectly legal way which is outrageous and unacceptable to some Democrats and regretfully necessary to defend against a very frightening and dangerous GOP to others. The Republicans, on the other hand, comfortably see it as the natural and correct order of things.
Nobody really has the answer to how to stop the ungodly flow of corporate money into politics. It seems to be like water — if you plug up one route, it finds another. It’s doubtful that even public financing or free TV time could do much more than temporarily plug the dyke. Until a politically possible answer can be found, there are those who believe that the Democrats should just say no to corporate money and people would reward them with their votes. Others call that unilateral disarmament. But the vast majority of Democrats, even DLCers, agree that massive corporate donations taint the system.
Contrast that with the Republicans who, for all of their Stalinist group think have some serious fissures in their coalition that are only held together by a phony and incoherent fealty to tax cuts as the answer to every problem. Their problem is not strategic, it is deeply philosophical and it is a train wreck waiting to happen.
The Republican coalition primarily consists of business and wealthy interests, social conservatives, libertarian individualists, movement ideologues and moderates. Very few of them are truly “conservative” in the traditional sense of the word. (And if conservatism isn’t traditional, it isn’t conservative at all.)
Most business interests and wealthy individuals see government as either a hindrance to their goals or a facilitator of their goals or simply as their goal. They all want to pay as few taxes as they can get away with and are more than willing to pay the chump change that amounts to contributions and lobbying expenses in order to use the government to their advantage in whatever way they need to. They are morally agnostic. Their job as businesses is to maximize profits and most wealthy individuals live in a world that doesn’t show any evidence of a need for government.
The social conservatives like Rick Santorum are in favor of a government that promotes and enforces their set of personal religious values for the common good. They believe in an activist government, but rather than providing a safety net they rely on coercion and police power to “guide” people into making the “right” decisions in the first place. They see government as a tool for radical social change. (I’m including the significant numbers of neo-confederates in this group, although it is an imperfect fit.)
The libertarians are the real small government “leave us alone”“coalition. This is the image of Republicanism that is sold to the public as being what the party is all about — the cowboy American, a rugged individualist who is self-sufficient and wants the least intrusive government possible. A Republican is strong, manly, confident, competent. Men want to be him and women want to pleasure him. In reality, they encompass the anti-UN black helicopter weirdoes and the intellectual utopians to be sure, but more importantly they also capture the regular Joe American who really just wants to be left alone to live his life unbothered by authority. But that includes religious zealots as much as do-gooders and the IRS.
The movement ideologues are the influential cosmopolitans like Peggy Noonan, Dinesh D’Souza and William Bennett, all of whom are really opportunists who have managed to make careers for themselves by working for the right wing message infrastructure. It also consists of the neocon faction who has transformed US foreign policy into an Imperialist wet dream.
The moderates are people who still believe that the Republican Party is prudent, fiscally responsible and traditional. They are not paying attention.
So, now that they are consolidating their power, how will the GOP reconcile the desire of social conservatives, who have an influence within the party that far outstrips its actual population in the country, with the “leave us alone” coalition? Rick Santorum was just given a big sloppy kiss by the Republican hierarchy after saying that he does not believe in a right to privacy and in fact believes that the government should outlaw any sexual behavior that he believes is harmful to the family values that he believes everyone should have. And the “leave us alone” faction should be repulsed by the idea that the government is seeking to inflict religious values on anybody against their will. If that is libertarian then I’m a John Bircher.
How do the movement ideologues and the social conservatives expect to pay for their enormous police state at home and Empire abroad if the corporations and people with money do not pay taxes? Supply side economics is a scam and they know it. If they remain in power they will have to find a way to raise taxes on the middle class and the poor, probably through a regressive consumption tax.
And at that point, the libertarians, who may have convinced themselves that the GOP will never be able to implement their police state and Empire as long as they are keeping taxes too low to pay for them, will see that they have been played for fools. The modern GOP does not believe in small government or rugged individualism. They simply use the imagery to sell their product.
As the social conservatives begin to flex their muscles, how are the cosmopolitans (who actually live in urban areas) going to feel when confronted with the mean bigotry of the anti-gay rights movement and the ugly intolerance of the still significant racist contingent of the GOP. They scurried like rabbits when Trent Lott embarrassed them. It is only a matter of time before the same thing happens with the gay rights movement. City girls like Peggy Noonan and Jonah Goldberg are embarrassed by the bigotry in their party.
In order to be coherent at all, the GOP must really believe in a huge, intrusive government that enforces religious values. One of their main targets for “reform” is the media. But, the media is big, big business, which has no interest in anything but profits. (Rupert Murdoch, after all, is the guy who publishes topless photos every day in the British tabloids.) If the social conservatives continue to gain real clout, how long before this confrontation happens?
In fact, how long can the Republican Party juggle the Big Government social conservatives and neocons with the valuable libertarian “leave us alone” brand and the big business moral agnostics?
And, how long will the Republican moderates stay in their nether world refusing to acknowledge that their party has become alarmingly radical and incoherent?
We Democrats have a lot of problems to be sure, not the least of which is that we are paralyzed by fear and indecision about how to fight the opposition. But, they have serious problems, too, and they are problems that the Democrats should exploit to the hilt. It’s called divide and conquer and it shouldn’t be too difficult to bring these conflicts into the open. Unlike the bogus wedge issues the GOP employed against the Democrats by demonizing straw men, these wedge issues are real.
Powell vs Rumsfeld is just the beginning. The GOP is on a collision course with itself.
If the presence of WMD was never at issue, there continues to be no proof that Saddam aided and harbored al Qaeda or any other “international” terrorist group that threatens the US, and if legal standards set forth by the UN are irrelevant to US interests then the Joint Resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq would look like this:
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.
Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in patrolling the north and south of Iraq.
Whereas the United States has the inherent right to use force in order to defend itself;
The President is authorized to use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force, in order to enforce the United Nations Security Council Resolutions referenced above, defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security in the region.
That’s it, folks. We are being told, in effect, that this is all that is really required for the US congress to authorize the invasion of a sovereign nation. All we have to do from now on is send our planes over any country and get them to fire on us and we can claim invasion is self-defense.
And, it sure will teach any would be assassins that there’s a big price to pay for targeting a certain somebody’s daddy, doesn’t it?
Josh Marshall (and everyone else) seems to believe that Newtie was seriously discredited by his rhetorical bayonet charge at Colin Powell last week. That may or may not be the case, but it’s hardly a body blow to Gingrich because he was already relegated to occasional Fox News commentary and behind the scenes strategery. The Bushies made a point of never being seen in the same room with him. If he was planning on making a Nixon-like comeback, he’s got a long way to go.
However, I doubt that was the point. The Republicans understand propaganda and Newtie understands it better than anyone. He fired off a salvo at the behest of the radical imperialists in the administration knowing full well that he would be severely criticized by the Colin Powell faction. It isn’t the first time that he has taken a bullet purely for the purpose of injecting a new meme into the discourse. As that great DC journalist Cokie Roberts once said, “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, it’s out there.”
These things often sound shocking at first, and it takes somebody with a special gift for controversy to plant the seeds of radical change and nurture it into the mainstream. It’s Gingrich’s true talent and the reason why he was such a successful “revolutionary” and such a dismal “leader.”
The radical right drumbeat for “State Department Reform” is already beginning as a result of his speech. Kristol endorsed it and that’s as good as saying it is only a matter of time before it becomes a GOP article of faith. Powell is reportedly unlikely to stay for a second term, so they are planning to purge the state department of career diplomats and analysts who are resistant to their Imperialist fantasies.
Like the Soviet totalitarians they studied and came to identify with, the radical right excels at power strategies and internal political control. And, while George W. Bush is showing quite an aptitude for Stalinist strong arming, the Leninists and Trotskyites are still necessary to consolidate the GOP hold on the body politic.
Many thanks to the Unablogger for this lovely gift. I think it’s only fair to share it with my readers, all of whom will enjoy it purely on an aesthetic level, of course.
Warning: Rick Santorum will find this link objectionable. It makes him feel all squirmy and restless and then he starts to wonder what it would be like to have conjugal relations with his eyes open and the lights on. Once you get on that slippery slope it’s downhill fast until pretty soon everybody starts thinking that people should have a right to engage in oral sex … in their living rooms… at 10 o’clock in the morning … completely naked!
And that, my friends, is the single biggest problem we face in America today.
It’s been quite a week, hasn’t it? Newtie’s back (not that he ever went away) and is reprising his award winning role as bombthrowing bad boy for the GOP Fedayeen. It made me nostalgic for the good old days back in the 80’s when he would denounce “deviant liberalism” to the empty House chamber on C-SPAN. We were all so innocent then. It never occurred to us that within 20 years Gingrich’s Leninist propaganda stylesheet would be the bible of a new right wing media establishment.
Gosh, I’ve missed him being in the spotlight. He is, after all, the reason the Republicans came to understand that openly expressing their “revolutionary” political philosophy of religious coercion, unregulated crony capitalism and global megalomania made the American public recoil in horror. Newt’s very existence exposes “compassionate conservatism” for the crock of shit it is.
Because President Chauncey W. Gardner is a sock puppet, it’s always hard to figure out whether these turf battles are good cop/bad cop or whether they truly represent a death match between State and Defense. But, as Atrios notes, the blow-back on this one is pretty over the top, so it’s hard to believe it’s a scripted routine.
My best guess is that the radical Rummy faction gave Gingrich the assignment to publicly introduce the idea of a need to “reform” the State Dept. (by purging career diplomats) along the lines of Rummy’s own revamping of the DOD, but they forgot what a rhetorical terrorist the guy is and let him do it his way. Certainly, some highly influential neocons agree with the substance of what he said:
Weekly Standard publisher William Kristol told Fox News that Gingrich is right about two things — a feud between the State and Defense departments is growing and the State Department is in need of an overhaul.
“People in the administration who don’t want some criticism are going to say Newt Gingrich stepped in it, but the truth is he told the truth. And Rumsfeld has tried to reform the Defense Department. He’s broken a lot of china; he has got a lot of enemies as a result. Colin Powell, who is an impressive man, has not rocked the boat at all at State, and I think that’s a mistake. State needs to be reformed,” Kristol said.
What they forget about Colin Powell is that he has his own constituency in the American public and could single handedly derail Junior’s re-election if he chose to do so, as Powell not so subtly reminds them from time to time:
“Personally, I’m very much in sync with the president, and he values my services,” Powell said on National Public Radio last month. “I also have to take note of the fact if you would consult any recent Gallup poll, the American people seem to be quite satisfied with the job I’m doing as secretary of state.”
This is why Rove muzzled Newt. I would guess that any “reformation” of the State department is tabled until after 2004.
And anyway, the much more important revelation in the Gingrich tantrum is his articulation of the neocon fury at the mid-east “roadmap.” That gets to the heart of the Perle/Wolfowitz plan for the region and they are hardly likely to give in on this one.
Let the GOP intramural blood-letting begin.
Which brings us to Lil’ Ricky Santorum’s intriguing remarks. He has no problem with people being homosexuals, nosiree. It’s what they do sexually in the privacy of their bedroom that undermines family values. So, I guess that Ricky doesn’t have a problem with men dressing in drag or wild Gay Pride parades or openly gay soldiers and sailors as long as they are celibate. He’s inclusive, that way.
It’s the dirty nasty sex that must be outlawed because every time Ricky thinks about what they do (and he thinks about it all the time) his family values get all tingly and stimulated — especially when he pictures that bad-polyamorous-man-with- three-hot-young-babes-all-tangled-up-together-in-one-great-big-bed kind of sex, or when he contemplates a sinful-adulterous-politician-who-strays-from-his-homeschooling-housewife-of-the-year-with-Ann-Coulter-for-some-man-on-dog type sex.
That’s the kind of sex that the government should make sure is illegal because if it doesn’t who knows what a Catholic Senator and former teen-age alter boy who has very, very bad thoughts might do?
… When a distraught Sharon Bush phoned her mother-in-law to commiserate about the 48-year-old Neil, Barbara Bush told her coolly, “That’s between you and Neilsie.”
And when the 50-year-old Sharon met with author Julie McCarron in Houston on April 14 to explore writing a memoir of her life in America’s premier political dynasty, they ran into Neil’s 40-year-old mistress, Houston socialite Maria Andrews, at a popular restaurant called the Grotto.
Maybe if Neilsie were faced with a little jail time, he might have thought twice, eh?
This is what is so very impressive about the modern GOP’s political leadership. Brainpower. Bush himself, as we know, has a towering intellect and Dick Cheney is one of the country’s foremost authorities on …something. But, little Ricky Santorum is so uniquely brilliant that it is clear he is being groomed for the presidency.
His mastery of logic is simply breathtaking. For instance, when talking about partial birth abortion he dismisses the slippery slope argument made by pro-choicers as “absolutist”:
“Charles is right. It is the absolutist argument that if they (Abortion Activists) concede even the most egregious and barbaric procedures then it calls into question the whole concept of abortion which they can not permit.”
But, in his infamous interview Senator Santorum also said:
“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”
Perhaps the distinction between these two slippery slope arguments lies in the existence of the large and powerful man-on-dog advocate movement which is on record saying their strategy is to whittle away at resistance to privacy laws in order to get the anti-bestiality statutes eventually struck down all together. When seen in that light you can understand why right thinking people everywhere would be on their guards against allowing even the smallest concession to sexual privacy. That would be playing right into the hands of the bestiality rights movement, which after all, represents the base of the Democratic party.
But, that’s not all. On partial birth abortion, Santorum also said, :
“I believe that this is one of the seminal moments in our society. If a government deliberately allows this kind of barbarism to be inflicted on the most helpless and innocent, who among us will be spared in the end?”
Yes, indeed. If the law allows a woman and her doctor to decide that a braindead fetus should be aborted in order to save her uterus, what on earth could stop this woman and her doctor from deciding that her braindead Senator should be “aborted” to save her sanity? You’ve simply got to draw the line somewhere. There’s nothing absolutist about that.
I have to agree with Ricky on principle. Until the Supreme Court reverses Griswold and subsequent rulings that imply a constitutional right to privacy, I guess I’ll have to live with the fact that Santorum is allowed to bring home the corpse of their 5 month old fetus and force his small children to hold it, despite the fact that I find such behavior bizarre, sick and abusive. If the constitution allows people to handle fetal corpses in the privacy of their own home, are we not on a slippery slope to sanctioning grave robbery, necrophilia and cannibalism?
It’s the scourge of moral relativism that’s causing the trouble. The intellectual braintrust of Bush and Santorum are in complete agreement on this. Morality is black and white, there are no choices to be made, private or otherwise. There is one true way and they know what it is.
But, as Tim Noah pointed out back in October 2000, the GOP doesn’t have a problem with relativism in general. Science, for instance, is entirely relative:
Bush believes “the jury is still out” on evolution and said:
“I’d make it a goal to make sure that local folks got to make the decision as to whether or not they said creationism has been a part of our history and whether or not people ought to be exposed to different theories as to how the world was formed.”
Santorum actually made sure the congressional record included a “sense of the Senate” resolution attached to the “No Child Left Behind Act” which ensured that an Estrada Supreme Court would have the evidence to rule that lawmakers intended to endorse “intelligent design” being taught in the science classroom. As a matter of intellectual integrity he doesn’t believe it is right to pass judgment on universally agreed upon scientific knowledge if even one crackpot religious nut who calls himself a scientist disagrees.
“A number of scholars are now raising scientific challenges to the usual Darwinian account of the origins of life,” Santorum said after the bill passed. “Thus, it is entirely appropriate that the scientific evidence behind them is examined in science classrooms. Efforts to shut down scientific debates, as such, only serve to thwart the true purposes of education, science and law.”
Perhaps this is what Junior was referring to when he called Santorum “inclusive.” And, it does stand to reason that he’d like the man. After all, it’s not easy to find someone who is even dumber than he is. In fact, Santorum is such a putz that he was once named the the dumbest member of Congress.
One example of his brilliance: In speaking about the country’s long term prospects, Santorum remarked, “Nowhere in the Bible does it say that America will be here 100 years from now.”
“Santorum?” Sen. Bob Kerrey once commented. “Is that Latin for asshole?”
Hahahaha….
With all of this talk of religion and politics this week, I am a bit surprised that this story didn’t get more play:
Six members of Congress live in a $1.1 million Capitol Hill town house that is subsidized by a secretive religious organization, tax records show.
The lawmakers, all Christians, pay low rent to live in the stately red brick, three-story house on C Street, two blocks from the Capitol. It is maintained by a group alternately known as the “Fellowship” and the “Foundation” and brings together world leaders and elected officials through religion.
Ok. Who cares, right? A nice Christian boarding house. There’s nothing wrong with that. Except, it turns out that this particular “secretive religious organization” is a powerhouse in Washington and has been for more than 50 years. Strangely, however, nobody knows about it.
In a tour de force of investigative journalism, Harper’s magazine this month published a jaw dropping expose of this group that calls itself “the family” and which has been working hand in glove with the political elite for decades. The report, called “Jesus Plus Nothing. Undercover among America’s secret theocrats” is simply mind boggling.
In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and more recently, in 2001, it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides’ eventual peace accord last July. Such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa’s postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand “Communists” killed marks him as one of the century’s most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. “We work with power where we can,” the Family’s leader, Doug Coe, says, “build new power where we can’t.”
At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, George H.W. Bush praised Doug Coe for what he described as “quiet diplomacy, I wouldn’t say secret diplomacy,” as an “ambassador of faith.” Coe has visited nearly every world capital, often with congressmen at his side, “making friends” and inviting them back to the Family’s unofficial headquarters, a mansion (just down the road from Ivanwald) that the Family bought in 1978 with $1.5 million donated by, among others, Tom Phillips, then the C.E.O. of arms manufacturer Raytheon, and Ken Olsen, the founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation.
I urge you to read the whole article. I thought it was anomalous that the freaky Reverend Moon was a silent partner in GOP Inc (which, incidentally sponsored Santorum’s “faith based summit” through it’s front group the “American Leadership Conference.”)
Apparently, however, Washington is just crawling with powerful, wealthy and secretive religious organizations that are deeply involved in politics.