Well, I didn’t think this quite warranted its own thread, but I noticed this on MSNBC. Are they desperate to get pro-Bush headlines out there, or is this a simple error?
Where’s the liberal media when you need it?
I appreciate your willingness at least to hear me out. Please note that I defended Sam Stone in that thread, and condemned the screamers. Please note also that I am not left-wing inasmuch as the only government interference that I support is that it keep people from maliciously and deliberately harming or deceiving one another. I do not support any wealth redistribution scheme, nor any public assistance funding, nor any government subsidy of art, science, education, or anything else.
I would debate you on the Libertarian Party candidate’s superior ideas for fighting terrorism, but I won’t burden you with that. I’ll just talk about Bush’s.
Please note that the origin of these ideological wars can be traced back to a left-socialist, Lyndon Johnson, whose War on Poverty has now raged for 40 years. Just like the War on Americans I Mean Drugs, it has had its opposite intended effect. There are more poor people now than ever. The first thing I thought of when Bush declared a War on Terrorism was, “Oh, my lord, no. Now we will have terrorists jumping out our asses.”
And in fact, Bush’s ideological war has, like all the others, encountered its inevitable unintended consquences. But this should be no surpise to you since, as a conservative, you know that central planning is anathema to getting anything done. Nothing good ever comes from the Politburo, and Bush’s Politburo is no exception.
Let’s examine the situation. Bin Laden is now merely the titular head of al-Qaeda, so that even if he is captured, it will have no effect on that organization’s operations. Warring against terrorism is equivalent to jungle warfare, but instead of trees and tunnels, there are buildings and caves. Bush’s strategy in his war is the same as Johnson’s strategy in Vietnam — that is, hit politically expedient targets that have long been abandoned by a wary enemy. There sheer paltry number of terrorists rounded up ought to tell you something. A recent poll shows that practically 100% of people in countries from Egypt to Pakistan utterly hate America. What sort of success is that? What sort of leadership alienates the very people among whom the object of its strategy will rise up in defiance?
It seems to me that Bush has committed the ultimate hypostatization fallacy. Fighting a war on terror is like fighting a war on hate. The problem is that your war is itself interpreted as the very thing you’re fighting against, i.e., you become a terrorist in the eyes of those closest to the object of your war. It would be like Jesus conducting his ministry by carrying a club from town to town and bashing people over the head to enforce His commandment that men love one another. Think of it this way: Bush has created terror by terrifying people of whose culture and history he has zero understanding. They hate him and are therefore ripe for recruitment into the very web of terror that he seeks to destroy.
Just like poverty, and just like drugs, terrorism is a fact of life that has been with us since the dawn of man, and will be with us always. Please consider whether “war on terror” is not in fact more a political slogan and less a good strategy. You can’t decrease hate by hating, and you can’t decrease terror by terrorizing. You decrease terror by defusing it, by removing its cause, and by making friends with the people whom terrorists would recruit to their causes. If you believe that Bush is doing the right thing by alienating the whole world, then by all means support him. But if you believe that little if anything can be achieved by constantly committing our resources to interfering in the petty squabbles among third-class nation-states that have gone on for thousands of years, then withhold your support until you find a man with better vision.
Here again, Bush is more like Lyndon Johnson than Ronald Reagan. His recent prescription drug legislation, for example, will, according to a study by the conservative Heritage Foundation, cost a 40-year-old head of household an average of $16,127 in additional taxes between now and the time he retires. If you have a baby today, you can expect that he will pay $1,125 per year in new taxes by the time he is 27 years old. When Johnson first gave us medicare, Congress projected its cost to be $12 billion a year by 1990. After Bush, it could cost a staggering $3.2 trillion in five years. Regarding education, he has increased funding for the federal Department of Education, which has never educated anyone. There is nothing conservative to be found in any of this.
But honestly, it is. Clinton cut taxes on capital gains, and signed legislation that reduced the average middle-class family’s tax burden by $2,100. His fiscal conservatism in everything from executive administration to welfare reform resulted in more than doubling the Dow Jones average, increasing tax revenues by expansion of new business, and doubling the total household assets in public stock. He made stockholders out of average Americans. Bush, on the other hand, has increased spending in practically every single category of government, from defense to social security.
Maybe not, but conservative churches are alarmed by it. And Republican candidates have distanced themselves from it because frankly, most people are alarmed when they hear about it — like Nevada Republican Senate candidate, Carlo Poliak, who does indeed equate it to Stalinism:
It is difficult to conceive a conservative supporting such government intrusion into people’s lives in the name of patriotism.
But that is hardly a reason to support Bush.
Holy shit, now even Liberal hates America. The terrorists win!
I think Kerry + Republican Congress will prove far far more effective than Bush + Republican Congress. The fact is, if you don’t lower spending, lowering taxes is a pure shell game. While Republicans have long taken a fancy to the “starve the beast” theory, the facts seem to suggest that it’s counterproductive: when you keep putting off discipline for the future, it never arives. Regan was at least serious about shrinking the size of government.
I understand your positions (I think), and I applaud your willingness to stand up for Sam Stone.
I think this is an over-statement. It is not necessarily true that every centrally-planned organization must necessarily fail. And, as a conservative who believes in Constitutionally mandated roles for the government, I believe that the military and national defense are appropriately directed and operated by the federal government.
My understanding is that this is not a change. I thought al-Queda used the traditional cell structure that most subversive organizations employ. And I would disagree that the conquest of Afghanistan has had no effect, or has only assisted, al-Queda and other international terrorists.
Again, I don’t believe this is an accurate description of the situation. Afghanistan was certainly not abandoned by al-Queda until after the military attacked, and Iraq was still occupied and controlled by Saddam until he was militarily overthrown.
(N.B., not to Lib, but to the Usual Idiots - no, this is not an assertion that Saddam was involved in 9/11. If you wish to insist that this must be what I meant, feel free to insert your head into an appropriate orifice.)
Well, He was known to use a whip of cords in at least one instance.
But I still think you are missing the point. It is pretty obvious that a war on terror is not going to be popular among those who support the use of terror, and it is also not going to be popular among those who are benefitting from the status quo.
But we tried doing almost nothing about terror attacks in 1993 and following. As a result, thousands of people died. So, to over-simplify, we can do nothing but lob a few missiles (as we did to Iraq), sign a treaty knowing perfectly well that it will achieve nothing (as we did with North Korea), and then continue to suffer attacks like 9/11. Or we can do what we decide is right, even if the French would rather appease their own fundamentalist Muslim minority and continue to assist Saddam in stealing from the oil-for-food program and therefore object.
I only have time to respond to your remarks on Clinton by saying that I think you are giving too much credit to Clinton and not enough to the Republican Congress.
I had a quick look at the website of the North Carolina Council of Churches. They explicitly describe themselves as “in the forefront of progressive social issues”. I do not see any indication that they are even slightly “conservative”. And they are affiliated with my own synod, the ECLA, which is about as squishy-soft liberal as you can get outside the faculty of UC-Berkely.
And even leaving that aside, exactly why is the NCCoC so concerned about the Patriot Act? I see a good deal of alarmist rhetoric - I see no instances of freedoms that the Patriot Act has removed. Same with your quote from Poliak - long on quasi-Godwinism (“this is like what I saw in WWII!”), short on “These are the specifics to which I object.” If you see what I mean.
The Patriot Act has been seriously misrepresented, here on the SDMB and elsewhere. Here is a link to a differing view of the Patriot Act, and includes a link to the text of the act itself. What specifically do you find in the act that leads you to conclude that it is Stalinist?
But I think that it is.
There has never been a candidate for office that I voted for with whom I agreed 100%. This includes Reagan. There has always been something or other with which I took issue. Same with Bush.
But he is the best available candidate. Everything I object to in Bush? Kerry is much, much worse. Bush spends too much money, for sure - Kerry wants to spend more. Bush cut taxes (something I agree with) - Kerry wants to raise them. Bush implemented a Medicare bill - Kerry wants to spend far more on health care. One reason health care in America is expensive is lawsuits and defensive medicine - Edwards is a trial lawyer. And so on, and on, and on.
Nader? Worse still. If you need cites on why I value him only for comic relief, I suppose I could supply them, but that Laduke clown last time? Come on.
And that leaves third-party candidates, with whom I disagree even more, although generally on other issues. I am not a libertarian, and I don’t support the kind of wholesale dismantling of government they advocate.
And therefore, my only choice is to support the best candidate, or no one. And it is my duty and my privilege to participate in the electoral process, and therefore declining to support anyone is not an option.
Ergo, Bush is my candidate. Not the perfect candidate, but much to be preferred over anyone else.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, you are certainly entitled to draw whatever conclusions you wish based on whatever the facts are. It is possible that reasonable people may come away with different interpretations of the same facts. And I won’t dog you since I have stated my case and you have stated yours. You have enough opponents as it is. I would point out, however, that it is not the case that the Libertarian Party advocates the “wholesale dismantling of government”. That is a perversion of the facts. It believes, as you do, that “military and national defense are appropriately directed and operated by the federal government”. It’s just all that left-wing and right-wing stuff — government with its hands in our pockets or government with its hands on our zippers — that it does not support.
I didn’t intend that throwaway phrase to be a detailed analysis of the Libertarian positions, about which you would certainly know more than I do. What I meant to convey was that I don’t agree entirely with libertarianism in principle. I am a Republican, not a Libertarian, both formally and by conviction.
But I also don’t see how the Patriot Act can be considered Stalinist enough that it should disqualify Bush from my support, or how a third-party candidate is going to handle the War on Terror better than Bush.
I understand that the other side is fairly well united behind the principle of “Anybody But Bush”. But the converse is not true for my side. I am not unshakeably committed to Bush above anyone else, no matter what. If a better candidate were available, I would support him (or her). But, in my view, there is no better candidate available.
Regards,
Shodan
Understood. The principle that we on yet a third side are united behind is that government should guarantee the freedom of peaceful honest people to pursue their own happiness in their own way — but otherwise, get the hell out of their way.
Heads no doubt will pop if he wins, because Bush habitually justifies his actions and denigrates his opponents through a network of carefully constructed lies. The man is the lyingest liar since the word “lie” was invented. Plus, he is a gutless coward who doesn’t have the balls to do the heavy-duty lying himself, but rather has to get his buddies to do it for him. Then there’s the fact that he ran like a scared little girl to avoid his obligation to his country. If that doesn’t make your head pop, maybe your head is already empty.