Does the liberal-left have a clue? I sometimes think not.
In his book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?," Thomas Frank made the excellent point that the Karl Rove Republicans take advantage of ordinary's people's frustrations and resentments to lead them into voting against their best interest.
Frank's new book, "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule," lacks the insight that distinguished his previous book. Why does Frank think that conservatives or liberals rule?
Neither rule. America is ruled by organized interest groups with money to elect candidates who serve their interests. Frank's book does not even mention the Israel Lobby, which bleeds Americans for the sake of Israeli territorial expansion. Check the index. Israel is not there.
Does Frank think that rapture evangelicals are conservative, that Christian Zionists are conservative? If so, where did he learn his theology?
Frank can't tell the difference between Ronald Reagan and Cheney/Bush. He conflates the collection of opportunists and fanatics that comprise the Bush Party with the Reagan conservatives who ended stagflation and the cold war. The adventurer, Jack Abramoff, is Frank's epitome of a conservative. Abramoff is the most mentioned person in Frank's story. In Frank's view, conservatives are out to ruin everyone except the rich.
But it was the Clinton administration that rigged the Consumer Price Index in order to cheat retired people out of their Social Security cost of living increases.
It was the Clinton administration that vanished discouraged workers from the unemployment rolls.
It was the Clinton administration that wrecked "effective government" by encouraging early civil service retirements in order to make way for quota hires.
Why doesn't Frank know that the "Reagan deficit" was due to the collapse of inflation below the forecast, thus reducing the flow of inflated revenues into the government's budget, whereas the Bush deficit is a result of what Nobel Democrat economist Joe Stiglitz has calculated to be a $3 trillion dollar war in the Middle East?
Frank doesn't want to know. Like so many fighting ideological battles, he just wants to damn "the enemy."
But who is Frank's enemy? He calls them "conservatives." But the Bush regime is a neoconservative regime. Neoconservatives, despite the name, are not conservatives. They have taken over formerly conservative publications, think tanks, and foundations and driven out the conservatives.
Neoconservatives are in the tradition of the French Jacobins of the 18th century. Having had the French Revolution, the revolutionaries thought that they should take it to all of Europe. Napoleon exercised French hegemony over Europe. The American neocons desire American hegemony over the world.
The true American conservative does not believe in foreign wars. In US history, conservatives were derided by liberals as "isolationists."
There is nothing conservative about launching wars of aggression on the basis of lies and deception in order to control the direction of oil pipelines and to enhance Israeli territorial expansion.
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has held numerous academic appointments. He has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, was published by Random House in March, 2008.
Republicanism has nothing at all to do with "conservatism" anymore. It's become more of a sickness than a legitimate political ideology. No self-respecting conservative could call himself a Republican by today's definition.
And, as you say, there has been rampant Democratic complicity and passiveness all along the way.
But the problem is, the author of this book is only calling these people what they call themselves. They have co-opted and usurped the label of "conservatives" from the actual practitioners of conservatism and have changed the nature of what a "mainstream conservative" is in today's America. And there are so very few true conservatives left, that you can't blame the guy for using the label that is now applied to the vast majority of those who call themselves conservatives today.
The nature of words change over time, and now "conservative" really has come to mean "imperialistic, warmongering, hypocritical, greedy, authoritarian, nationalistic, rule of law-hating, Constitution burning, borrow-and-spend, simpleton fascists who can't do anything right, and don't care if WWIII starts tomorrow."
Sad, but true.
by
JC Garrett (40 articles, 65 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 604 comments)
on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 at 3:08:36 PM
All the big foreign wars were given to us by Democrats.
There is really no longer a Republican Party. The communists hijacked the Democratic Party in 1913 with Woodrow Wilson and his Cheney, Col House. The Fascists have hijacked the Republican Party starting with Nixon-Kissinger. They seem like 2 ends of a rope, but when you tie the 2 ends together and make a knot, you get the noose that has hung Democracy, our legs are still twitching, but the end is near.
Really, they are just the same now. Big Government, Big Business, Fiscal Irresponsibility, Globalist and Free Trade, neoliberal economics, Imperialists.Republicans have the religous right, Democrats have the pseudoscience religion of AGW. Both embrace fear as a social control mechanism.
But a good article by PCR.
As for his question: Does the liberal left have a clue? Reading all the Palin articles have answered that one. But the right is just as clueless.
No choice, no change, no hope.
by
pft (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 499 comments)
on Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 1:09:52 AM
There is no question we face America's (as we know it) demise, due to the imperialist, plutocratic system we've watched take over our nation that began after WW2. And yes, both major parties are responsible and vested in the status quo.
But these are not typical times. We're less willing to let ideology and distraction dominate the conversation. We're finding crumbs of truth throughout this Interweb, and we're standing up - even as protesters get arrested at the RNC.
Old Mister Wind is blowing, and we may well find this to be a fresh wind, blowing against the empire.
by
Jim Prues (15 articles, 33 quicklinks, 10 diaries, 77 comments)
on Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 10:00:39 AM
The thrust of this is exactly right. PCR is virtually always
pretty much on target (except for his idiosyncratic defense of Reagan, which also makes an appearance in this piece, though it's not central to his argument).
PCR writes, "What is wrecking America is the Democratic Party, which was put in control of the House and Senate in the 2006 congressional elections to stop the gratuitous wars and gestapo police, but, instead, has continued to cooperate with the Cheney/Bush regime in behalf of war and police repression..."
- That's spot on. You just can't be more accurate than that. That's a bullseye summary of our times.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1210 comments)
on Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 10:24:42 AM
Why does Richard Mynick think that the factual statement that President Reagan ended the cold war and cured stagflation is an "Idiosyncratic defense of Reagan"?
Does he deny established facts? Does he think Reagan should get no credit for his accomplishments?
by
paul roberts (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 31 comments)
on Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 1:20:47 PM
With great respect, Dr Roberts, that doesn't seem a fair
perspective for viewing Reagan. The most dangerous features of the GW Bush years seem in many ways continuous with what took wing under Reagan: military aggression (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Grenada, etc); an excessive military build-up with associated budget deficits; & the domestic politics of plutocracy. Reagan also engaged in union-busting, & appointed infamous "foxes to guard the hen-houses," like the anti-environmental James Watt as Secretary of Interior. The "Missile Defense Shield" idea also derives from Reagan, & the Iran-Contra scandal was a very, very serious abuse of power. Deregulation of business has been a bipartisan project, but the Reagan admin contributed much to it, reinforcing the trend towards plutocracy. The emphasis on the Cold War & demonizing the Russians ("the Evil Empire") was obviously similar to Bush's "Axis of Evil" demonizing of external enemies, & Reagan also played Iraq & Iran off against one another.
Also, a good bit of the credit for defeating stagflation goes to Paul Volcker, a Carter appointee.
Look, I agree with and admire 99% of what you've written in recent years! You can't really be too dissatisfied with that! But it seems that you are adamant & fixed in your positive view of Reagan. In an interesting way (considering the very different trajectories the 2 of you have followed), it reminds one of Chomsky, who's also incredibly accurate on almost all of the very big picture; yet still has this "idiosyncratic" part of his thinking, where he adamantly refuses to budge on his rejection of JFK assassination and 9-11 "conspiracy theories." It's hard to see how Chomsky could think what he obviously thinks on the other 99% of his stuff, & still be so rigid about those 2 particular subjects. Similarly, it often seems baffling to a reader, that you could be so right about GW Bush, the neocons, & about the Democrats' role in wrecking America, & still not see the ways in which all this is a logical extension of what happened under Reagan.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1210 comments)
on Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 2:35:44 PM
What other president has such important achievements as ending the cold war and stopping stagflation?
If Reagan wanted war, why did he end the cold war?
How does Mynick know what the appropriate level of defense spending was? He doesn't. The plan was to show the Soviets that their broken economy could not stand an arm's race. This was one way Reagan convinced the Soviets to end the cold war. Obviously, it paid off.
If Reagan was a warmonger, he would have proceeded with the US buildup and coerced the victory over the Soviets that the neocons desired.
No president is perfect. They are all affected by powerful organized lobbies, by competing advisers, and by conflicting advice.
Volcker made no contribution to ending stagflation. He almost blew the policy's chances by selfishly using monetary policy to protect himself from false predictions of rising inflation. I have documented this many times.
What I find is that people are generally uninformed and therefore usually taken in by one side's propaganda or the other. Few people speak the truth, and when they do few can recognize it.
by
paul roberts (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 31 comments)
on Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 3:44:51 PM
There is a dam good reason why this complicit Democratic Party continues to allow these illegal, horrid and gratuitous wars to continue, add to that the loss of our civil liberties along with the implementation of a Police State throughout this "so called" United States, and that's because they are being controlled by the very same group "the powers that be" who are controlling the Republican party. They're one in the same.
What's most sad is that the people "sheeple" of this country still believe their vote counts on election day.
by
Munich (0 articles, 74 quicklinks, 13 diaries, 900 comments)
on Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 12:52:58 PM
Their both got it wrong and it did start with Ronald Reagan and the beginning of the end of our country as a republic. PCR fails to mention we became a debtor nation for the first time and have stayed there ever since. Both Democrat and Republican have contributed to it. Not that our two official parties are really very different anymore. The Dominionists have infected both while any third parties are left out in the cold. No real media access kills you chances every time.
They bring us low so they can force us when they need to and fool us by dominating the media. Just look at how responsible peaceful protesters were treated by both the RNC & DNC. We are in a very bad state and it isn't over yet. Our voting system is corrupted and untrustworthy which is why the UN are forbidden to monitor.
by
nightgaunt (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 244 comments)
on Friday, September 5, 2008 at 5:21:56 PM
nightgaunt is wrong. the US did not become a debtor nation during the Reagan administration. Offshoring made the US a debtor nation, and that did not begin to any extent until the collapse of world socialism in 1990 and the rise of the high speed internet.
by
paul roberts (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 31 comments)
on Friday, September 5, 2008 at 6:45:47 PM
Ronald Reagan was a traitor to this country, and should have been charged as such, tried, and if found guilty, given an appropriate sentence. US soil was attacked, and 54 US hostages were siezed. President Jimmy Carter negotiated in good faith, and procured a release date for said hostages. Reagan, and sidekick G. H. W. Bush gathered 10 million dollars, and told those holding the hostages to release them the day after the elections, ignoring the treaty already in place. That is treason.
Too much credit is given to Reagan concerning the demise of the Soviet Union. We, the US, could just have easily been the ones who went under financially. In addition, there are history sources that give Pope John Paul far more credit for the fall of the USSR than they give Reagan. Reagan was no hero in any sense of the word.
by
Kellis R. Solomon (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 78 comments)
on Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 1:30:32 AM
11 comments
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