Ron Paul was one of only 4 congressmen to endorse Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president. After Reagan, Al Gore found an enthusiastic cheerleader in Texas, who looked nothing like a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. According to the latest Campaign For Liberty ad, Rick Perry helped lead the Al Gore campaign to undo the Reagan Revolution. The Paul Campaign’s pitch about an untrustworthy Perry is persuasive. Rudderless is also a good description for the core of Perry.
Category Archives: Republicans
Wrong About Ron
Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Republicans, Ron Paul
The DC Establishment, left and right—the engorged organism I call the media-military-congressional complex—thinks of Ron Paul as “charming”; his “heresies—his denunciations of ‘militarism,’ even his suggestion that Iran might have understandable reasons for wanting nukes and it might not be so terrible if they got one—[as the] tolerated [and] lovable eccentricities of a cranky but harmless uncle.” Or so writes Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker.
Hertzberg has a point.
But his kind is as detached from mainstream America as the Republicans he lambastes (Let us hope that this will be their undoing.) Ron Paul’s stance against American militarism around the world makes him appealing to voters on the left, the (real) right, and the center. All are well represented among the millions who are jobless and without an income. All would prefer to see “charity” (I use the word in the loosest possible way for the evil the US perpetrates around the world) begin at home, not abroad. Like or dislike him, Ron Paul is the only Republican presidential contender whose foreign policy position can unite left, right and independent Americans.
Provided all factions begin to … THINK.
Quintessential Republican Cretinism
As the Republican presidential candidates ramp-up their faux-patriotic militaristic jingoism, it’s time to remember just how dumb these people are. Here is “The Republican Party Animals Music Video”:
The American Conservative captured this thematic, quintessentially Republican cretinism, in all its contradictions—as if both “small government” and a massive military can coincide—in the cover art and cover story of the issue titled, “GOP and Man at Yale”:
Unbeknown to Republicans, “the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small.”
Neocons Are Second-Handers
Conservatism, libertarianism, Literature, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Pseudo-intellectualism, Republicans, Ron Paul, South-Africa
Readers often conflate popularity with quality. Periodically, a reader who’s recently stumbled upon the commentariat’s dirty little secret—libertarians who’ve been writing predictive op-eds for over a decade—will suggest that this writer petition one of their favorite, famous, thoroughbred neoconservatives for an audience. “Show your latest book,” the well-meaning reader will urge, to this or that NYT best seller neocon, pseudo-conservative, know-nothing.
Take the “portfolio,” goes the well-meaning chap’s advice, and seek a pat on the head from a particular dufus whom my reader, for some reason, considers to be a Delphic oracle.
Of course, in the larger scheme of things, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa” should survive long after the various neocon books.
Liberals this; liberals that; Bush was great; Cheney too, the world is dead without America; Europe sucks; we’ve discovered that debt and big government are bad now that Obama’s in power:
If you don’t already know that these titles and their authors all have precious little to impart for posterity—you should!
Mark Steyn’s freshly presented tired ideas are one of many such examples. Steyn is an entertaining writer and fun to read. However, The “One-Man Global Content Provider’s” epistolary razzmatazz should never be confused with unconventional analysis, as explained, by way of an example, in “Beck, Wilders, and His Boosters’ Blind Spot.”
As for this writer and her relationship with mainstream neoconservatives: Been there done that. I may one day write about the almost-flirtatious sweet nothings some big-name neocon-cum-conservatives whispered in my e-ear when I first appeared on the US scene. There were dinner invitations too, one at least was even attended.
All that was before I registered, on Sept. 19, 2002, the first of many principled objections against their war of choice on Iraq. That was before the neocons discovered I was not an S. E. Cupp, a Margaret Hoover, or a ditzy Dana Perino.
After that fatal date, I became a political persona non grata.
The neocon modus operandi is to ignore and vilify truth-tellers such as Ron Paul, so long as the truth is unpalatable. After a period of time has passed—say five years hence—Ron Paul’s economic and foreign policy prescriptions (or my analysis of the New democratic South Africa and its lessons for America) will become quite kosher because it will no longer be possible to deny reality. Then the usual gasbags will proceed to “borrow” ideas they have not originated.
Seldom will originators be credited, not by neocons, at least.
When it comes to Machiavellian machinations, however, neocons are originators second to none.