The already famous New York Times Magazine by Ron Suskind on George W. Bush (not in his favor, of course) begins with these two paragraphs (I assume that quote is honest, and that is not to Bartlett’s advantage):
"Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ’if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.’ The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.
’Just in the past few months,’ Bartlett said, ’I think a light has gone off for people who’ve spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he’s always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.’ Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush’s governance, went on to say: ’This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can’t be persuaded, that they’re extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he’s just like them. . . .’"
Both Bush and the terrorists know, unlike so many of the self-centered, egotistical, libertarian, relativist, post-modernists, that good and evil exist. The Islamicists, unfortunately, have chosen a path of death and destruction of civilization while Bush is promoting an objectively good form of government that promotes human freedom and happiness. The problem with libertarians like this author is that they only pursue their own epicurean desires unfettered by any moral framework of right and wrong. "Do what you will" may have worked for Rabelais or the 1960s generation who dropped out of society in a drug-binge, but it is irrelevant in these debates. To equate good with evil is the height of intellectual folly.
Can we start a pool on how long it’s going to take for Bruce Bartlett to start scurrying away from these asinine remarks?
(Assuming, of course, that he was quoted correctly and not somehow ’Dowdified’.)
CNN.com and MSNBC.com have just posted a news article about Al-Zarqawi claiming allegience with Al-Queida. This further backs up Bush’s claims that Iraq has been harboring terrorists and that we need to be there. It justifies the war for all of those people who claim that we should not be in Iraq because Bin Laden is in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
I had two immediate questions come to mind: How will this effect the election? And, how will the media spin this tomorrow?
The Suskind article should be welcomed by the Bush team. Comparing President Bush to Al-Queida insults the common sense of the majority of Americans. The hatred of Bush by the left bubbles to the surface too frequently and especially now that the election is right upon us. Recent polls reflect that Bush’s "likability" rating outpace all other poll data for the President. What this means is that extreme slams against a likable President can only work in his favor.These types of irrational outbursts say more about the messenger than the target.
Nevertheless, I am still frightened by the fact that (educated) people actually make these kinds of arguments (in the newspaper of record). This kind of moral relativism morally equating America to the terrorists is the greatest threat that would undermine the war on terrorism. It is sad that this type of "thinking" goes on among the Left, the libertarian Right, and Europeans. The decadent civilization that they worship has clay feet. I, for one, would promote the manly defense of civilization as a positive good to defend the sacred fire of liberty.