A Symposium on Sarah
Posted by Peter Lawler
...in the fascinating new web-zine CULTURE11. It features a contribution by a NEW REPUBLIC editor, a prominent paleocon, and ME. As usual, I’m the one with the audacity of hope.
10:55 PM / September 1, 2008
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I agree with your points about the aging corrupt leadership of conservatism. But the point of the election is not going to be to 'change' the corrupt leadership of conservatism but to completely remove conservatives from office. Bush and Cheney have lectured me again and again that I have no voice against the war, against their Katrina indifference, against their trickle-down policies, except the ballot box. Well, I have saved up all my anger and frustration to do just that. On every ballot I will vote against the republicans.I don't care if it is for county commissioner.
Dawn,
No voice? When have more voices been raised? How have Bush or Cheney silenced anyone? I hear this from the Left and am baffled at trying to find truth in the kind of statement you make. My dad and other Leftists speak of the the threat of being dragged off to political prisons for speaking out. Yet who has been dragged away in that way? Where are the prisons? Maybe I live in the wrong part of America to see this threat. Please, explain it to me.
Kate, you need to widen your reading. Let me help.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-dantoni/amy-goodman-violently-arr_b_123062.html
A Huffington Post?
Kate asked for the facts and she's referred to the Huffington post...............????????????????????????????
Brian. Sounds similar to police activity in Denver last week. Don't see how that's President Bush's fault.
Bush and Cheney have lectured me again and again that I have no voice ....against their Katrina indifference
As someone who lived in New Orleans before, during, and after Katrina (though I have recently moved out of state) I am tired of this silly lie.
The feds were the only ones who did ANYTHING about Katrina. Yes, they were about 24 to 36 hours late - a small mistake when compared to the complete and total corruption that is local and state governance in Louisiana. New Orleans, like so many inner cities, is composed largely of a lack of local law and order, and a culture of criminality. Who is that Bush's fault?
Dawn's statement is one of ignorance...
Brian. Sounds similar to police activity in Denver last week. Don't see how that's President Bush's fault.
Does it? I'd be interested in seeing footage of republican leaning journalists being manhandled into paddy wagons. Do you have that to hand?
It is Bush's fault because he has promoted authority as absolute, force as an ideal solution and rule of law meaning "what I say" for all of his presidency. The police have obviously got the message, particularly when it comes to the left.
Is it normal for the police in America to arrest dissenting journalists covering national conventions?
Golly.
Peter, only one caveat to your points on Palin. The Reagan nostalgia is creepy and in the Republican primary debate, the candidates exploited it so as to not have to supply a clear and compeling agenda. But the Reagan nostalgia has several things in common with the current enthusiasm with Palin and Jindal.
1. Both the nostalgia and the enthusiasm are expressions of intense disappointment with the present Republican leadership.
2. Both point to a conservative politics that is both more ideologicaly pure and more corruption free. Like McCain, Palin and Jindal are corruption fighting "mavericks". Unlike McCain, they didn't get their reputations by moving left on issues important to liberal journalists.
3.Arch Reagan idolater Rush is also a huge, huge booster of Palin and Jindal.
Palin and Jindal represent a POTENTIAL conservative politics in a way that Reagan does not (what with being dead and all), but the enthusiasm they raise says as much about the frustrations of many conservatives as it does about their own governing skills
Pete, sure, you're right. What energizes those of us who engaged with conservatism through Reagan is absolutely that potential we see in Palin and Jindal. So what? In some thread below I worry about any conservative being able to take on the government we have and succeed with governing. How do manage this bureaucratic republic that we have got with the ideals and principles we propound? I don't know. Apparently, not very well in the recent past. Somehow, we have to find people who can do that job right. "Corruption fighting 'mavericks'" are the best option we see for increasing the republic part of that b/r equation. I sure hope it works. I don't like the alternative, which is an ever growing bureaucratic part. Maybe that is the way of governance in the future. It makes me nervous as hell.