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Andy Revkin, former NY Times science writer-turned blogger, notes the "still spreading ripples" from the "Post-Partisan Power" plan I co-authored two weeks ago, but describes me in passing as belonging to the "largely libertarian American Enterprise Institute."  I'm confused: I thought we were imperialist neocon Trotskyites, when we're not stem-cell-crushing religious fanatics.  Can't these guys get their epithets straight?  (Andy does a very nice job, though, of summarizing the debate this is provoking within the environmental community about whether they can embrace any strategy that doesn't involve heavy direct government regulation.  Mission accomplished, I say.)

Meanwhile, the plan also gets a shout out today from Anne Applebaum in her weekly WaPo column that is otherwise about Jon Stewart's upcoming rally for sanity.  Crossing my fingers now that this link to Stewart might finally get me invited on the Daily Show.


Discussions - 6 Comments

Revkin's description is bland yet accurate. AEI - and you - are "largely libertarian" (at least when it comes to allowing those persons known as corporations to do what they wish - individuals interested in sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll are given a much more... ahem... complicated approach).

Who has ever called you or your cohorts "imperialist neocon Trotskyites"?? former Trotskyites, perhaps, in some cases...

From Michael Lind, "How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington--and Started a War (https://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html):

Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their admiration for the Israeli Likud party's tactics, including preventive warfare such as Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for "democracy." They call their revolutionary ideology "Wilsonianism" (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism. Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians.

To quote the great Dick Cheney, "So?"

I believe Lind is referring more to the PNAC crew and some of their progenitors who, yes, actually were imperialist neocon (FORMER) Trotskyites.

AEI's a pretty big shop these days, so I'm not sure if any of this particular sort of neocon is there. But Free-Markets-Uber-Alles certainly seems to be the dominant mentality, so I'm guessing that any kind of socialist would be less than welcome there.

But again, this really seems hypersensitive. Since when do AEI folks bristle at being described (accurately) as "largely libertarian" - and would take that to be an "epithet"???

Also, note Lind's specificity - "Most neoconservative defense intellectuals..."

So, I'll leave it at that.

Craig, are you just saying Dick Cheney is great because: "Deficits don't matter"?

Actually the post-partisan power plan kind of sounds like deficits don't matter... or perhaps a qualification like "deficits wisely spent don't matter."

I am still trying to figure out what Reagan proved.

Also I was thinking the "moderate" republicans and "moderate" democrats discussed by Applebaum would have to be Deficit Hawks. That is Paul Ryan, maybe Scott Brown, McCain, Olympia Snow, Charles Grassley (on the republican side). Folks willing to raise taxes, let Bush tax cuts expire, expand the tax base, possibly even uncap the social security tax base.

On the democrat side folks who voted against Obama Care and are willing to means test social security and roll back entitlements period. Folks that think all gov spending should be subject to strict scrutiny, and that healthcare and education are protected interests but not rights.

I mean the end of moderates coincides nicely with the deficit, the extremes of both parties will do a lot to make it a lot worse, Until we are absolutely forced to confront it, which certainly isn't now(with this level of unemployment?)

Actually I am unsure where I stand on the "defict", or "moderates" or bipartisanship.

Also some of that plan is already in adoption.

Scanlon,
I defy you to find anyone at AEI who supports corporate sex or their use of illegal drugs.

Why don't you look at the signatories of the statements on this page, as well as the proximate 'Statement of Principles"

https://www.newamericancentury.org/lettersstatements.htm

and tell us who among them was a member of the Socialist Workers' Party or some like group (e.g. Alcove 1 at the City College of New York or any of Max Schactman's political clubs before he joined the Socialist Party of America).

I will give you a head start: Irving Kristol actually was a post-adolescent Trotskyist, a viewpoint he abandoned around about 1942. His son signed these statements; he did not. Joshua Muravchik and Penn Kemble were members of the Socialist Party of America, which was not a Trotskyist outfit and, in fact, antedated the emergence of Trotskyism as a Marxist tendency by a generation. Elliot Abrams does not count toward your score either, as Campus ADA was a common-and-garden social-liberal outfit. Neither does Norman Podhoretz, whose flirtation with radicalism ca. 1964 was non-Marxist.

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