Obama in China highlights total failure of conservative vision
– if you know how to see
Open Left
By Paul Rosenberg
November 22, 2009Bush’s tax cuts & "free market/free trade" policies were supposed to turbo-charge America’s economy, while the neo-conservative foreign policy laid out by the Project for a New American Century in "Rebuilding America’s Defenses" was supposed to be a blueprint for extending American hegemony across the globe, indefinitely, with the containment and subordination of China as a key strategic goal. Conveniently, those lofty promises of yesteryear have been entirely forgotten. Otherwise it would have been impossible to cover Obama’s recent visit to China without starkly confronting the utter failure of conservative ideology, given its first unfettered shot at power since the 1920s, when it brought us the Great Depression…
In summary, the neo-cons never even saw the terrorist coming. They were taken completely by surprise, and now insist the Obama must continue on the doomed path of failure that they have constructed…not even thinking about the number one challenge that they themselves were obsessed with before getting blind-sided by al Qaeda. Is there any way to even begin to grasp how utterly foolish this state of affairs is? There are people in lunatic asylums who deserve to be taken more seriously than this sorry crowd of losers. It’s just that simple. Conservatism as an ideology has failed as utterly and completely as Soviet Communism. It’s time to toss it onto the dust heap of history, before America itself winds up there.
This is actually an article about China, but I loved the opening and closing so much that I left out the middle altogether. With Glen Beck organizing a march to the Lincoln Memorial on MLK day and Sarah Palin speeding about on her bus tour, I needed a shot of rational thinking.
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con·ser·va·tism \kÉ™n-ˈsÉ™r-vÉ™-ËŒti-zÉ™m\
noun
1832
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I don’t understand what Conservatism really means. Maybe I never did. One thing I do know is that Conservative people have some shared understanding because, on meeting, they seem to recognize each other immediately. I’m not sure that’s true on the other side of the fence.
There’s another thing that characterizes Conservatives – negation. It’s apparent in that definition quoted above: no taxes, no regulation, no social welfare. The part about the military is one of the few positives and bears further scrutiny.
The piece of Conservatism that has my attention right now is in Paul’s comments: "Conservatism as an ideology has failed as utterly and completely as Soviet Communism." That’s obviously true, but that doesn’t seem to bother them at all. If anything, it seems to have inspired them. A corollary to these last two points is that they seem to do best when they’re out of power. The twenty years of Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II have been disastrous failures by any criteria, but it doesn’t seem to upset any of them [come to think of it, that Nixon fellow wasn’t so hot either].
There’s something about morality in all of this that’s very confusing to me. While they generally loudly taut moralities of various kinds [the abortion, stem cell, homosexuality thing], they don’t practice it very well [Watergate, Iran/Contra, Dirty Tricks, Abramoff, CIA Leak, prewar intelligence, ignoring FISA, etc]. I’m not so sure what you call that, but it looks like self-righteousness ["if you do it, it’s horrid, but if I do it, it’s expedient"].
I’ve been thinking about how the military business fits in there. On the face of it, it makes little sense. They preach fiscal conservatism and oppose taxation and spending, yet they seem to go for any military program or junket that comes along. I think it must be about power. In politics, in foreign policy – power is the point. Once they get it, they don’t seem to know what to do with it.
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con·ser·va·tism \kÉ™n-ˈsÉ™r-vÉ™-ËŒti-zÉ™m\
noun
[see also The Myth of Sisyphus]
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I need to ‘fess up here – I was a charter subscriber to The American Specatator published out of Bloomington from the late ’70s until when I don’t know. It amused me for 3-4 years and then got tired. It was a neo-con rag before “neo-con” entered the vernacular. It was well written, urbane, erudite, and humorous. I wouldn’t doubt that before G.H.W. Bush said, in describing your average Democrat, that “he never met a government program he didn’t like”, read it first in the Spectator’s monthly inside front cover titled ‘The Continuing Crisis’ – itself worth the subscription price. At the time, it was all very easy for me to understand…everything was more or less in keeping with the basic notion that “that government is best which governs least” and similar outgrowths of the Enlightenment, Pragmatism, Utilitarianism and cetera. Also, the liberal label tended to be associated with people who had been professional politicians for way way way too long – interestingly, a number of such were known as “DixieCrats”. Anyway, ‘Don’t you dare tread on me, don’t you be making my decisions, spending my time/labor/production on what you think is best, don’t condescend that you know one jot what is best for me you effete liberal snobs, keep the hell out of my doctor’s office, my bedroom, my school, my faith, my house and, to the extent possible, my wallet.’ At least that was my naive interpretation…I didn’t talk to many “conservatives” who would endorse laissez-faire capitalism or benevolent dictatorship. I didn’t get to meet many in the circles I was running in (the Harvard School of Public Health, for example) but those that I did know and could have sensible discussion with would shudder and quake if they were asked to consider how “Conservative” has come to be manifest over these past couple/three decades. It is little wonder Mickey, that you don’t understand what it really means because whatever it is become is an incoherent amalgam of moralistic perseverating hobby horsers who, while rocking, are yanking on their own particulars while emitting endless streams of insensible tripe. I read the NYT Sunday Magazine yesterday. A Vietnamese-born who took Jefferson’s seat in New Orleans, by his own admission in print, joined the Republican Party SOLELY on the basis of “their” pro-life position. I rest my case.
I too must confess. Ayn Rand, Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative, I even voted for Goldwater against Johnson – my first vote. I think I’d do it again. Being all involved in the Civil Rights stuff actually put me outside of all of it for a while. When I woke up, it was Nixon who I didn’t think of as Conservative. I thought of him as a crook. I’m not even sure that I think of these people as Conservatives. I still have some idealized view of Conservative as fiscally responsible, non-utopian. I feel like telling them what it’s supposed to mean. It’s like I feel like telling the Fundamentalist Christians what Christianity ought to be. That’s why I actually wrote this. I don’t think that these people have to right to use either moniker. They’re something else, and it’s a bad something else to be. Selfish, immature, self-righteous people behaving badly…