Ideology Has Consequences - The American Conservative

[applegrove]

November 20, 2006 Issue
Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative
Ideology Has Consequences
Bush rejects the politics of prudence.

by Jeffrey Hart

"Many Republicans must feel like that legendary man at the bar on the Titanic. Watching the iceberg slide by outside a porthole, he remarked, “I asked for ice. But this is too much.” Republicans voted for a Republican and got George W. Bush, but his Republican Party is unrecognizable as the party we have known.

Recall the Eisenhower Republican Party. Eisenhower, a thoroughgoing realist, was one of the most successful presidents of the 20th century. So was the prudential Reagan, wary of using military force. Nixon would have been a good secretary of state, but emotionally wounded and suspicious, he was not suited to the presidency. Yet he, too, with Henry Kissinger, was a realist. George W. Bush represents a huge swing away from such traditional conservative Republicanism.

But the conservative movement in America has followed him, evacuating prudence and realism for ideology and folly. Left behind has been the experienced realism of James Burnham. Also vacated, the Burkean realism of Willmoore Kendall, who aspired, as he told Leo Strauss, to be the “American Burke.” That Burkeanism entailed a sense of the complexity of society and the resistance of cultures to change. Gone, too, has been the individualism of Frank Meyer and the commonsense Western libertarianism of Barry Goldwater.

The post-2000 conservative movement has abandoned all that to back Bush and has followed him over the cliff into our calamity in Iraq. On top of all that, the Bush presidency has been fueled by the moral authoritarianism of the current third evangelical awakening.

........SNIP"

http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_11_20/article.html

[applegrove]

1. ..... blind mice...see how they run

[tanyev]

2. Yep. Be careful what you ask for.

[xchrom]

3. recommended.

millenial conservatism is layered with neocons forging -- were forging -- the newest terriotory.

this thread for those interested http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2796484
will be of some interest.

[davidinalameda]

4. hindsight is 20/20

no?

[Phredicles]

5. Reagan was "prudential"???

How is Star Wars "prudential"?:wtf:

As I recall, he was only "wary of using military force" against oppoenents with a chance of fighting back. The Decider is the whirlwind we're all reaping from the wind that Reagan started sowing...

[applegrove]

8. Wasn't star wars part of the creation myth of the end of the Soviet Empire?

CIA knew that the soviets were crumbling under their non-economic system in the 1970s and GOP built up this myth that Reagan alone ran them into the ground with star wars and military spending. Seems the only people who didn't fall for the myth of American supremacy at the time were people who hung out in Afghanistan in the 1980s.. you know.. people like bin Laden who had dealings with both CIA and war with the Soviets.

[Phredicles]

9. I'm not sure they did know;

The CIA seemed to have the same ideological blinders on as the rest of the political establishment.

Another weird thing about the Reagan mythology, though, was his followers' insistence that a "totalitarian" state such as the USSR could never end on its own. Then, when exectly that happened, they all lined up to give Reagan the credit for it.

[bluestateguy]

6. I have given serious thought to subscribing to that magazine

as i agree with much of it's foreign policy stance. But if I subscribed I surely get put on a bunch of mailing lists, which would be passed around from one fascist group to another, and the floodgates would be open. I subscribed to the National Review for one year back in the 90's. It took 5 years for me to stop all of the right wing fascist crap in the mail.

[applegrove]

7. No kidding. My dad gives to lots of charities. My sister just spent a day

going through hundreds of requests for money by mail (just this past year)..and now she has to call them all (except the 20 charities he really wants to give to)and tell them to leave him alone.

If you do anything these days..you get paited as such out there in the ether..and it comes back at ya a hundred times!!

[acmejack]

10. You aren't kidding we were talking about it the other day.

We got the mail and I had twenty one letters from charities and I had donated to only one of them! It does make you almost regret any acts of philanthropy.

[applegrove]

11. And I know it from the Charities point of view too. Even if they send

5 letters a year.. they are better off sending it to someone who is known as a giver..even if it angers the person..than to somebody out of the blue. There are people who are givers and are fortunate enough to give. It will be interesting to see how many letters he gets next year.